Being Riceless can be priceless, too. A slogan for a T-shirt in May, perhaps? The absence of Declan Rice against Aston Villa was supposed to be significant. It was in that it proved Arsenal can cope without him.
Arsenal have learned to embrace the fight, to harness the energy of a title challenge. If pressure is a privilege, as the Americans like to put it, Arsenal are suddenly all over it. Not only are they good enough to resist Manchester City, they believe themselves to be so.
We await City’s reply at Sunderland, of course, but it had better be good to taser the feeling that Arsenal’s beatdown of third-placed Villa means more. Mikel Arteta was a 22-year-old playing for Rangers when Arsenal last won the Premier League. The world in 2004 was created by Arsene Wenger. It was unimaginable in that distant constellation that 22 years would also become the magic number between titles.
Gabriel Jesus scored just minutes after coming on to make it 4-0 to Arsenal pic.twitter.com/Fy6PRv5mHN
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 30, 2025But then none foresaw the birth of a new star in the north, a blue supergiant that would reshape the galaxy. It may be that City’s cosmic surge proves unanswerable as 2026 dawns, yet there was in Arsenal’s evisceration of Villa the nascent rumblings of substance, the sense that this time the Gunners are built to last.
It took 45 minutes to figure it out but once the first goal went in the stars aligned. Gabriel Magalhaes, resuming his iron-clad pairing with William Saliba after a seven-week lay-off, popped Arsenal’s 13th of the season from a corner, taking their total via that most Arsenal of mechanisms to 13, the highest in the Premier League.
Three minutes later it was two, Martin Zubimendi pinning Villa to the floor. In that moment Arsenal crystalised into a different beast, one that began to recognise itself as the alpha of the piece.
Rice watched from the stands, wired like those around him by the sudden, irresistible turbo thrust. Little soothes like the power of relief. It was, however, more than that. There was a new energy about Arsenal, rising not sinking.
City under Pep Guardiola are practiced at this. Last season’s fall can be reassessed as the oddity it was. Revitalised by the arrival of Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders, plus the renewal of Phil Foden, City are inching towards their familiar selves, albeit in a less obsessive configuration.
Arsenal needed to respond. The defeat to Villa in added time at the start of December followed draws at Sunderland and Chelsea, two points from nine on the road. Since the loss at Newcastle in November, City have strung nine wins in a row in all competitions, including a Champions League victory at Real Madrid.
This not only chopped Arsenal’s lead at the top to a slender two points, it resurrected that old feeling of drift, the impression that Mikel Arteta’s creation is one that melts. This was his response.
The wins were everywhere, not least in the presence of Noni Mandueke and Eberechi Eze on the bench. When Eze scored a stupendous hat-trick in the North London derby in November, he looked undroppable. Then he let Matty Cash run behind him in the defeat to Villa and did not see the light of night here. That is the standard required to make this team, episodic eruptions of excellence are trumped by elite reliability.
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That message was rammed home by Leandro Trossard’s hard-edged diligence on the left, probing throughout and smacking a wonderful third goal. Madueke, who is still managing his recovery from injury, was given a token seven minutes at the end.
Eze and Madueke shared the bench with Kai Havertz, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ben White, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus. That is the real substance of Arsenal’s title challenge, high class back-up, readily demonstrated by Jesus, who scored Arsenal’s fourth with his first touch.
His cameo in place of Viktor Gyokeres, who continues to perform like a Manchester United solution to attacking shortcomings, over-priced mediocrity, felt as significant as winning sans Rice, a coping strategy that might yet yield the ultimate prize and a slew of biblical headlines in the spring.
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