Arsenal: 4 Things We Learned From Southampton Draw

Arsenal ended their losing streak with a 1-1 Premier League draw with Southampton.

Never before in the history of the club had Arsenal lost five consecutive home league matches. One unwanted record was thankfully not set on Wednesday.

Not turning up at all for the first half, Southampton saw swathes of possession in all areas of the pitch, dictating the play and keeping Arsenal at an arm’s length.

Their dominance paid off when Theo Walcott exploited the space between Gabriel and Kieran Tierney to run through on goal and chip the onrushing Bernd Leno. At this stage, heads did their usual drop from back to front, as the hosts could only carve out half-decent openings before the break.

Improved in the second half as the Saints willingly dropped off, some sublime work from Bukayo Saka down the left flank saw him beat three men as he charged towards the box, with the ball eventually falling to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who calmly slotted beyond Alex McCarthy.

https://twitter.com/Aubameyang7/status/1339313549626273793

Arsenal actually scored a goal. From open play, too.

Believing this could be the catalyst for a shift in narrative for the season, previous uncertainties crept back in less than ten minutes later, as Gabriel was sent for an early shower after needlessly hauling down Walcott for his second yellow card of the evening.

Nathan Redmond came closest to making the visitors’ waves of attack pay off having struck the bar, while Rob Holding came within inches of snatching an unlikely win when he too hit the woodwork.

Here’s what we learned from the 1-1 draw.

Not Much Has Changed

A glance at the result shows one team bang in form could only muster a 1-1 draw away at a side languishing in 15th place and without a single point from their previous four home league matches.

Good, right? Unfortunately not.

Arsenal were still desperately poor for the vast majority of the game, only picking up the pace after the break when Southampton invited it. History wasn’t made at the Emirates, yet it had a strong whiff of deja vu.

Mohamed Elneny was way off the pace in midfield and Dani Ceballos added something different with a broader array of line-breaking passing, together culminating in a similarly languid use of the ball. Every attack fluttered at the final hurdle, with no ball retention anywhere across the pitch and each attack lasting in the region of seven seconds (probably).

Mikel Arteta tried to change things up against the Saints. Not much altered.