For large portions of Saturday afternoon, Everton were the better side. David Moyes had his team organised, confident and dangerous, and for long stretches it appeared that Arsenal might be heading for yet another of those maddening 0-0 draws that have punctuated this title run. Dwight McNeil struck the post in the first half, Iliman Ndiaye could not turn in the rebound, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall forced a sharp save from David Raya, and Kai Havertz was tripped in the box by Michael Keane in an incident so clear that even the reporters in the press box could not understand how referee Andrew Madley waved it away. VAR agreed with him. Of course it did. None of that is what this match report is about, though, because what happened in the final two minutes of this game was something that very few Arsenal sides in my lifetime have been capable of producing.

Viktor Gyokeres came off the bench in the 62nd minute and spent the best part of half an hour making very little impact. Max Dowman, 16 years old and still sitting his GCSEs, replaced Martin Zubimendi in the 74th minute and within fifteen minutes had changed the entire shape of the contest. His cross in the 89th minute caught Jordan Pickford in no man's land, deflected off Piero Hincapie and landed perfectly for Gyokeres to tap home from inside the six-yard box. The Emirates, which had spent the previous hour in a state of tense, anxious silence, erupted. Then came the moment that made this game historic. Everton, chasing an equaliser, sent Pickford forward for a corner in the seventh minute of stoppage time. The ball was cleared, Dowman collected it midway inside his own half, dribbled past two Everton players and ran the full length of the pitch, unchallenged, before rolling into an empty net. At 16 years and 73 days old, he became the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history, shattering a record that James Vaughan had held for 21 years by a remarkable 197 days. The fact that Vaughan set that record playing for Everton, and that Mikel Arteta was on the pitch for Everton that day, is the kind of detail that football occasionally hands you to remind you it is paying attention.

Before we talk about Dowman, it is worth sitting with what these two goals represent in the context of this season. Arsenal have now scored more Premier League goals from substitutes than any other team in the division, with eleven. Both goals against Everton came off the bench. Five Premier League goals this season have been both scored and assisted by substitutes, a figure only three teams in the competition's history have exceeded in a single campaign. Arteta is building a squad, not just a team, and the depth he has assembled is quietly doing as much work as the starting eleven.

At almost the exact moment Dowman was completing his run, Manchester City were drawing 1-1 at West Ham. The gap is nine points with seven games remaining, and City have played one fewer game. Pep Guardiola had told his press conference before the weekend that losing would effectively end the title race. City did not lose. But nine points with this fixture list, this squad and this momentum is not a gap that tends to close in the Premier League, and everyone in the stadium knew it when the full-time whistle went.
We were not good enough to win this game in the conventional sense. We laboured, we were denied a clear penalty, we created very little of note until the final ten minutes, and we rode our luck at times against a team that genuinely deserved more from the afternoon. Every single one of those facts is true, and none of them changes the scoreline or the points total. Winning football matches when you are not at your best is what title-winning sides do. We are doing it.