João Palhinha stuns Arsenal as 10-man Fulham battle back to earn late point

On a wild, storm-wracked afternoon at the Emirates Stadium Arsenal and Fulham played out a frantic 2-2 draw that felt by the end like three games in one. Not to mention at least two different, and largely opposed, tactical versions of this Arsenal team.

This was a messy and chastening afternoon for Mikel Arteta, and a hugely encouraging one for a neat, sparky Fulham team, who took the lead with the first attack of the game and equalised with two minutes to play and 10 players left on the pitch. In between Fulham exposed for long periods the self-induced weaknesses in Arteta’s attempts to reconfigure his team in these early days of the league season.

Thomas Partey may or may not be a fluid, instinctive positional postmodernist, able to slip straight into a fluid right-back role in this team. But there was very little evidence of it here and his 55 minutes on the pitch felt like time lost pursuing an under-researched experiment.

The Emirates had been a boisterous, hopeful, contended kind of place at kick-off under chilly August north London skies. But it was reduced to a note of baffled silence after just 57 seconds as Fulham took the lead with a goal that was both farcical and supremely well executed in its details.

It would be tempting to call this a total gift, Bukayo Saka’s attempted pass back into his own defence emerging instead as the perfect through pass for Andreas Pereira, unmarked and in on goal. But the finish was also excellent, Pereira spotting Aaron Ramsdale scrabbling about trying to gauge the danger in the middle, ambushed by the moment, so curling the ball with his second touch inside the near post; a lovely piece of improvisation.

Arsenal’s instant response was frantic. There were high, looped crosses towards Leandro Trossard, some defiantly urgent crossfield switches. But above all some top notes of self-induced tactical incoherence. Partey started at right-back once again here, stepping into central midfield alongside Declan Rice when Fulham had the ball, but even in his more natural role he seemed always wary of Pereira sniping into that outside left position. Under these conditions, this is a system that gives you half a midfielder and half a full-back. At times it felt as though Arsenal were playing with 10 men.

At other times Arsenal began to apply the expected choke hold, creating the kind of chances that come from pressure, but missing the razor edge of a specialist finisher. Trossard had replaced Nketiah in the starting XI and floated inside from the left.

Eddie Nketiah fires in a shot to give Arsenal a 2-1 lead despite the attentions of Antonee Robinson. Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty Images

Arsenal had most of the ball, but Fulham still made the better chances for long periods, largely because they were up against such a confused looking defensive shape, and in Partey a full-back so positionally vague you half excepted to look down and notice he’s leafing through the manual on the go, wondering why the whole thing is in Swedish.

The first half saw Arsenal take 72% of the ball, with eight shots at goal, but still look like a team playing with its shoes on the wrong feet. Perhaps one reason Saka was flaky here at times was the lack of a genuine right-back to link with, or indeed any kind of right-back half the time. Is this the best use of your most decisive attacking player?

Nketiah replaced Trossard at half-time. And for a while Saka played with a kind of anger on the right, whirling and jinking and throwing himself at the Fulham backline. Too often the ball ended up in the space Arsenal have deliberately vacated, that space being the one close to goal in between the line of the posts, historically quite a key area in the scoring of goals.

Partey left the pitch on 55 minutes, replaced by Oleksandr Zinchenko, who slotted in at left-back, shifting Ben White back across. Kai Havertz, who occupied a Kai Havertz shaped vacuum in this game, was replaced by Fábio Vieira.

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And it was Vieira who forced the breakthrough for the equaliser, zipping in from the left and drawing Kenny Tete into a wild sliding challenge. Saka took the penalty, a little odd given Martin Ødegaard’s precision last week. But as ever with Saka and penalties this had an element of destiny, redemption, vibes about it. He duly buried the kick, low into the right-hand corner, to level the scores and give Arsenal a clear 20-minute run at winning this game.

They only needed two of them to take the lead. Again it was fine work from Vieira, entirely comfortable on that side, and given time to measure the perfect low cross into the path of Nketiah, who slid the ball past Bernd Leno. It felt like a vital goal not just in the context of the game, but for the basic notion of the central striker in this team, the direct route to goal. Why the high-difficulty prelude, the attempts to win with one leg tied behind the other?

There was a controversial element to the goal. Bassey had been injured in the buildup, pulled to the ground in a challenge with Saka that saw him fall heavily on his arm and stay down. He was still there when Arsenal scored from a spot he might have been occupying. It might easily have been called a foul. But playing on, in these marginal cases, is never the worst idea; not to mention one Bassey himself might have considered taking, given there was no lasting damage.

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Fulham were not finished however. Even as Bassey was sent off with eight minutes to go, shown a second yellow for an absurdly blatant bodycheck on Nketiah as Arsenal broke.

The Fulham equaliser was a wonderful finish by João Palhinha, arrowing the ball into the far corner from Harrison Reed’s corner. They might have won it had Adama Traoré’s finishing been anywhere near the level of his running power right at the death.