If this truly was the day that Arsène Wenger's Premier League title dream died for another season, then the abiding images will be of the Arsenal manager towering above the three match officials at full-time, as he berated them for the award of the late penalty that brought his team to their knees.
The ironies were plentiful. Dirk Kuyt's successful penalty for Liverpool saw their bitter rivals, Manchester United, clamp one hand upon a record 19th championship win. In the directors' box, Sir Alex Ferguson might have cursed Arsenal's goal, Robin van Persie's penalty coming in the eighth minute of the time added on for Jamie Carragher's head injury. Yet Fergie-time would come back around for him. Kuyt's goal was timed at 102 minutes.
Up the road at Wembley, Stoke City, a team that Wenger has in the past derided for their "rugby tactics", stuck five goals past Bolton to set up an FA Cup final against Manchester City, another team whose ethics Wenger has questioned. One of them will enjoy a silver-lined finish to the season. Despite what Wenger perceives as Arsenal's superior brand of football, his side will surely not.
Wenger burned with a sense of injustice. For him, there was rage and frustration, a familiar cocktail in what has been a relentlessly trying season and as he lashed out at a variety of targets he projected a certain helplessness too. He lambasted the referee, Andre Marriner, not only for the penalty decision against Emmanuel Eboué but also his time-keeping. Kenny Dalglish got it as well, for having the temerity to set up his Liverpool team in a defensive vein. It was a familiar lament. Why can't visiting teams simply lay themselves open for Arsenal to take apart?
The unpalatable truth was that Arsenal had let themselves down. This was a third successive home draw in the league and with Wenger having outlined the imperative of a victory to keep their title hopes alive, the last thing he wanted was to see his players so flat and so lifeless. All of his creative talents endured afternoons to forget and only the most blinkered of Arsenal fans could have argued that the opening goal had been coming, although Van Persie did blow his team's best chance of the second half in the 85th minute.
Arsenal looked laboured and one-paced and this felt like one battle too far for tired legs. The penalty that Arsenal got for Jay Spearing's nibble at the back of Cesc Fábregas felt like a lifeline out of the blue. Yet it would be dramatically cut off.
Liverpool's comfort for most of the afternoon was depressing from an Arsenal point of view and Wenger's players seemed to run out of ideas. They had flickered in the first half and they will wonder what might have happened if Laurent Koscielny's 16th-minute header had been six inches lower. But one of the damning indictments against them was that in the second half, despite the home team hogging possession, Liverpool had the better chances, through Luis Suárez.
Liverpool finished the game with three teenagers on the pitch - the rookie full-backs John Flanagan and Jack Robinson emerged with honours - and having lost Fabio Aurelio, Carragher and Andy Carroll to injuries of varying severity. When they conceded so late, the game looked up and so it was not surprising to hear Dalglish praise the character of his players.
Arsenal had been charged with breaking down a Liverpool team whose back four and defensive midfielders rarely got ahead of the ball. Dalglish prized the solidity that his protectors provided even when Arsenal broke, for example, in first-half injury-time with four fliers, they were immediately out-numbered. It was a theme of the afternoon. Curiously, for such an attack-minded side, Arsenal struggled to get bodies into the box. Their final ball was repeatedly dreadful.
It had been a momentous week for the club, with Stan Kroenke's takeover and the death of Danny Fiszman. The Arsenal players' black armbands were as much for the visionary director as the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy. Kroenke was in the directors' box; he missed his Denver Nuggets in NBA play-off action for the first time and he might have squirmed with every other Gooner.
And so to Tottenham on Wednesday, the scene of the last rites on Arsenal's challenge last season. It feels as though they have already been read this time.
Source: David Hytner, The Guardian on 17 Apr 11
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