As the year comes to an end, Arsenal remain nine points off the league leaders Liverpool and face a challenging second half of the season to close the gap to their title rivals. Madly enough, should the Gunners win their next two games, they will be two points better off than at the same stage the season before.

What, therefore, has opened up such a gap between the two sides at the halfway mark? Looking internally, as Mikel Arteta will be doing, while the defensive record has remained strong, there have been games where the club have failed to score enough goals costing them many points.

In the 18 league games so far, they have either scored one or zero times in eight of those, close to 50%. In those matches the Gunners have dropped 14 points.

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It is clearly the case that the side are not scoring enough, despite the fact they broke a record for scoring five-plus goals in six away games this season. Undulating, that would be the way to describe the scoring form of the side but it needs to improve.

Injuries have not helped, and the losses of Bukayo Saka and, recently, Martin Odegaard contributed greatly to that. Games lost at Bournemouth, Newcastle and Inter Milan were evidence enough.

Arsenal deserved more from their draw at home to Liverpool, but ending a game of that magnitude with Thomas Partey, Ben White, Jakub Kiwior and Myles Lewis-Skelly at the back says it all. White now too has been missing since the November international break and is not expected back for the foreseeable future after undergoing knee surgery.

Mikel Merino and Riccardo Calafiori, the two summer signings, have missed more games through injury than they have started this season. Merino in particular missed pre-season and the start to the campaign and continues to play catch-up in fitness meaning his best likely will not be seen until the next campaign.

Then comes the most egregious fact of them all, the controversial decisions. Look at any game this season Arsenal have dropped points, bar the loss at St James’ Park, up until December and you can find something odd.

The draw at home to Brighton in which Declan Rice saw red for “kicking “the ball away after Joao Pedro had done the exact same and gone unpunished in the first half. Away to Manchester City saw Leandro Trossard sent off again for delaying a restart – something we have seen no other Premier League player fall foul of this season.

Away to Bournemouth saw William Saliba sent off for being the last man. Hours later both Tosin Adarabioyo and Micky van de Ven would escape the same punishment despite very similar infringements – Joe Gomez for Liverpool too would infringe in an even more obvious manner against Southampton in the League Cup quarter-final and also not face any action.

At home to Liverpool, Virgil van Dijk would avoid being sent off for a stamp on Kai Havertz, Luis Diaz was not booked for kicking the ball away, Ibrahima Konate collided in the box with Gabriel Martinelli and a late goal by Gabriel Jesus was ruled out for a supposed foul by Jakub Kiwor which was extremely contentious.

At Chelsea, Arsenal should have won the game were it not for a poor finish by Leandro Trossard with the final kick of the match – there was however little to no refereeing controversies here. Just some smaller calls given wrongly which may have had some influence.

In both games against Fulham and Everton, Arsenal were by far the more dominant side, looking for a win but were unable to breach both side’s low blocks. It comes again back to finishing but Arsenal have been worth far more than the points tally so far suggests but come May, that will not matter – and so from here forth they need to take control of their own destiny.