Arsenal show fight in dramatic Southampton draw but also prove title pressure is too much

A draw will feel like a loss for both Southampton and Arsenal even though the latter were two goals down with two minutes to play. The pressure is taking its toll and a win at the Etihad is necessary if the Gunners want to claim their first league title in 19 years.

An alarming number of red flags emerged during Arsenal’s dramatic 3-3 draw against Southampton.

After being pegged back from commanding winning positions two weeks in a row, the Gunners needed to show they are not caving under the title race pressure and going 2-0 down after 14 minutes against the team bottom of the Premier League showed that they are doing just that.

It was an extremely worrying start to a game Arsenal were expected to comfortably navigate, which meant that even if they recovered to win it would have been a concerning performance.

Rob Holding’s presence in the team changes things for Arsenal. The drop-off from William Saliba is enormous and worrying for Mikel Arteta. Holding over Saliba gives the other team confidence, allows them to press higher than they would normally be able, and gives Arsenal less dominance playing out of the back.

The English centre-back might not have been at fault for any of Southampton’s goals, but his lack of press resistance and inaccurate long balls allowed the visitors to punish the league leaders.

With Granit Xhaka out due to illness, Fabio Vieira stepped into the midfield and had a night to forget; he wasn’t the only one. Aaron Ramsdale assisted Carlos Alcaraz for the opening goal with a horrible pass intended for Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Magalhaes was all over the place as Alcaraz slipped in former Gunners forward Theo Walcott to score a trademark goal, leaving the Emirates crowd stunned.

Zinchenko called a post-goal huddle to try and work out what the hell was going on, with Gary Neville left dumbfounded on Sky Sports co-commentary duty.

Arsenal did respond through Gabriel Martinelli, who thrashed Bukayo Saka’s pass into the back of the net to galvanise his teammates and the home crowd.

Martinelli and Saka were the only good players for Arsenal in that first half. They had their opposition full-backs on toast from the word go and both helped Romain Perraud and Kyle Walker-Peters into the referee’s book with identical fouls.

Wingers aside, Gabriel Jesus did not look sharp, Ramsdale, Zinchenko and Gabriel were all left red-faced by the Southampton goals, Vieira was poor and Holding was out of his depth. Thomas…