HISTORY TEACHES US you have to beat Manchester City in order to beat them to the league, but all the same it would be harsh in the extreme to label what Arsenal did today as any kind of failure.
Still, they looked to have defanged City and were seconds away from the kind of statement victory that belongs on a club-headed letter and is published on social media with a photo of the Emirates’ corner flag.
Instead they take a 2-2 draw that they’d probably have taken before the game and would definitely have taken at its break. But when you come so close to winning in such bizarre, galvanising circumstances. . . it’s got to sting.
But first, let’s get the 115 elephants out of the room.
To rake over this game’s contentious calls, errors, inaccuracies, and fine margins in relation to the winners of this year’s title is a patent absurdity when an undisclosed location somewhere in England is currently hearing legal arguments in private which may have a far greater bearing on the destination of this year’s title than the card-flashing proclivities of Michael Oliver.
But this is the credibility problem into which the Premier League has walked, so to give this coarse, compelling heavyweight battle the obsessive and slightly-hysterical post-mortem which forms much of this competition’s appeal is to acknowledge this fact and then compartmentalise it.
These sides served up two of the most abominable games of last season, the two managers’ styles mirroring each other to the point of dreary stalemate.
There was a different kind of mirroring going on today. The game started with Kai Havertz slamming into Rodri off the ball from kick-off, and it ended with Erling Haaland doing likewise to Thomas Partey. Michael Oliver didn’t book either of them. See, all we ask for is some consistency.
The game was threaded through these two moments. It was a stop-start choreography of muscle and rancour, around which a football match occasionally broke out. City began slickly, and in picking Jeremy Doku and Savinho, Pep Guardiola targeted Arsenal out wide, which Spurs failed abjectly to do a week ago.
Arsenal don’t defend their goal so much as erect a couple of rings of steel in front of it, and in Martin Odegaard’s absence they are playing more defensively, sitting off in their 4-4-2 mid-block. There are works of philosophy by Immanuel Kant easier to penetrate than this Arsenal set-up.
But City went wide and pulled it out of shape. Savinho skipped by Riccardo Calafiori and then looked ahead of him to find a runway of green grass. Thomas Partey should have been blocking it, but he had been dragged wide by a clever Bernardo Silva run. He therefore slipped the ball through for Erling Haaland, who poked in his 100th City goal. In what was his 105th City game. Daft, really.
Arsenal looked like they might be overwhelmed, but the whole occasion jacknifed on Rodri’s jarred knee. He crumpled to the ground in the penalty area after meagre contact and limped gingerly off, before the full whack of pain hit him on the touchline. Few things cause City to sweat, but the potential severity of Rodri’s injury would be enough to move bookies’ odds.
Soon Guardiola was kicking his high-backed bench seat in fury. Calafiori’s equalising goal was astonishing, a left-footed draw into the top corner beyond Ederson that came from nowhere. Guardiola’s fury seemed directed at Kyle Walker, who was caught out of position from the Arsenal free-kick that began the move. Walker deflected everyone’s anger to Oliver, who had called Walker out of position to issue a cool-down talk to the respective captains.
Arsenal were suddenly emboldened and started playing their best football of the day and arguably of any of their games since the international break, with Rice striding forward and Calafiori proving to be delightfully nimble in possession. Their second goal came from the customary source, with Gabriel heading in a corner. Walker was sent to mark Gabriel, jabbing manically at him before the corner was delivered before instantly losing him. Rico Lewis has been preferred to Walker for much of the season to this point, and Walker may soon be heading for the Guardiola Selection Twilight Zone.
Mikel Arteta may find it harder to forgive Leandro Trossard who, already on a booking, barged Bernardo and then thumped the ball away to make sure he got his second yellow in first-half stoppage time.
Oliver’s was the correct call, though even the Arsenal fans with short memories could recall Howard Webb’s excuse for Oliver’s failure to send Mateo Kovacic off for two obvious yellows in the Emirates clash last year: Michael didn’t want to ruin the game.
This time Oliver decided he want to apply the rules, rather than assume some kind of auteur role. But did Trossard’s red card really ruin the game? We here in Rugby Country should argue no.
For the second half became a kind of rugby game. Arsenal went 6-3-0 and booted the ball into touch when they could, while Man City shuffled the ball across the line in the hope of prising open a gap.
Arsenal have a voracious appetite for this kind of stuff, though, and they helped to make City look toothless. Most of these City back-and-forths ended with the ball at Ruben Dias, whose shots became more and more forlorn. Some went so high as to have been decent drop goal attempts.
City missed Kevin De Bruyne’s whipped deliveries and Rodri’s shooting ability from the edge of the box. Had he not hobbled off, Rodri would have been thwacking some of Dias’ sorry efforts.
It took Jack Grealish to break City’s self-paralysing process. First he got to the byline and pulled the ball across to win a corner, which he then took quickly. He then took possession back and drilled the ball back into the box, with a follow-up shot blocked by Jakub Kiwior, colliding with David Raya like two motivational verbs in an Arteta portmanteau. Amid the chaos, and with Raya now finally unable to spring to his feet, John Stones rescued a draw City scarcely deserved.
Arsenal will take encouragement and heart and pride from this, but nagging at this fair-earned positivity will be a feeling that this was a game they needed to win.
Unless the lawyers change the game later in the season, of course.
