Arsenal became the first Premier League leader to bottle this hard

Arsenal's blip in the title race has become a full blown crisis. On Wednesday night, in a fixture brought forward to accommodate the EFL Cup Final, the Gunners were widely expected to swat Wolves aside at Molineux.

Well, this was especially the case when Bukayo Saka's deft header broke the deadlock inside six minutes, the Gunners' earliest goal of the entire season, before Piero Hincapié scored his first for the club shortly after the interval.

However, a beautiful strike from Hugo Bueno soon after awoke the Wolves faithful from their slumber and the nerves began to kick in. Mikel Arteta's team could not find a clinching third, rarely looking like to doing so, and paid the price.

In the 94th minute, after a mix up involving David Raya and Gabriel, teenaged debutant Tom Edozie, who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, fired in an equaliser that Riccardo Calafiori could not prevent on the goal line.

This takes Wolves' points tally up to just ten, while, more importantly, Arsenal are now just five points above Manchester City, having played a game more. 20 matches into this campaign, the Gunners had 48 points on the board, thereby on course for an impressive tally of 91.

Since then, however, they've picked up only ten points from 21 available, so they would need to win every remaining fixture to reach 91. Thus, their points tally of 58 after 27 fixtures is the lowest of any league-leaders since Leicester City a decade ago; things did all work out for them.

With a North London derby at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium up next, some of the statistics that came light following Wednesday's collapse are alarming.

Statistics that compound Arsenal's misery post-Wolves

As noted by Tom Ede of Opta, this match was the first time in Premier League history that the leaders had relinquished a two goal advantage against any opponent in the relegation zone, let alone rock-bottom as Rob Edwards' side are. The second half statistics are also very concerning:

Arsenal vs Wolverhampton Wanderers 2nd half statistics

Note: All statistics are courtesy of SofaScore.

Across an entire half of football, longer when the elongated added time is accounted for, Wolves had more possession and completed more passes than the league-leaders. The hosts also mustered as many shots, created as many big chances, had one more shot on target and were level with one corner apiece. This is the same Wolves team that has won only one of their last 31 Premier League matches, losing 22 of them.

This though is not a first since the turn of the year. In 2026, only Crystal Palace and West Ham, both on eight, have dropped more points from winning positions than Arteta's team (7). They led against both Manchester United and Brentford in recent weeks, but yielded just one point from those two outings.

This simply has to change, starting with Sunday's derby, or their wait for that first Premier League title since 2004 will continue.