Arsenal are running out of chances and the Premier League title has to be enough

For about twenty minutes at St Mary's on Saturday evening, Arsenal looked like they had weathered the storm. Viktor Gyokeres had equalised, Southampton were rattled, and the Premier League leaders appeared set to roll through to Wembley the way everybody expected them to. Then Shea Charles scored, and another trophy slipped away.

This was supposed to be the season Arsenal finally broke through. Nine points clear at the top of the league, into the Champions League quarter-finals, and carrying a squad that Arteta has spent three summers rebuilding. The quadruple talk that bubbled after the FA Cup third round has been dead for a while, ever since Manchester City lifted the League Cup at their expense, but a treble still felt within reach. Now it is down to two.

The pattern is becoming a problem

What should worry Arsenal more than the defeat itself is how it happened. A Championship side pressed them into errors, scored from a counter-attack, and then hit them on the counter when the game opened up. Southampton did not need to produce anything extraordinary. They just needed Arsenal to be slightly off, and that was enough.

It is a pattern Arteta's team have not been able to shake. The League Cup final against City followed a similar script. Arsenal started brightly and forced Trafford into a flurry of saves inside the opening ten minutes, but City grew into the match and ultimately controlled long stretches of it, with Arsenal managing just 38 percent possession. When the chances did come, they were not taken, and two moments of carelessness from Kepa gifted City both goals. Talent is not the issue. Consistency in decisive moments is.

The league remains theirs to lose

None of this changes the fundamental reality of Arsenal's season. They are nine points clear at the top of the Premier League and have a Champions League quarter-final against Sporting to come. If they win the league, nobody will remember St Mary's by May. If they win both, Arteta will be celebrated as the man who delivered Arsenal's greatest season in two decades.

But that is the point. There is no margin for another slip. Arsenal cannot afford to drop the league title the way they have dropped two cups, because there is nothing left to fall back on. The safety net has gone.

Arteta's response matters now

The Spaniard said all the right things afterwards. He refused to blame his players and took the responsibility himself. But words are cheap in April when the matches are coming thick and fast. Arsenal travel to Sporting in the Champions League in a few days and still have a trip to the Etihad pencilled in later this month. Those are the fixtures that will define the season, and Saturday's performance at Southampton is not the kind of dress rehearsal that breeds confidence.

Arsenal's squad is deep enough and talented enough to win the league from here. That has never been in doubt. What remains in doubt is whether they can handle the weight of the moment when it arrives. Two cup exits suggest the answer is not as clear as the league table makes it look.

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