16 Conclusions on Man City 2-2 Arsenal: A quite ridiculous end to a quite ridiculous game
Manchester City against Arsenal is now without question a clash between the two best teams in the country and this was the best game between them since that status became reality. What a lot we’ve got to get through here, and only a mere 16 opportunities to do so.
1. Usually, 16 conclusions is a very silly number of conclusions to make. It’s far too many, isn’t it? It’s a joke that frankly got out of hand quite some time ago, a cartoonishly ridiculous number of points to make about a single game of football, but a joke to which we are enormously committed and stubbornly refuse to abandon. Phil Neville is still number 50 on the Famous England Ladder for those of you wondering when this might actually come to an end.
But occasionally a game comes along where 16 conclusions feels pitifully too few, a wholly inadequate number to do sufficient justice to what we’ve all just witnessed. When such a unicorn game happens to be contested by the best two teams in the country, so much the better.
This 2-2 draw between Manchester City and Arsenal was something really quite special. It had something for everyone. City’s 100mph start showing just how otherworldly their actual top level is when they see fit to deploy it. Arsenal’s bravery and brilliance in not getting completely blown away by it and getting a foothold in the match and indeed perhaps the whole title race.
Two controversial Arsenal goals. Another landmark for Haaland. An injury the significance of which may be felt way beyond today. A ludicrously stupid red card. A training-ground exercise of a second half. Housery. A 98th-minute equaliser. Haaland bouncing the ball off Gabriel’s head. Everyone finishing the game absolutely furious. Sometimes this sport is all right, you know.
2. Before we get into all those lovely, juicy specifics, a quick look at the bigger picture. Yes, it was agonisingly close to being completely perfect but this was still a fine day for Arsenal. A September trip to the Etihad is never going to be must-win, but this was definitely must-not-lose for Arsenal. Five points is not a cushion anyone has ever recovered from giving this City team and even this iteration of Arsenal – which has improved upon last season’s just as that team improved upon the one before – would be unlikely to have done so.
Arsenal would have taken a point before the game, at half-time and for most of the second half despite City’s struggles to hurt their 10 men. They would have given almost anything for a point after chasing shadows and falling behind in that chastening first 10 or 15 minutes.
And while it’s hard to know how one should react to a significant injury blow for one’s rivals, the simple fact is that if Rodri is out for a significant period of time then that arguably does far more for Arsenal’s season-long prospects than any result in this one match could have done. We’ve all seen the numbers, we all know what Rodri’s absence does to this City team and how human it sometimes makes them look.
3. This was a game to reassert the fact that while the table might not yet quite show it, these remain pretty comfortably the country’s top two teams. Arsenal may sit only fourth and two points adrift right now, but they have already ticked off trips to three of last season’s top five and safely negotiated a week – Spurs away, Atalanta away, City away – that always shone brightly as a horrible early-season pinch point, and done so while missing key players.
After those three teak-tough away games comes a run of four home games before the next international break that should be far more straightforward: Bolton in the Carabao, and then Leicester and Southampton in the league either side of a Champions League visit from PSG.
Three domestic wins should be close to a formality there, while Arsenal can luxuriate in the new tension-free format of the Champions League where draws and defeats at this early stage hardly matter at all. A world away from trying to go toe-to-toe for 38 games with City’s daftness.
And now let us go right back to the start and evidence of that daftness. City were something else in those first 15 minutes. One of the most galling things about their brilliance is the fact that a lot of the time they are still playing comfortably within themselves.
It can be quite unnerving when they do this sort of thing and remind you that they can always go up a level when required. Doing so from the start of this game was its own compliment to a team that now stands as their only significant domestic rival.
A lesser team than Arsenal would have been blown apart. Arsenal still almost were, clinging on by fingernails and grateful to trail by only one goal.
4. That goal was scored, with a sense of gnawing inevitability, by Erling Haaland. A small mistake by Riccardo Calafiori was instantly turned into a large one, Haaland recognising the moment and sprinting into space to be set free by Savinho. In that moment, the combination of Gabriel and William Saliba that has looked all but impregnable all season long was suddenly destroyed before Haaland poked the ball past a wrong-footed David Raya.
