Arsenal’s win at West Ham should have been remembered for Leandro Trossard’s decisive goal, but the aftermath quickly became another round of pundit outrage over a VAR decision that was rightly overturned.
At around 6:30pm on Sunday afternoon time stood still.
At the London Stadium, Callum Wilson had just smashed a rebound from a corner over the line and earned West Ham a point. In doing so, he had also put one Manchester City hand back on the Premier League trophy.
Watching on at home, my face dropped almost as far as my stomach. A million impulses crowding my brain, creating a white noise. Out of the noise, a simple thought emerges, “We’ve blown it. We were so close to it and now it’s gone”.
I know instinctively there’s no way Arsenal can come back from this, there isn’t the time and even if there was, these moments are not ones you recover from. I’d actually voiced an opinion along those lines around five minutes earlier to Jo.
Mikel Arteta is going mad on the touchline, holding his arm, Gary Neville thinks he’s wanting a handball and then, as replays of the goal are run, a clearer picture emerges.
Perhaps there’s a foul on David Raya.
Now, full disclosure here. I called Neville a “Commentary Terrorist” a few months back, but it’s Neville’s words as the replays run that provide an atom of hope.
He thinks it’s a foul, and the more times you look, the more you can see it.
The question then becomes whether the VAR, Darren England, is going to do anything about it.
The fate of the Premier League title, in this moment, rests in England’s hands. Two teams scrapping for their lives at the other end of the table, West Ham and Spurs, are in England’s hands.
After the longest two-and-a-half minutes of my life, with me bent double on the edge of my sofa, on the edge of the abyss, tears pricking my eyes for the second time in five days, thinking, “Please, please please, please just disallow it”, there is a distant cheer from the away end.
The referee, Chris Kavanagh, is asked to have a look on the pitchside monitor. The last time a referee was sent to the monitor in one of our games, it didn’t end so well for us.
However…
Well, you all know what happened next.
I can’t put it any better than Ian Wright did at the time, so I’m not going to try, but if the decision to overturn the goal due to a foul from “West Ham’s number 19” is the biggest VAR call in Premier League history, then it stands to reason that it’s also the biggest in ours.
So, here we are, just two wins away from a first Premier League title since 2004.
Given what went down in Stratford, I’m sure you can understand that I won’t be rushing to crown us champions just yet. Perhaps coming so close to disaster is a timely reminder that full focus will be required at home to Burnley and then at Crystal Palace.
It’s certainly a good reminder for us as fans that nothing can be taken for granted and, while we have two eminently winnable games left to play, they still have to be won.
The reaction to the disallowed goal, which everyone in the Sky studio, yes, Wright, but also Roy Keane and Jamie Redknapp, agreed was the correct decision, has really allowed us to see people.
Wrighty’s old friend, Peter Schmeichel, has been on a one-man moan-up about us all season. He outdid himself after the game on Sunday, saying this,”It cannot be a free kick, it cannot… I think it’s so wrong, I just don’t understand why all of a sudden that’s a free kick, because it’s not been for any teams all the way throughout the season. All of this, it’s just crazy, and that decision today is just so wrong on so many levels.”
What, you mean apart from the fact that Raya was impeded from jumping by West Ham’s number 19 at the front and was having his shirt pulled from behind by Todibo, Peter?
How can it be wrong to give a foul to Arsenal when the goalkeeper is being fouled?
I mean, that’s two fouls and two fouls that Arsenal, because they’re a bit cuter about their set pieces, haven’t been anywhere near replicating this season.
The closest anyone can find is Saliba jumping against the United keeper in our first game of the season and Gabriel on another old friend, Emi Martinez.
You can argue we might have been sailing close to the wind, but these challenges were clearly not the same thing.
Then we had Shay Given making an utter, utter fool of himself on Match of the Day 2, even as the Match of the Day producers brought in Darren Cann, a former assistant referee, to explain clearly and repeatedly that the correct decision had been made.
To help Given out, Cann spoke in very short, simple sentences, even explaining why the decision took so long.
Still, the former Manchester City keeper couldn’t seem to get his head around how this was a foul and all the atrocities Arsenal had perpetuated over the season and got away with were not.
If you looked closely, I’m sure you would have seen his cranial fluid leaking out of his ears.
To be fair to Given, he was the second former City keeper to make himself look stupid on the programme in consecutive weeks, following Joe Hart‘s weirdly emotional dismissal of Arsenal’s title credentials, saying City would do “whatever needs to be done”.
Smash cut to 24 hours later and two dropped points for City at Hill Dickinson Stadium, which would have been three dropped points had yet another old friend, Michael Oliver, only blown the whistle when he was supposed to.
Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.
None of the above would be relevant, though, without the earliest 83rd-minute winner in Premier League history.
Honestly, it feels like I lived about three lifetimes between Leandro Trossard‘s winning goal and the end of that game.
It was a day of substitutions, some good, some bad, and on another day we might have had to talk about how Declan Rice came to spend 20 minutes at right-back, but I’ll simply say, everyone can make a bad decision, you just have to make the next decision a good one.
The decision to introduce Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz to proceedings with about 20 minutes left was a very good decision from the manager.
In the eye of the storm, the two of them brought a bit of calm and, just by being able to get on the ball and then move it, helped turn the game our way.
It was from an extended bit of keep-ball on our right involving Cristhian Mosquera and Noni Madueke that Havertz and Odegaard combined before the Norwegian created a give and go with Rice. A perfect return from the England man gave Odegaard a yard of space in the penalty area.
Touch, touch, touch, touch and, with his fifth, the captain found Trossard, lurking between the penalty spot and the edge of the box. The Belgian shot first time, the ball deflected off Soucek and found its way home, sparking the mother of all celebrations in front of the away end.
I’m quite glad we didn’t go full Richarlison, but it was close.
At home, I don’t know what noises came out of me, but I nearly killed Jo as I threw myself on top of her like I was protecting her from a landmine.
Fair enough, I guess.
Five minutes earlier, an incredible block from Raya allied with, let’s be honest here, a terrible finish from Mateus Fernandes had stopped us from going a goal behind.
This would have been, if not terminal to our Premier League chances, certainly akin to Michael Myers turning up at your front door wondering if you needed help with any babysitting.
Yet, there we were just five little minutes later, standing on the very brink of glory.
In two weeks, we could be champions.
That thought is occupying every fibre of my being right now, I don’t have space for anything else.
Please please please please just make it happen, Arsenal.