There are moments when a manager feels like he must simply obey his instincts and perhaps trust a little in the game’s capacity for drama, which may well be what persuaded Mikel Arteta to substitute his captain and chief creator Martin Odegaard just after the hour.

It was early for a last roll of the dice, but Arteta did it anyway. In Odegaard’s place came the Islington teenager Ethan Nwaneri and it is not impossible to envisage a scenario where the 17-year-old sprung open the Everton defence and created a moment that would reinvigorate Arsenal’s title challenge. But Everton would not be sprung and Arsenal dropped two more points on a day when Liverpool were dropping two of their own.

The Odegaard move was unusual because Declan Rice was substituted in the same minute, his withdrawal the consequence of a lingering injury problem. Perhaps Arteta just sensed one of those moments, having of late placed ever more trust in Nwaneri and the 18-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly, who started the game. “I understand,” Arteta said. “If Ethan comes in and he scores a goal, it’s a great goal. If he doesn’t, you have taken your captain out. That’s football.”

It came amid a grinding battle of nerve with an Everton defence that was obliged to play the last 20 minutes at the same frantic pace that most teams defend stoppage-time. Led by James Tarkowski and also by goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, they were excellent. They survived a second half VAR review for a potential penalty after a collision between Thomas Partey and Vitaliy Mykolenko. They survived five shots on target, and they did so with some composure.

Arteta: It’s hard to coach game-changing moments

It will naturally open up the old question of whether a true goalscorer of the more conventional nature exists in this Arsenal squad beyond Bukayo Saka. But as most clubs know, you are lucky to have one goalscorer of that level. So once again, Arsenal waited for their Saka moment. This time it did not come. He was marked by Mykolenko and Jarrad Branthwaite for the most part, with covering from Abdoulaye Doucouré and that was just about enough – along with Pickford’s form.

Could that game-changing moment be coached? “That’s difficult,” Arteta said. “In the end, you need a spark and you need to be precise. We had the chances and this could have been two or three-nil, and [then] nobody is talking about it. The reality is 0-0 and they are not going to talk about all the incredible things the team did in the game.”

By the incredible things, he meant the pressing and the effort. There were fewer penalty-box incidents. In the first minute of the second half, Pickford pounced to his left and pushed away a low Saka shot that came in quickly. By the end of the game, the centre-half Gabriel Magalhães was in a permanently advanced position. Arteta was demanding that parts of the crowd raise their participation from a setting of general groaning. It felt that, for Arsenal, there should have been many more chances than were created.

In fact there were just two big Pickford saves – that one from Saka and then in the first half an Odegaard hit after Saka had isolated both Mykolenko and then Branthwaite and swept past them both. What Sean Dyche’s players succeeded in doing was closing down Arsenal when they were in what Arteta calls “the last 20 metres”. Everton did that with some commitment but it never felt like they were dealing with a threat they could not handle.

Why is Sterling so often overlooked?

It would appear Arteta has the kind of options that he uses more as a last resort – or not at all. Raheem Sterling was once again overlooked through the full five substitutions, behind Gabriel Jesus, as well as Leandro Trossard and Nwaneri among others. Despite Sterling’s protestations that there is still much to come from him it is hard to think of a game when his manager might be more in need of a player capable of breaking down a deep defence. What kind of games might Arteta have in mind for the loan signing from Chelsea? What is he seeing in training that is such a source of discouragement?

It cannot just be that Sterling is Saka’s understudy. Not now that Arteta has shown he is prepared to substitute his best players if he feels there is the chance of a replacement being able to spark something.

Dyche’s players had one chance – a sixth-minute breakaway that ended at the feet of Doucouré. He was unable to strike his shot on target and there were no more of that kind to bother David Raya in the 90 minutes or so that followed. His players, Dyche said, had shown “focus and attention to detail” throughout as well as the appetite “to do the ugly stuff”. Some of that, of course, is defending Arsenal’s famous set-pieces which Dyche left to his assistants Steve Stone and Ian Woan – “Stoney and Woany”.

Were they set-piece experts of the kind currently in vogue? “No, but they have got all their licenses,” Dyche said, “and like me they’ve played and coached thousands of games.” On this occasion, that was enough to stop Arsenal in their tracks.