Title race is far from over but Arsenal need to recapture their relentless energy

Amid the sense of disbelief and frustration that Arsenal had snatched a second straight draw from the jaws of victory at West Ham, Granit Xhaka was on hand to add a dose of pragmatism. “If something is not going well, it is easy to show the finger to someone else,” he said of their faltering title push. “We took this challenge up until now and nobody was thinking about this before the season. Let’s refresh everything now.”

The path towards an extraordinary achievement has narrowed considerably and the annoyance for Mikel Arteta will be that it did not have to be this way. There was a moment not long before they let West Ham back into proceedings when the silence around London Stadium verged on eerie: Arsenal were passing their way towards a victory of consummate ease and, in hindsight, perhaps they were lulled by the occasion’s near-total lack of edge. Neither their hosts nor those in the stands were evincing genuine belief that the afternoon might turn on its head.

What happened next was another lesson that Arsenal have not earned the right to decide when they can cruise. Second-guessing what is going through a player’s mind can be a lazy form of analysis but it was hard not to conclude a measure of complacency had set in. West Ham are not Liverpool and their ground is hardly Anfield: perhaps Arsenal would be able to declare early and conserve energy as they had in a cakewalk at Fulham five weeks previously.

It will exasperate Arteta that, just as Xhaka’s set-to with Trent Alexander-Arnold shifted the tone a week previously, another senior player contrived an avoidable error this time. Thomas Partey is 29 and schooled in Diego Simeone’s unceasing approach at Atlético Madrid: he should have had no business trying to