Gavin Cooney

THIS WAS LESS a football match for Arsenal than a mass event of catharsis, with Manchester City first beaten, then trolled. 

Much of it targeted Erling Haaland. Gabriel kicked things off by roaring in Haaland’s face after the first goal, before Myles Lewis-Skelly mimicked his cross-legged celebration having scored the clinching third goal.

Arsenal then tagged on another couple of goals amid an atmosphere of goading glee. The crowd told Pep Guardiola he’d be sacked in the morning and reminded Haaland to stay humble; they oléd every Arsenal pass and could forget about Liverpool’s commanding lead for a little while. They didn’t linger on the bitter irony that dethroning City is no guarantee of receiving the crown. 

And despite all all of this, Arsenal arguably showed City too much respect. Having taken a second-minute lead, they withdrew and crouched in that adamantine defensive structure so beloved by Mikel Arteta.

It wasn’t until Haaland equalised at the start of the second half that Arsenal grew bold. While they re-took the lead fortuitously, this time they weren’t minded to allow City back into the game, and so led the crowd through the purifying endgame. 

The glory for Arsenal fans was in salving City’s lashings of the recent past, but the reality in front of them was not the City of the recent past. Had the Arsenal players realised this earlier than the 56th minute, a humiliating scoreline would have instead been historic. 

Here Arsenal were playing some kind of hollowed-out sketch of Manchester City; the chalk outline of their body on a pavement. City were awful in the ways we have come to recognise this season: they were slow and creaky and sloppy and puce-faced and ragged. They were hopelessly overwhelmed physically and could be talked into falling apart as soon as they lost possession. 

Granted, Arsenal gummed up the middle of the pitch, but once City got into the attacking third, they shuffled the ball from side by side, looking gaunt and clueless. The plan was obvious, because the plan is always obvious: toss the ball from side to side until someone can curl a cross to the back post for Haaland to nod in. 

The plan worked, of course, for the equalising goal, but that was the only moment in which it did.

It was an afternoon to raise uncomfortable questions for Haaland and the club so eager to shackle themselves to him. Is the balance of this thing now wrong? Is the ledger out of whack? Is Haaland now costing more than he’s worth? 

With Rodri in the team and fresh legs around him, City can play at a tempo and be sufficiently secure in transition as to equip Haaland with enough bullets with which to do damage. But this beaten-down version of the team now live in terror of being countered, and so are offering Haaland fewer and fewer crosses and opportunities to do the one thing for which he is in the team. 

And if they are not playing to his strength, then should Haaland really retain his indisputable status in the team? 

There has never been a Premier League footballer as specialised and as Haaland, whose one trick is the most difficult and expensive one in the book. But with City in such a shambles, he is a luxury they currently cannot afford.

City were swallowed by Arsenal’s press early in the game but couldn’t play long to Haaland as he was monstered in the air by Gabriel and Saliba. Nor could they play the ball into his feet, because his touch was heavy and his link-up play clumsy and unreliable. 

Haaland was a non-factor in the first half: he touched the ball twice in the first four minutes and then not at all for another 36 minutes. He finished the game with nine touches in all.

Plainly, anyone would be expecting more for their franchise player. But Haaland is an oddity: he is the totally contingent superstar; the man who laughs in the face of diminishing returns. 

His ruthless efficiency will make a great team nigh unbeatable, but he is in a poor team at the moment, and he is not pulling the weight under which his aged team-mates are now buckling. 

Reverting to a false nine would give City another passing option in attack: it would make them less predictable and, crucially, give them another body to counter-press immediately when they lose the ball, and so stymie those ruinous counter attacks. 

Guardiola has tried virtually everything this season aside from benching Haaland. Today was a day to show it’s time for Pep to break the glass: this is an emergency.