Before the game yesterday I would have taken the point. Sod the context of Liverpool being nine clear of us and screw the fact that you don’t get many chances to overtake City and make ground on them, this was an away game against a tough opponent who had been in decent form. Yet after the game there’s no doubt that it was two points dropped and as the ball flashed across the Chelsea goal on 96 minutes where Trossard took it off Havertz’s feet for a tap in, it kind of felt like a microcosm of our season. Because in season’s in which you fight for the title, these are the kind of Sliding Doors moments that go your way. It didn’t and the game finished 1-1.

But as I say, I would have taken that a couple of hours before kick off; an hour before kick off those goal posts got moved a little with the team line up. In came Rice. In came Odegaard. Up went our expectations. This was one of our best teams we could field I think. Perhaps you’d argue Calafiori for Timber, but Timber is an excellent full back and not a lot of a downgrade on the Italian; I also thought overall the Dutch international had a great game at left back.

You could tell by their inclusion that Arteta meant business yesterday, but this is a better side under Maresca and the first 10 minutes showed they are no pushover. They dominated the ball and Palmer forced Raya into a very smart stop in the opening few minutes. Chelsea were having the better of the opening exchanges but as soon as Arsenal made that tactical tweak mentioned in commentary by having Saka and Martinelli tuck in to congest the game a little more, we took hold of the first half. But it was still Chelsea that had a better chance with Gusto at the back post. Then the offside goal came for us. It was quick thinking on a free kick, Kai did excellently to spin and was able to keep his balance to flick home. I celebrated like a beast. Only to eventually have that taken away because of VAR.

I know it shouldn’t have been a goal. I know that we all want to avoid these types of annoying situations where we’re complaining that a goal was allowed to stand when it shouldn’t and I know that if it was the other way around I’d be saying “that’s fine. It’s offside. move along”. But that still doesn’t make it a little depressing that you can’t celebrate these goals any more. So when we got our actual goal through super Odegaard work and a tidy finish from Martinelli (he does love a goal at Chelsea, eh?), I celebrated, but as soon as I was up on my feet I sat back down and said to The Management “that’ll probably be ruled out as well. You can’t celebrate goals any more.

And all I could think to myself was “isn’t that sad? That football fans feel like that these days”. Regardless of tight offside calls, anything that isn’t a wonder strike like Neto’s for their equaliser, you spend up half the time wondering how the referee and VAR are going to find a way to disallow it. It sucks the joy out of football and I just think it’s sad.

Our goal was scored on 60 minutes and we had 10 minutes of looking like we were gearing up for another resolute Arsenal away win, until the aforementioned Neto goal. He was a handful for White in the first half but was much more effective when they switched him to right wing and it was from that position he scored, annoyingly.

So it’s 70 minutes, it’s 1-1 and the big question was whether we would respond, which I think we did a bit. We had most of the attacking momentum after the equaliser, even if we didn’t create a ton of chances, but Trossard should have probably scored when he blazed the ball over from around the six yard box with a couple minutes of normal time came. Then there was the chance right at the death that I mentioned. But the points ended up shared and it doesn’t really do anything for us if we’re honest. There was no marker laid down to put us back in the title discussion. Conversely there was no defeat to leave everyone in the world saying “it’s over for Arsenal now” either. But there was some hope in the fact that we had our starting XI looking more like the one we’d all hoped for since match week one. The only question mark that remains is over Rice and Saka, neither of whom Arteta said could continue and who said afterwards of them both “it doesn’t look good”. My hope is that loosely translated that means “for them to go to England” and we have them rested up over the international break. But I suspect they’ll still be called up and knowing Lee Carsley they’ll probably both play on one leg. But let’s see what happens.

The same question on availability for Martin Odegaard will remain too. He managed the whole game yesterday which is good and, frankly, amazing given how much he has played. You could tell he faded a bit towards the end of the game, but the fact he played the whole match suggests to me that he’ll be retrospectively called up for Norway now. He’s one of their most important players and even though they announced their provisional squad around a week ago, I think they can still call up players, so it will be interesting to see what Solbakken does. Obviously as Arsenal fans – and Arteta too – we want him at home not at risk of another injury, but I think he’ll most likely travel now and so we just have to hope that Norway don’t chew him up and spit him out like they did to us last time he played for them.

Arteta’s attention now needs to turn towards how Arsenal go on a run. Forest are up next and they have shown that they are no pushovers, currently level on points with us, but Newcastle gave them a bit of a hiding yesterday and so hopefully that is a sign that their early season form is just starting to wane a little bit. We know what they will look to do on the counter but we will need to control them when we play next – but that’s a fair bit away for now so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it in just under two weeks time.

If you fancy some bonus watching / listening, we did a Same Old Arsenal pod in the immediate aftermath of the game which you can catch up on here. Otherwise, I’ll catch you wonderful people tomorrow. Have a good’un.