I am in a quandary as to how I feel this morning. On the one hand, I’m really disappointed in the draw away at Brentford. We had an opportunity to keep City at arm’s length, we had the chance to show our credentials, we could have laid down a marker for the league. In this mindset, it was two points dropped. But on the other hand, we went away to a good team, a team who have just beaten Villa and Newcastle away, that is vying for a European spot, that is difficult on their patch, and that provides a very specific and unique challenge to every team in this league.

We know what people think about set pieces, about how it’s “ruining the game”, but I’m not going to even remotely posit that notion this morning. Brentford have weapons, and they use them very well, not least those throw-ins, which are essentially corners in themselves. And we suffered from it with the equaliser they scored from. It’s funny because on the balance of the 90, you have to say that it was the least they deserved, but I thought in that second half we had bested them for most of the opening period and about five minutes after we scored through Madueke’s goal (which I thought took an age to actually drop into the net). So half of me was thinking that Brentford scored against the run of play, but on balance, it was just in that period of the game, because Brentford had the most of it.

It’s fair to say we weren’t really at it yesterday. The early seeds were sewn within a couple of minutes when Big Gabby passed the ball out of play for a corner. Raya had one or two wobbly moments too, including a ridiculous roll out to Rice for which Thiago nearly scored from the cross that came in. But the odd thing about Raya, right, is that he often does this – he’ll make a cock up, then instantly redeem himself with a worldie save. So you don’t know whether to be pissed off at him for his error, or delighted for him at his brilliant save. Just do the latter more than the former, mate, alright?

That first half really pissed me off, too. I’m starting to get wound up by how we just give up halves of football. It’s happened so many times this season; the first half is reduced to a kind of non-event, with the only real chance being Thiago’s header, which shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Brentford ended the first half on 0.41xG and I’ll be all of that chance creation probability came from that one effort. Conversely, we created one shot in that first half, as we just let it pass us by. That’s not what Champions-elect do. They go to a ground like last night, into a difficult night atmosphere, with the crowd up, and they bore the f*ck out of them by scoring early and shutting the game down. But we just couldn’t get players on the ball in the right spaces. Eze was anonymous. Gyokeres was okayish, with the most ludicrous yellow card I’ve ever seen in my life, whilst Madueke looked like he didn’t know how to best Rico Henry. One thing you have to say about Noni is that he knows how to beat a man, but last night I thought he struggled with Henry’s touch-tight man-marking. You have to give the Brentford left-back some props for that. The thing Noni isn’t good at is delivering end product, so it was weird that on a night in which is primary asset was nullified, he was the one who actually delivered end product. Weird. If you could just combine the two from now on, Noni, that’d be grand lad.

Brentford closed the spaces we wanted to be in, then left big gaps in the middle of the park and we just didn’t get into those spaces. I guess that’s because they go from back-to-front so quickly and they don’t really need the middle of the park because they go long so much, but you’d have thought Arteta would have had a plan to answer that. Perhaps he did and the team just didn’t execute, because for the 15 minutes after halftime and until we scored, we pretty much dominated. Most of our chances came then, except the Rice chance just after we’d scored, which he probably should have put his laces through it instead of trying to find Big Vik. Brentford defended stoutly and deep into their box as I’d said in my pre-match blog, the chance therefore went a-begging.

But after that we retreated again. If we cock up this Premier League campaign, we won’t specifically look back at this one as one in which the title was lost, but we will lament those times we couldn’t get that second goal to see off a game. We did that last weekend against Sunderland, but certainly in 2026 so far, it really feels like we just haven’t done enough to kill off a game. That leads me to another point of discussion: Our 2026 form. Brentford have more points than we do this year. We’ve drawn three, lost one, won two. It’s patchy. It’s stodgy, a bit like our football in the first half and were we a little more authoritative in games like this, I wouldn’t be as worried as I am. Which sounds mad, right? I mean we’re four points clear at the top, 12 games to go, we’re rightly lauded as the best team so far’ this season and we suffered an off night. Normally you have a game like this and you say “ahh, it happens”. But Liverpool in the second half. Forest away. United at home. Now Brentford away. It’s the patter of these performances that worries me more than the actual result itself. If we’d played last night, hit the post, ‘keeper has the game of his life, we create chance-after-chance, Brentford hang on and we are left ruing missed chances, then you can say that. But that didn’t happen. Brentford probably created the better chances than us, save for the one right at the end with Martinelli. In the moment I was like “you have to score those”, but on watching the replays, it was a good save from the Brentford ‘keeper, so perhaps you have to give it.

1,000 words in and I’m still no further in my thinking as to whether I’m still grumpy or I want to do a little ‘Perspective FC’ tonight on the Same Old Arsenal pod. Join in and listen at 6pm UK time if you want to find out.

I’ll be