Arsenal 1-1 Brentford: Yoane Wissa cancels out Thomas Partey’s opener as Gunners drop points for fifth time in last seven Premier League games

They were still living the Real Madrid dream in every imaginable way, from Martin Odegaard’s eloquent programme notes to the half-and-half scarves from last Tuesday’s game which were going for a song on Benwell Road.

‘We made a beautiful night,’ Odegaard observed and when the stadium announcer came to Declan Rice’s name, there was a quite exceptional cheer. But something Mikel Arteta had said in the immediate aftermath of that legendary 3-0 win was far more relevant to the match which then ensued here.

When Mail Sport asked him, late last Tuesday, how such a majestic win could have come three days after an unprepossessing draw at Everton, Arteta declared that the Premier League was ‘a completely different game.’ It and the Champions League were ‘two different walls of football and demands.’ How appropriate that assessment proved against an obdurate, resolute, well-drilled Brentford, hunting for the Europa League football that a fifth-place finish would bring.

When the sun had dropped in the sky and the game was beginning to run into the sand – Arsenal at a virtual standstill, knocking the ball aimlessly around in front of 11 green shirts – a moment’s genius was required from someone and Rice delivered again.

The thirty seconds it took him to bring the ball from in front of his own box – taking the ball David Raya rolled out to him – to the periphery of the Brentford area was a study in awareness. He took ten touches as he drove it up the field, all the while scanning the landscape, looking for his team-mates’ movements, waiting for the challenges to evade. His eventual lay-off to Thomas Partey, who drove Arsenal ahead, concluded something just as fine as those two free-kicks in midweek.

The goal belonged to Arteta, too. It was he who had the vision to play Rice higher up the field in the second half and provoke some of the attacking threat which had been absent in the first. But that ‘different wall’ Arteta had spoken of meant that a moment of excellence was not enough.

Within 15 minutes, Arsenal allowed their defensive intensity to slip and were punished for it. In the blink of an eye, Nathan Collins had beaten William Saliba in the air, nodding back to Yoane Wissa, who swivelled around the ball to score because his instincts were sharper than substitute Jurrien Timber’s.

Wissa mimicked Myles Lewis-Skelly’s ‘zen’ goal celebration, just like Lewis-Skelly mimicked Erling Haaland’s and Brentford’s fans sang a song about how Arsenal were going to win nothing at all. Real Madrid this was not.

Arsenal’s frustration was compounded when Bukayo Saka, arriving from the bench, immediately spurned a gilt-edged chance to put them straight back ahead. Saka seized on goalkeeper Mark Flekken’s mis-control to take the ball towards goal but substitute Michael Kayande put in a vital block.

Arsenal had other moments. An instinctive 20-yard strike from Leandro Trossard and a close-range from Rice after driving into the left side of Brentford’s box, both in the first half. But Flekken was equal to both chances and when Kieran Tierney leapt to head in Ethan Nwaneri’s levered cross, the new semi-automated offside technology found him a foot offside.

Arteta raged against the decision not to send Christian Norgaard’s challenge on Gabriel Martinelli, launching into him from behind in a scissor movement, though there were no studs. It wasn’t an act of reckless violence.

Saka came close at the death, curling a shot a foot wide, but Brentford were leaving the Emirates turf as heroes on this occasion. Collins, whose defensive contribution repelled the late surges. Kristoffer Ajer, who defended obdurately and drew a sharp save from Raya when sent through by Bryan Mbeumo.

Arsenal’s season resides in Madrid and whatever roads might lead from there but sooner or later they will be back confronting the task of bringing this title home. They will need to find something better than this.