Arsenal looked scared to win as hope gave way to fear, writes IAN LADYMAN

The really worrying thing about this for Arsenal, the thing that will have kept their supporters awake last night, is that Mikel Arteta’s team suddenly looked scared to win.

Teams play badly. Mistakes are made. Chances are missed. It happens all this time. But when teams play like Arsenal did here, just as they find themselves in sight of a glorious push through the finishing line, then it tends to hint at something deeper and more significant. It tends to hint at psychological weakness.

That’s a notion that Arteta’s players must dispel quickly and before it takes root. They are in Munich with a Champions League quarter-final locked at 2-2 on Wednesday night. That would be a very good place to start their recovery.

The story of this afternoon was simple. Arsenal, handed an opportunity to turn a three-horse race in to a straight fight with Manchester City after Liverpool’s home defeat to Crystal Palace, were absolutely fine in the first half. They didn’t score but they played well enough. The dominated the ball and the territory and created a couple of very good opportunities that they narrowly failed to take.

But then, sometime between the end of the first period and the start of the second, something changed. It was as though a different set of players emerged from the dressing room for the second 45 minutes.

Arsenal have been in such good form recently but here a cloak of confidence worn so effortlessly during a flawless run of victories and clean sheets fell to the ground as quickly as the sun can disappear behind a cloud. And when the darkness came, it stayed.

Fear. There it was. Anxiety. That, too. You could see it on their faces and in their body language and in their football. Forward passes became sideways ones.