What do they say about champions playing badly but winning? This match showed how true that is. Both teams played well but will look back ruefully on points lost. At this time of the season, points trump performances.

But while it’s easy to view this as a setback, the truth is it will only be at the end of the season that we know how bad (or good) this result was. This is a very good Everton side who should have beaten Spurs, came to the Emirates with Champions League aspirations of their own, and will push Chelsea extremely close on the last day of the season.

Reasons to be cheerful

Despite the visit of Man Utd, Arsenal’s run in is the easiest of all the clubs vying for a top four spot, and there was enough good to come out of this massive game to believe we can maintain our late-season momentum and get a minimum of 12 points from our remaining five games.

For the opening quarter of the match, we struggled to compete with Everton. But we survived their onslaught, were clearly the better side for the last hour, and were only kept out by an utterly outstanding defensive performance from Everton’s back five.

As their leader, Phil Jagielka richly deserved his man-of-the-match award, but we also had plenty of excellent performances: Laurent Koscielny was superb at centre back, with an unfit Wilshere belatedly taken off, Cazorla orchestrated our siege of their area, and Ramsey added touch and vision to a typically energetic performance alongside him.

I write the above fully expecting there to be a backlash against the Welshman in the comments below, but surely the majority can now see that Ramsey’s poor form is far behind him. His remaining critics are simply seeing what they want to see but his industry is vital to this team, and he hardly put a foot wrong tonight.  He completed 66 of 75 passes (courtesy of FourFourTwo’s Stats Zone, which also had him as Arsenal’s most influential player) and produced an unbelievable cross which Giroud spurned.

Reasons to tear your hair out

Ah, Olivier Giroud. If ever there was a performance to prove the doubters right, it was this.

None of the Frenchman’s chances were cut and dried, but strikers befitting of a starting place in a top four side don’t need cut and dried chances to score. At the business end of the season against a defence as excellent as Everton’s, those chances simply have to be converted.

What Giroud brings to Arsenal is obvious, he’s a brilliant target man who will win his fair share of aerial battles against any centre back in the league. But, while Arsenal have found scorers from all over this season, his main job is to hit the back of the net and he simply doesn’t do it efficiently enough to be considered a viable first-choice striker.

Awful officiating

But Giroud’s was by no means the worst individual performance of the night. That dubious privilege belongs to Neil Swarbrick, a referee who was horrendously out of his depth.

As Arsenal came into the game midway through the first half, Everton adopted the Tony Pulis approach to football, and Swarbrick allowed them. Fellaini and Barkley should have been booked early and Darron Gibson stayed on the pitch only because of the referee’s cowardice.

Had his obvious check resulted in a deserved second yellow, it’s hard to see how Everton could have maintained their compact performance for the remainder of the match. The space we would have been given would have been perfect for our intricate passing and pace on the flanks.

Everton’s thuggery subsided in the second, and a truly entertaining nil-nil unfolded, but the referee had done his damage already. Perhaps Swarbrick is considered one for the future, but how can a game this big, which was also the only game of the night, not warrant the not-perfect-but-at-least-decent presence of Howard Webb?

And finally…

While it’s not about the football, it wouldn’t be right to talk about tonight without mentioning Ian Wright. Fair played, Ian. You looked ridiculous, but you pulled it off.

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