Arsenal’s title hopes take another knock after goalless draw against Everton | Premier League

Inevitability is a dangerous sensation in Football. Nothing is ever certain. No matter how great the general sense of domination, no matter how impressive the possession stats, at some point a team still has to go and actually put the ball in the net. For a long time on Saturday the sense was that Arsenal would score at some point. They had to. They had all the ball. They were only playing Everton. There were enough chances and half-chances to maintain the general feeling that a breakthrough would come. But it did not – and so, with Liverpool dropping points, another opportunity to close the gap at the top was missed.

For the second week in a row, Arsenal looked short of ideas against a side who sat deep and defended in numbers – even if they might think themselves unlucky not to have been awarded a penalty for Vitalii Mykolenko’s late lunge on Thomas Partey. It’s three and a half league games now since they scored from open play. It’s one thing to make a virtue of set-pieces, quite another for that to become the only means of attack. Twice early on Martin Ødegaard missed the target from decent positions and then, having been picked out by Bukayo Saka on the half-hour, his shot hit James Tarkowski and Jordan Pickford on its eccentric path over the bar. Pickford kicked away a Gabriel Martinelli effort and then, early in the second half, got down well to save a Saka volley.

Slowly the grumbling sense of frustration mounted. There were a lot of crosses, but few of them good. It was all a little bit like Fulham last week: Arsenal creating more chances than their opponents without really driving home their advantage. Ødegaard, whose return from injury has been so key to the recent upturn in Arsenal’s form, was withdrawn on the hour. He had had three decent chances and there was the occasional link-up with Saka but, as at Craven Cottage, he did not control the game as he can.

Everton’s threat was extremely limited, Abdoulaye Doucouré taking an age after being freed by Orel Mangala, allowing Gabriel to get back and make a block. But it hardly mattered; their job was to thwart Arsenal and get the 0-0 – which they did with relative ease, in part by their organisation and resilience, in part through the excellence of Pickford and in part through time-wasting, for which they collected two yellow cards.

There is a strange sense with Arsenal these days of the game being a diverting imposition between the real business of the corners. Perhaps they are necessary context-setting lengthsjust as even the most schlocky of thrillers needs its exposition between the shootouts and car chases. But still, the set-plays are the bits that everybody wants to see, presented with a great dramatic pause before the delivery into the box. Of all the sides in the modern Premier League, though, the one least likely to be troubled by balls into the box is Everton. Sean Dyche lives for set-plays; it’s almost an insult to his professional pride to think you can beat his side by dead balls alone.

It wasn’t until the fourth of the five corners (plus a free-kick from wide that Ødegaard whipped into the box) Arsenal had in the first half that they troubled Everton, but Pickford, back-pedalling, was able to tip the ball away. Mikel Merino did get to the first corner of the second half, an inswinger from Saka, but his header was straight at Pickford. How do you deal with Arsenal’s dead-ball threat? How do you defang Nicolas Jover, their great auteur of the dead ball? Having two massive centre-backs as good in the air as Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite really helps.

And of late, if you can blunt Arsenal’s set-piece threat, you’re a long way to keeping them quiet more generally. Arsenal are not yet out of the title race but the margin of error for the rest of the season is getting smaller and smaller.