Arsenal 1-1 Southampton: Mikel Arteta's side show spirit but lack of discipline needs fixing fast

If Arsenal’s defence found the final 28 minutes plus injury time taxing tonight, they might reflect thankfully on the fact that it wasn’t a much longer shift. Just 13 minutes into the match, Gabriel pole-axed Che Adams with a stray arm and sent the Southampton forward to the deck like Kubrat Pulev. It wasn’t intentional but it was dangerous, and a VAR review of the incident might have yielded more than just a free kick to the visitors.

As it was, Gabriel lasted another 49 minutes before being sent off for picking up two yellow cards in the space of four minutes. Even more frustratingly for manager Mikel Arteta, this within ten minutes of his team equalising and at a point where Arsenal were starting to establish control of the match. This draw keeps them in 15th in the table. Yet as admirable as the defensive front was in the closing stages, it shouldn’t have been necessary.

It’s part of a pattern at Arsenal, who have now been reduced to ten men in three of their last five games. Nicolas Pepe was sent off just after 51 minutes at Leeds and Granit Xhaka, in that well-publicised throttling of Burnley’s Ashley Westwood on Sunday, lasted just seven minutes longer. Taking a second yellow in the dying minutes to secure a result is one thing; putting the team right up against it with a third of game left due to indiscipline is another.

There’s not much of it going around the Emirates right now, but the good news is that at least Arsenal have rescued two points from those three dire situations, tonight’s courtesy of their first Premier League goal in open play since 4 October. The wider pattern of two draws and four defeats is a slump that has brought Arteta’s immediate future under serious scrutiny, a torrent of social media aggression and even prompted Patrice Evra to make Thierry Henry’s next visit to his spiritual home a wee bit awkward.

Those bagatelles aside, only results will pump up a club that has seemed utterly deflated in recent weeks. ‘It's not time to hide,’ Artera said yesterday. ‘It's time to put your face and body on the line.’ Now really is the time for Arsenal to keep all eleven bodies within the lines. Passion is all well and good, but it needs to be channelled into commitment and decisiveness rather than panic and anger. In a bunched and demanding league with squads hampered by muscle injuries, isolating players and a relentless schedule of matches, Arsenal don’t want to turn the current trend of playing the last half an hour or more with ten players into a habit.

An example to follow was on the other side of the pitch to them tonight. Southampton are a compact side, with their base of Oriel Romeu and James Ward-Prowse in midfield strong enough to release their full-backs up the pitch and adroit enough to find the array of hard-working attacking options ahead of them. It’s a controlled discipline that has taken them right into the top four. When this Premier League does eventually start to spread out, they look nailed on to be at the opposite end of the table to where Arsenal currently reside.

If Arteta’s team are to start moving through the Premier League to join them, then they need to capture the spirit of the final 28 minutes here with the full complement and use it as the base to underpin any kind of victory to get them upwardly mobile. It’s Everton away and Chelsea at home next for Arsenal, a team for whom 1-0 has always had a nice ring to it.