Don’t call it a comeback: Saka and Gyökeres step up to deliver for Arsenal

Sometimes all you need is Bukayo Saka, a man built to prop up the world, who knows nothing but mind-melting pressure and expectation. Arsenal have lost three of the six Premier League games Saka has missed this season, and as he separated Raúl Jiménez from his sense of gravity and dignity down the right wing after nine minutes to set up Viktor Gyökeres’s opener and deliver the Emirates into euphoric relief, you were instantly reminded why.

Saka has basically spent his entire life as close to career- and world-defining success as possible without actually touching it, both Sisyphus and Atlas. In the past five years he has lost consecutive Euros finals and finished second in three consecutive league seasons, adding a Carabao Cup final defeat for good measure.

This is not his fault, of course, already an England and Arsenal great at 24, an unimpeachable talent and lifeforce. But the expectation and urgency has dissected him sinew by sinew. This was his first Premier League start in six weeks after an achilles injury. Doubt has spread as to whether his best is already behind him. He needed to play only 45 minutes to prove this is nonsense, a relief to Thomas Tuchel as much as anyone.

Nothing at Arsenal can be routine any more, and yet these increasingly bizarre occasions settle into familiar rhythms, all twitching legs and folded arms, forced laughter and desperate searches for distraction. “North London Forever” has become an oddly moving anthem of hope, but also of fear and loathing. Rain beginning just as Jarred Gillett blew for kick-off only added to the sense that maybe even God thinks it would be funny if Arsenal conspired not to win the Premier League, not just pathetic fallacy but cosmic interference.

For all the gleeful focus on Arsenal’s perceived bottling, there has not been enough discussion of the alternative. Given the depth of quality, the strength of the challengers, this might be the hardest Premier League title ever to win. Anything approaching consistency requires either remarkable competence or incompetence. A club might get ­relegated on 40 points, a mid-table feasibly extending to 18th. Winning the title on 80-something points would not be proof of some inherent flaw in Arteta’s empire, but of a changing league and world that Arsenal have adapted to better than any other club.

Yet while this will hold true for Manchester City, it is unquestionably more intense for Arsenal, every action seemingly a referendum on their value and ability, their masculinities and minds. The brain is designed to chase, not lead, yet they have led for the vast majority of this season. Every player will be physically and psychologically burned out; crushed and remoulded almost weekly. Their sleep might be measured by every possible metric, but that does not mean plenty have not spent night after night inspecting their bedroom ceilings from their temperature-controlled mattresses. And so every goal they score from here, everything they do well, every moment where a player does not collapse screaming in terror, is impressive in itself.

And this was deeply impressive at a cagily overcast Emirates, measured yet relentless, nothing resembling stagnation or fear. What, if anything, has changed in the week since stumbling past Newcastle? Yes, Fulham were soft and disconnected, but for much of the past few months that would have been irrelevant to Arsenal. Helpfully this has been perhaps the best week of Gyökeres’s Arsenal career, his ninth and 10th goals in the past 12 league matches, indications he is adapting not just to the team but to the league, finding his place and purpose. But perhaps it is that the finish line is finally visible, the lingering sense that more than ­victory or defeat, all everyone involved wants now is for this to be over, to think about something different, for the ground to stop trembling. There was something oddly free about the ­clinicalness with which they comported themselves.

Arteta has been criticised for leaning into the pressure, telling his players to “love” the noise pre-match, but what is the alternative? Pretending this doesn’t matter, that the walls are not actually falling in? Informing his squad that they are wrong to believe this is everything they have ever wanted and worked for? How about enforced relaxation, a prescribed cocktail and chit-chat hour every Tuesday and Thursday? The programme called this “a huge London derby”, which might sound ridiculous given Arsenal have never lost to Fulham in a league match, but was unquestionably true. Everything is huge here. Maybe that has been the case for so long they have finally learned how to live in a world constantly trying to eat them, seemingly fuelled by their suffering, learned how to dance in the rain.

Talk now will be of six points that are not really six points, a false lead, City’s success considered as inevitable as Arsenal’s collapse. Yet Arsenal have only three games to survive, City five, including three teams in the top eight. All Arsenal’s remaining opponents currently reside in the bottom seven; West Ham collapsing in on themselves, Burnley both relegated and managerless, Crystal Palace likely preoccupied by the impending Conference League final.

Albeit in a world less confusing and confused, Arsenal won the reverse fixtures by a combined 5-0. This is what they are good at, what this squad was built for at massive expense and effort. And if anyone can push them over the finish line, it will be Saka.

Photograph by Stuart Macfarlane/Getty Images