The thing that might have to tie today in the back of Arsenal's spirits is that there was actually a point.
While the Manchester City Forward left the stage at the end of Arsenal's eviction of his team in the Emirates on Sunday, he pointed to the badge on his arm that marks him as a Premier League title winner. Twice.
Small? Yes. Desperate? After such a mauling, maybe a bit.
But it was relevant the same because we also admire Arsenal for their ambition, their energy, their growing faith and their indisputably deep well of talent, they are not a team of winners.
Not yet, not yet. They win big competitions, but – more than five years after the reign of Mikel Arteta – they are not a team that wins big trophies.
And this is the challenge that now stands for them. We know the direction that Pep Guardiola and his city team travel. Arsenal can take joy as they have suffered from the champions in recent years.
Twice they have closed them for the Premier League title, twice they have fragmented the wheels of Abu Dhabi's threshing machine.
But there must now be more for Arsenal. There must be trophies. They still have three left to play for the next four months and it feels like they just have to find a way to win one of them.
Individual victories mean something. They build trust and faith and unity. They reinforce tires and serve to build an aura. You beat a team like City 5-1 and people certainly look at you differently.
In the end, however, the challenges for all top teams are greater than those, they are more completed.
For example, in Newcastle, Arsenal is looking for a 2-0 deficit of the first stage of a semi-final of Carabao Cup against the Eddie Howe team.
Newcastle has just lost at home against Fulham in the Premier League, after four to Bournemouth sent in their previous match on Tyneside.
So there is a vulnerability to choose there. There is a chance to make up for the big win of Sunday and to kick. Declaration victories tend to lose their authority if you are unable to support them.
The Arsenal team of Arteta is an emotional group and he is an emotional coach. It is a lot of part of what they are and it can work. Teams can hot from the back of the energy it provides.
Similarly, there must always be a middle ground between that and a stability of heart and spirit. Has Arsenal fallen the wrong side of that line in the past? Possibly so. Finding that balance remains a challenge for them.
Sunday in the Emirates was flooded with bad feeling and City had beaten a lot before. Haaland encouraged Artetaoooi a city coach of course to stay 'modest' after the teams pulled 2-2 in Manchester last September.
When seeing young Myes Lewis-Skelly on the edge of that argument, he asked him: “Who the F *** are you?” It was unnecessary and it was patronizing.
So the victory of the weekend was undoubtedly seen as a payback time for all that. Arsenal had waited a while at their moment and they had their say. City has become used to coming to the Emirates and having things in their own way.
Not anymore. Arsenal had put a boil and they enjoyed it enormously. Correct.
The role of Lewis-Skelly in this was interesting and fundamental. The goal he scored in the second half to make 3-1 was crucial for the victory and the first for a teenager who – together with colleague goalkeeper Ethan Nwaneri – came to the club.
Arsenal is rightly proud of both. Lewis-Skelly-Al involved in a red card controversy at Wolves a week earlier to mark his strike by simulating a Van Haaland's goal celebrations.
The emirates thought it was great and his teammates too. Choosing to celebrate your first senior goal by removing the Mickey from a guy who scored more than 250 at the age of 24 and has a Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup -Treble to his name was a bold move .
If it was the right one, it might come clear over time, but after the game, Arteta has suggested that it might prefer his players to concentrate on the challenges that lie in front of us, instead of themselves Involve in mocking a powerful and legendary rival.
“It's up to the players, but they know my opinion about it,” said Arteta.
'We have to concentrate on ourselves and leave something else that happens. We have been to football for a long time. Just leave it behind. There is nothing to do there. '
It felt like a timely intervention of Arteta, a coach who knows that City will come again at a certain stage and also feels the power and quality of a Liverpool team that has a six-point lead at the top of the competition with a competition In hand.
With Liverpool in mind, it is difficult to imagine that the players of Arne Slot are dragged in something as personal and worse as what we saw on Sunday.
Great teams can be filthy. You can say it is a condition. But being just as emotionally invested as arsenal that sometimes appears is something completely different.
Arteta can feel that it works for its specific group. The Spaniard would be wise to be less concerned about what the outside world thinks and says and only care about the dynamics in the game.
Yet he wants to gently illuminate Lewis-Skelly back to the earth. The big Brian Clough would undoubtedly have asked him to play for the reserves this week, but those days have disappeared and maybe it's for the best.
While the dust settled at the Emirates on Sunday, it certainly had the feeling that the Arsenal season came to a boil at the right time. They remain a fantastic gifted football team and they will now feel that they have proven a point.
And maybe they have that. The problem is that it is only at the beginning of February and the really important battles still have to take place.
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