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It was Hector Bellerin who best summarised this strange Arsenal team and their peculiar season. Speaking after their recent defeat at Wolves, the Arsenal full-back was blunt in his assessment of his side’s shortcomings. “Teams are not beating us,” Bellerin said. “We are losing against ourselves.” Those words came to mind on Thursday night, when Arsenal once again appeared to be trying their absolute hardest to undermine their own cause. This time it was Dani Ceballos, gifting not one but two cheap goals to a Benfica side that, to be frank, should have been dismissed with relative ease. Those moments encapsulated the very worst of this Arsenal team: ill-disciplined, brainless, naive. And yet it was also a night in which they showed their best qualities, too: the determination of Kieran Tierney, the finishing of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and, above all else, the irrepressible brilliance of Bukayo Saka. If a complete outsider from a far-flung corner of the world wanted to gain a full understanding of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, they would need only to watch the two legs of this Europa League tie against Benfica. It was all there, from the horrendous mistakes at the back to the moments of genuine quality in attack. This is simply what Arsenal are at the moment: a flawed side with the capacity to beat the most formidable opponent on a Sunday and then lose to the most meagre team on a Wednesday. Only on rare occasions do other teams decide the outcome of Arsenal’s matches - if they lose, they usually do it to themselves. If they win, they usually do so either because they have not made any mistakes, or because their attacking quality has outweighed the defensive negligence.
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