Last season Arsenal conceded 5 goals in the last 15 minutes of premier league games, — that’s over the entire season — already this season of which we are exactly at the halfway stage Arsenal has contrived to let in 6 goals. This is exactly why I said yesterday that it will be a nervy end to the game.

It was a familiar feeling of elation turned to anxiety finally descending into despondency. After being put under pressure for most of the game maybe we should be grateful that a point was earned, but being up 2 – nil it can’t be regarded as anything less than 2 points lost, and actually feels like a game lost.

Arsenal has let in more goals in the final 15 minutes than all of last season

Ok so we were battered by Villa in the first half although if you look closely Villa actually created nothing from open play — OK 1 opportunity — all of their chances came from set pieces, luckily for us the psots were on our side. Sagna who was by far Man of the match had to display some fine acrobatics to keep Villa out.

It seemed inevitable that Villa would open the scoring, but much against the run of play the gunners were the ones who got the goal. The much maligned Denilson following a pass to which Eboue had lost, won the ball from Reo Coker and slotted the ball through Friedel legs for the first goal of the game.

Shortly after the goal our bad run of luck continued when Song had to be replaced by Ramsey after picking up an injury. This came after Wenger was forced to start Toure when Djourou picked up an injury during warm ups.

Early in the second half Arsenal scored a second from a great piece of play from Diaby combining with Eboue. A goal which shows exactly what Diaby is, clueless defending but potent in attack.

For some time we saw the old Arsenal, full of confidence and verve, beautiful one touch passing and completely in charge of the game. It would take something extraordinary for Villa to get back in it, and they did. Agbonlahor was found himself on the right side of the Arsenal defence from a well weighted pass, Gallas went in for the tackle but missed the ball and took down Agbonlahor for a penalty.

Arsenal fans knew what was coming, Villa grew in confidence, Arsenal got flustered and ragged at the back. When the 4th official signalled 4 minute added time you could sense the apprehension. This is a phenomenon I can’t get my head around, how could you play an entire 90 minutes and suddenly get nervous in added time?

Although we have let in 6 goals in the last 15 minutes we had only lost points twice from winning positions. Against Hull we scored first but the last goal was on 66 minutes, and we all know about the Spurs game. It seems like deja vu which it is, there’s no real history of throwing away leads this season.

It does feel like a loss, it always does when a team equalises at the death. The second string is not that bad on their day, take away 6 players of the calibre that we have injured and there are not many teams if any that would do better than we are doing right now.

There have been mistakes made in the transfer season hopefully these will be corrected in the next few weeks. Arsene has to strengthen in some areas, otherwise the team in it’s current incarnation does not have much hope of winning silverware

I cannot knock the team for yesterday’s result. When the news came that Djourou was injured if anyone had offered us a 2 – 2, I don’t think there are many gooners who wouldn’t take that as a result. We would like better for our club but the fact is the team we put out yesterday could have done much worse.