There is an inescapable sense that Arsenal are blowing the title

In one technical area, Arteta’s childhood team-mate from San Sebastián, Andoni Iraola, a cheerful, easy-going Basque, was giving his old acquaintance a tactical masterclass. Then there was Arteta, a brooding and explosive Basque, committed to his Arsenal creed, watching his players being picked off in possession. Bournemouth pressed fearlessly. Scott and Ryan Christie ran the show. Arteta did not – could not – change the approach and so the drama played out.

Afterwards the Arsenal manager chewed over the details, talking darkly about “some very basic things that we did extremely badly”, but declined to elaborate. He refused to feel sorry for himself but did, nonetheless, mention some of the key men who are still injured. On the other hand, Iraola, shrugged and pointed out that anyone who watched his team knew that they embraced the press, accepted the risk, and chased the reward. Today their ship finally came in – there have been seven draws in the 12 straight Premier League games Bournemouth have now gone undefeated.

This was a fabulous game – full of tension and unexpected twists. One wonders if Sporting CP, due at the Emirates on Wednesday for the resumption of their Champions League quarter-final tie, will take note. Perhaps they had always intended to approach the second leg differently, but the combination of a home crowd determined to urge the team forward, and then Arteta’s insistence on the short passing game, presents opportunities.

The win in Lisbon in the 91st minute is the only Arsenal triumph in the past four games in four different competitions. Three defeats going back to the Carabao Cup final on March 22 – all of them different, all of them pregnant with meaning – and now the closing weeks of the season presents an Arsenal psychodrama like none other.

It is gripping stuff, no less absorbing than the relegation calamity unfolding over at Tottenham Hotspur. Another injury to Riccardo Calafiori meant only the second league start of the season for Myles Lewis-Skelly – and he was among the better performers for Arteta. But others in his side failed notably to rise to the occasion.

Arteta felt that too and went early with his changes. After 53 minutes, and with the score level, he abandoned his faith in Noni Madueke, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Martinelli – and sent on three very good alternatives. But he would not abandon the system – and it was the system which was giving Bournemouth their opportunities.

“A game of cat and mouse” was Iraola’s elegant grip of the idiom to describe the pressing game of the likes of Eli Junior Kroupi, Evanilson and Brazilian Rayan. Could Arteta have changed it? To go long would have meant relying on Viktor Gyökeres as the target-man fulcrum, and the Arsenal manager seems unprepared to do that. The £64m striker dispatched a first-half penalty but otherwise nothing has changed. He can do certain things, but conjuring a match-winning, title-defining goal from nowhere is not one of them.