IT’S true that, at Arsenal, when it rains it pours. Despite being reduced to 10-men for the third time in five matches, the Gunners clung on to draw 1-1 with high-flying Southampton and provide some much-needed respite for manager Mikel Arteta.

“At the end, if you lose a game again it would’ve been really difficult to take,” said the Spaniard on the unthinkable prospect of falling to a fifth consecutive home defeat that would have spelt the club’s worst sequence in history. 

But prospects are seldom set in stone. So when Theo Walcott scored against his former side to rub salt in the Gunners’ gaping wounds, it felt especially fitting for a club seemingly in perpetual disarray.