Villa v Arsenal was the Premier League in a bottle

Undeniably, that was football.

I write this stood up in the Post Office Vaults. I'm still shaking. For some reason.

The breathtaking lunges, tactical plays drawn up and distilled into fluid movement with goals at the end. The moaning, the crying, the berating, the desperation. Hands on the head, head in the hands, hands in the air.

You could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Aston Villa were involved in the title fight, with the way they scrapped with Arsenal. There was bite in their performance, and desperation seeped in for both teams, despite there being an enormous chunk of the season left to play. It felt all or nothing. It was far from it.

On another day it could've been so much different. Leon Bailey thunders Villa into a lead, and Jhon Duran seals it. The Gunners leave with their week, and hopes, in tatters. Villans leave jubilant and victorious. It was close.

Instead Villa's refusal to accept defeat after allowing Jorginho to push the win allowed Martinelli to wrap it up. Emi Martinez on another day is perhaps a goalscoring hero, but after his jubilant lap of honour after winning the World Cup, a day of bitterness - like this - was due. Instead, he's caught out trying to wrap it all up.

The last word on Villa is this - we've got a team that will fight. Genuinely fight. Fight with ideas and salvo with effort. I think fans are realising this quickly, because apart from Manchester City, when Emery's lads lose it's not to do with a lack of trying. It's because the other team is better.

Arsenal are so obviously better. They have had a few years to drill deep into Mikel Arteta's ideas after foundations laid by - minorly Unai Emery - but majorly by the legend Arsene Wenger.

But it was so close.

Why do you think the Premier League has arrived to be the crown jewel of world football?

The answer is obvious - even if it's bleedingly Anglocentric. We have conjured ways to make results mean more. This day means everything to Arsenal who are chasing glory - but their opposition were so bloody close to making it all about them. Every stupid little match means more because we pour everything into it. Our money and our time and our hearts. It's so obvious, and I say that with someone who holds the Bundesliga and Serie A close to heart. This means more, by default.

Here, as we know thanks to this result, that it's slim margins. A fingertip here, an offside call there. Heartbreak in the Premier League is a hairline fracture.

Don't we just know it.