Nervous Arsenal washed away on tide of Newcastle optimism

After a season of gentle optimism, global improvement and reasons to believe, it felt like it was all going to come down to this. The question was if Mikel Arteta’s best José Mourinho impression after the North London derby, ostentatiously avoiding explicit comment and covering for his Arsenal players by making himself the story, was to have the desired effect.

In a season of the Spaniard’s team providing half-answers to many, they did it again at St James’ Park. They had the guts but they lacked the nerve required of them on a Monday night that was always going to be more challenging than some suggested. Tottenham’s follow-up win, laboriously prised from Burnley at Sunday lunchtime, had knocked the ball flush into their court. The schedule and the occasion demanded and if ever there was a night for Arsenal to show they really had changed and that they were becoming a team of substance, then this was it.

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If they were looking for an idyllic retreat to recover from Thursday’s ordeal, though, this was never going to be it. This was not quite the bear pit they had faced (and which had initially inspired them) in N19 last week but it wasn’t a million miles away from it as we kicked off, in an arena brought back to its buoyant best since the late autumn exit of Mike Ashley – with a crowd ready to hail its Newcastle United’s side’s sharp revival in 2022 ahead of a summer full of unfamiliar optimism.

The home fans chanted with insistence and the visitors could have done with some of their certainty. The suspicion was Aaron Ramsdale’s heartily-cheered slip in the opening seconds, when making his inaugural clearance of the evening, pointed