Arsenal returned to the Premier League summit with a taut 1-0 victory over Newcastle United on Saturday, yet the relief sweeping the Emirates was tempered by fresh injury anxieties and a simmering sense of injustice. Eberechi Eze’s sublime early strike — his tenth of the campaign and the club’s astonishing seventeenth from a corner — proved decisive, ending a four-match domestic slump that had allowed Manchester City to erase a nine-point cushion in eleven days. The psychological liberation of no longer fretting about a trip to the Etihad was palpable, as Mikel Arteta’s side played with a verve that had been smothered by dread.

But the sight of Kai Havertz pulling up with a groin complaint before the interval, followed by Eze himself being forced off, drained much of the positivity. Arteta later cautioned that tests were needed, though initial assessments suggested no major damage. Even so, for a squad already fretting about Havertz’s World Cup availability, any setback at this stage of a title run-in carries disproportionate weight.

The manager, broadcasting a message of measured defiance, framed the win as the first of five finals: “Game one, done.”