The most controversial VAR call in history has all but won Arsenal the title

LONDON STADIUM – Staring into the face of their own fallibility, Arsenal reawakened their worst fears and banished them again. They always knew a day like this was lurking within – they do not usually end with one of the most extraordinary moments in Premier League history. Leandro Trossard and the VAR will have spared more than a few tears in both halves of north London.

There has never been an occasion like it for its power to shape destinies at both ends of the table. If it is Callum Wilson’s 95^th-minute disallowed goal which sends West Ham to the Championship, that is a particularly cruel way for West Ham to depart.

It was a call so contentious for the foul on David Raya that it carried a potency of its own, one which turned doubters into believers. Barring the unthinkable against Burnley or Crystal Palace, Arsenal are going to be champions.

If any more evidence were needed that this Arsenal team is different to the ones who have fallen so agonisingly short before, for 83 minutes their kismet had felt out of kilter. For a group with such a psychological charge sheet as this one, that is the most dangerous feeling of all.

To triumph in such astonishing circumstances will only fuel the conviction that after 22 years, the trophy is destined for Highbury. They have dominated this campaign almost from the first bell to the last. With every Konstntinos Mavropanos block and Mads Hermansen stop, that risked not being enough.

Yet the biggest difference of all is that the strange twists which once would have derailed Mikel Arteta and his previous pretenders are now turning into footnotes on the road to immortality. Trossard’s winner bobbling in swung the odds back in their favour, Ben White’s injury having so worryingly shattered the equilibrium.

Until that point, Declan Rice had been the understated engine behind his side’s total control over West Ham. Such is the respect his imperious performances command that even the smattering of home fans booing him could not muster the force to do it properly. The moment he shifted to right-back to cover for White, Arteta bringing on Martin Zubimendi in midfield, sounded the alarm for Crycensio Summerville to grab the game by the horns.

Arteta knew immediately what he had done. Rice was thrust back into his proper place after the break, Cristhian Mosquera on the right of the defence and Myles Lewis-Skelly on the left. Indeed Zubimendi did not last the afternoon, hauled off when Arsenal needed one last spark from Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz.

Rice was desperately unfortunate not to win the recent gong for Player of the Year at the expense of Bruno Fernandews and here was a reminder that he was never just a cog in a very good team. West Ham know that only too well. David Sullivan keeling under his blanket in the directors’ box, Karren Brady no longer by his side, they have never been the same since his sale. That is likely to end with them in the second tier, made worse by the notion they have handed Tottenham Hotspur a hand in staying up.

Arsenal need not worry about the latter. It was never particularly instructive to talk about them in terms of bottlejobs and chokers, tones of phrase which fail to encompass the myriad ways in which titles are decided. Too often, those margins could go either way. Raya flapped and was not going to get the ball. Arsenal may never know fortune like it again. They cannot let it slip now.