Sunday’s defeat by Aston Villa has added jeopardy, and Mikel Arteta knows ousting Bayern will take some doing

Arsenal landed in a gusty Munich aiming to show they have not been blown off course. A week is a long time in football and it was only last Tuesday, when Mikel Arteta’s players emerged for their first leg to a rapturous reception at the Emirates, that they were being favoured to dethrone a wobbly Bayern Munich. The picture has clouded since then and there is a sense of being caught between absolutes when the rematch kicks off on Wednesday night.

If Arsenal overcome their depleted hosts, they will have achieved an outcome for the ages and can savour a first Champions League semi-final since 2009. Should Bayern make home advantage and elite-level lineage count, those hovering to sound the death knell on their season will form an orderly queue. At this point of a campaign the lightest breeze can resemble a hurricane, as was amply shown by the reaction to Aston Villa’s victory in north London on Sunday.

We ask whether the teams’ Premier League defeats had been coming, where the problems lie and what the managers must reflect on

Arsenal: Mikel Arteta’s decision to disrupt the formula that has served them so well since the turn of the year backfired spectacularly against an Aston Villa side who came to the Emirates Stadium with a clear gameplan. Kai Havertz looked threatening during the first half as he consistently broke through the lines from his midfield position but Gabriel Jesus was unable to provide the cutting edge in attack as Arsenal faded badly after the break. By contrast, Ollie Watkins was a constant menace and unsettled the usually assured Gabriel Magalhães, while John McGinn and co were able to control possession for Villa against an ineffective Arsenal midfield. But of most concern was how panic seemed to spread among Arteta’s players as they chased the game and were eventually overwhelmed. EA

City have not been at their overwhelming best this season, but they remain immune to the typical anxieties of a title run-in

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There are still only two points in it: Manchester City 73, Arsenal 71, Liverpool 71. It’s not over yet. If the three keep pace for the next five games, it will still be the first season since 1971-72 in which three different sides go into their final game of the season with a chance of winning the title. The hope for anybody seeking a dramatic run-in is that this weekend was just the beginning of a final month of twists and turns. But the sense is that the race has taken a decisive shift towards City and a fourth successive title for Pep Guardiola’s team.

It’s not just that City swept Luton aside 5-1 . You’d expect that; they beat them 6-2 in the FA Cup in February. Nor was it just the fact that Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace , the opponent Jürgen Klopp had beaten more than any other, or that Arsenal lost at home to Aston Villa , managed by their former manager Unai Emery, each detail twisting the knife in a little further. It was the way they lost, coming after the way Arsenal had played in drawing against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and the way Liverpool had played in losing to Atalanta in the Europa League .

Manchester City are only two points ahead, there are six games remaining, but we know we have seen this movie before

At the final whistle the Emirates ­Stadium was already half empty, the home crowd streaming out into the Sunday gloom.

Mikel Arteta could be seen striding across the turf to applaud the empty pink-red seats, or least those who had remained in theirs right to the end of an afternoon that had kicked off to raucous club anthems, tongues of fire on the touchline, choreographed victory-vibes.

• Defeat by Aston Villa leaves Manchester City top
• ‘We knew this moment could come. It’s about reacting’

Mikel Arteta admitted that Arsenal must “keep believing” they can still win the Premier League for the first time since 2004 after a disastrous 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa handed Manchester City the initiative in the title race.

Late goals from the substitute Leon Bailey and a 19th league strike of the season for Ollie Watkins condemned Arsenal to only their fifth loss of the season. It meant that Arsenal missed the opportunity to return to the top of the table having seen rivals Liverpool also slip up against Crystal Palace on Sunday.

If this was the afternoon when Arsenal let it slip then Mikel Arteta will know they only have themselves to blame. Handed the perfect opportunity to lay down their title credentials after Liverpool had been surprisingly beaten by Crystal Palace , instead it was Aston Villa who celebrated wildly at the final whistle after late goals from substitute Leon Bailey and Ollie Watkins delivered a hammer blow to their chances of ending a 20-year wait to be crowned champions.

It was a victory that will have tasted particularly sweet for Unai Emery, who was sacked by Arsenal in November 2019 after just 18 months in charge but is now a step closer to guiding Villa to Champions League qualification next season following this famous victory. Things could have been even worse for the home supporters - most of whom stayed until the bitter end in hope rather than expectation of a comeback - had Watkins and Youri Tielemans not seen their efforts strike the woodwork either side of half-time.

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We’re at that point aren’t we? Two squads, each rammed with players who’ve flogged themselves their whole lives, sacrificing their youth and neglecting their relationships desperate to experience the intensity of a moments like this one … and now it’s here.

Arsenal took a while to get going this season, but the addition of Declan Rice gave them ballast – they can now win without playing well – while that of Kai Havertz gave them options – they can also now win if things don’t start well. It took Mikel Arteta a little time to work out how best to deploy his assets, but he now has a sense of which combinations suit which opponents and, if he miscalculates, a variety of alterations available to pose opponents a different challenge. So now, as things get edgy, these two aspects – central solidity and forward variety, two aspects absent last season – might take Arsenal one step further.

Manager confident his ‘exceptional players’ will have learned from mistakes against Bayern when they face Aston Villa

Such is Mikel Arteta’s attention to detail that it surely will not have escaped him that this week’s thrilling 2-2 draw in the Champions League against Bayern Munich took place one year on from another topsy-turvy game that ended with the same scoreline.

It now seems remarkable that 12 months ago the Arsenal manager was acknowledging Aaron Ramsdale’s crucial role in rescuing a point for his side against Liverpool despite leading 2-0 at half-time, with the goalkeeper producing a string of brilliant saves in stoppage time after Roberto Firmino’s late equaliser . “He was superb again today,” Arteta said. “You need your goalkeeper at Anfield.”

This season’s title race is thrilling because all the contenders are imperfect. Sport is nothing without a sense of jeopardy

In Chad Harbach’s 2011 novel The Art of Fielding , the shortstop Henry Skrimshander is approaching the US college record for the most consecutive errorless baseball games when a throw inexplicably goes awry and hits a teammate in the dugout. At that, his confidence evaporates to the point that he can no longer execute the most basic skills; he gets the yips. What lingers from the novel, for me, is the crushing sense of pressure of having errors recorded like that, appearing even on the scoreboard, as though the sport had become less about the achievement of glory than about the avoidance of mistakes.

Avoiding mistakes is good. Some people should be judged on the avoidance of mistakes. Postal workers, bus drivers, indexers, especially surgeons and air-traffic controllers, should carry on not getting things wrong. But sport? Shouldn’t sport be about actively creating something?