Should Arsenal lift the Premier League trophy in May, the thrill of the chase will be remembered fondly, difficult forks in the road glorified. Here was a statement win to show that the pain and agony can be worth it. A champion team must often suffer to arrive at beautiful moments. Those scratchy wins over Wolves, Everton and Brighton can now be celebrated alongside a champagne evening to sign off 2025.
The club’s familiarity with chasing the title as the league turns for home has bred an unavoidable anxiety. April and May have previously proved the cruellest months but December has been full of worries. In pre-match, “north London forever” was sung tremulously, fans seeking a collective warmth to ward off individual doubts about the dream. For 45 minutes, fans, players and manager alike were left alone with their private agonies, only for the second half where Arsenal played the expansive, confident football of the autumn, smashing in four goals to vaporise the unease.
Aston Villa were a feared opponent, all too familiar. Bringing their winning run – and perhaps their title challenge – to an abrupt end added further satisfaction, burying a recent ghost and some former employees, too. Emi Martínez, a former Gunner, fed off the frustration with his time-keeping, and was barracked as he headed in for half-time. How the home fans enjoyed him being culpable for Arsenal’s first goal. It was only 24 days previously that Emi Buendía’s 95th-minute winner at Villa Park was followed by Arsenal players sinking to the turf as if another disappointing May had already been reached.
It is rare that Mikel Arteta is the least active manager in the technical area but Unai Emery exuded the greater nervous energy, breathing in the London night air deeply, as if caught downwind of an offending odour. His distaste was understandable, his Villa team might have been out of sight by the break, only for the razor-sharp counterattacking that caught out Chelsea to fail them. Ollie Watkins was particularly culpable, his seventh goal in 12 matches against favoured opposition coming long after Villa’s fate had been sealed.
Time has been relatively kind to Emery’s Emirates Stadium tenure, a job taken on in difficult circumstances. Its termination six years ago has proved the right move for all concerned, particularly Arteta, the coach passed over for his fellow Basque.
The Arsenal fans who mocked Emery might instead have celebrated a signature win for Arteta against the alchemist taking Villa to heights unseen for decades, who had previously had his successor’s number, Arteta enjoying just two wins from eight. Emery’s blueprint is little secret but has brought him four European trophies. Sit in, do not seek a greater share of possession, spoil if you have to. And in the moments when the match will be decided, it becomes time to go for the throat. Going behind need be no cause for alarm; each of Villa’s five successive away wins had come after falling a goal behind. Falling two behind, then three, then four, was not part of any plan.
Martin Ødegaard’s pass for Martín Zubimendi to coolly score the second released endorphins of relief into a crowd suddenly finding a voice for something other than berating the referee, Darren England. Leandro Trossard’s goal celebrations were tempered by an extended video assistant delay. Gabriel Jesus’s fourth was the first this season for the only Premier League winner in the ranks, a reminder of the power at Arteta’s hands.
The restoration of the defensive bedrock of Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba represented better tidings than pre-match panic greeting news of Declan Rice’s knee injury, the measure cautionary rather than cause for desolation. Rice’s absence meant this was time for other heroes. Arteta’s expansive, expensive squad was designed with such emergencies in mind. The sight of Villa’s collection of rangy midfielders carrying the ball great distances through the spaces where Rice is usually found was a significant feature of a purgatorial first half where Viktor Gyökeres was guilty of two headed misses. He was also guilty of losing possession for a move from which Watkins should have scored far earlier than he eventually managed.
The Swede is not alone in struggling with the burden of expectation but Arsenal need so much more from the player bought as the franchise striker; Kai Havertz’s return to the bench may soon enough disrupt the project, as will Jesus’s return.
Arsenal’s most heroic moment of the first half came when Saliba’s toe robbed Watkins as he shaped to tap in. His partner’s return got another band back together. “Set piece again,” sang the home fans after Martínez’s flap and the familiar sight of the Brazilian defender bundling home. From there, a deluge of goals and noise to remind Arsenal’s path to glory need not be all trouble and strife. They have it within themselves for success to happen far more serenely.