It was Haaland’s 100th Manchester City goal in just his 105th  appearance for the club, an entirely absurd record. It’s testament to the greatness he possesses in front of goal that he can even have you marvelling at the unique brilliance of a finish that looked an awful lot like a good old fashioned toe-poke.
5. Ilkay Gundogan hit the post having already early on sliced a presentable chance wide before the opening goal. City won a series of corners as they sought a second goal that would have left Arsenal with a potentially unscalable mountain both here and for the season as a whole. But it was from one such set-piece that what still stands as perhaps the day’s most significant of its many, many moments arrived. City won a corner they appeared to have little right to win and may now wish they hadn’t, given the obvious agony on the face of Rodri after he crumpled following an innocuous and blameless coming together with Thomas Partey.
He is a brilliant player of course, but one wonders just how much of his influence on both City and their opponents is psychological and self-fulfilling. His departure was certainly followed by an instant change to the game.
6. It would be facetious to argue Rodri’s sudden absence had a direct involvement in Arsenal’s out-of-nowhere equaliser, but the timing was certainly on the nose. It’s rare that a single goal could justify 16 Conclusions all on its own, but this one perhaps comes closer to most. Let’s see how many we can get out of it.
Let’s start with the finish, because it’s an absurdity on multiple levels. Not least the fact the scorer of such a goal was Calafiori, the Arsenal player who had perhaps suffered the most personally harrowing and difficult start to the game of anyone.
He had been rinsed repeatedly by Savinho, but popped up here to send a shot arcing, curving and dipping beyond Ederson to bring Arsenal improbably and deliciously level. Surely not even the most committed and time-served members of the Celebration Police could have a problem with the way Calafiori reacted to it, running and jumping into the arms of his manager with such joy unbridled that he nearly took Mikel Arteta clean off his feet.
So a brilliant, brilliant goal. What else can we say about it, though? This one might just be us, but we were enormously (perhaps even we would concede irrationally) irritated from an aesthetic point of view that the ball bounced out of the goal almost instantly after crashing into that effects mic or whatever it is right up close behind the goal. This was a goal of such class and importance that it and we all deserved a quality bit of net nestling at the end of it. We were robbed of that and honestly it might be the single most annoying thing about the whole game. We appreciate that actual fans of both clubs might see things differently right now, but it’s a goal that whatever else happens this season is sure to be shown on repeat for years to come and it is always now going to look that tiny bit less sexy than it should. There’s no need for anything to be that close behind the bloody net, lads, come on.
7. One of the reasons City fans might not care so much about that disappointing lack of nestle is that they have some reason to believe the goal shouldn’t actually have stood. We’re not sure either of their two reasons for believing it are entirely compelling, but nor is either without some merit.
It’s undoubtedly true that Kyle Walker was caught out of position by Arsenal taking a swift free-kick, and also true that this was in large part due to him being called in for a captain’s chat by referee Michael Oliver. Walker absolutely could have been quicker about getting back set after that discussion, but is also probably within his rights to think that the referee, having called him out of position, would not allow Arsenal to then take the free-kick so quickly.
The free-kick itself was also not taken from where the offence occurred and could easily therefore have also been called back for that. But free-kicks being taken from the wrong place happens all the time, and play is halted only rarel. Free-kicks in midfield are so routinely taken from the wrong place and with so little consequence that it doesn’t feel like a defining feature of the goal. By the letter of the law it perhaps shouldn’t have counted, but there was an awful lot that still had to happen before that ball reached the back of Ederson’s net. It’s not like a foul 35 yards from goal led to a free-kick being stroked in to the top corner from 25.
8. And for a final point on this goal, what a significant moment it could prove for Gabriel Martinelli. He is one Arsenal player who has endured a conspicuously troubled start to the season, looking short on confidence and making plenty of the sort of duff final-ball decisions that point to a mind not quite at ease.
But he was alert and alive to the opportunity here in creating that simple chance (ahem) for Calafiori and it was just the first of a series of eye-catching moments across the rest of the first half in which he continued to give Walker a set of problems for which City’s captain only occasionally had the answers and this time had no mitigation of having been distracted by a very important conversation with the officials.
Martinelli, like all Arsenal’s attacking players was forced into a wildly different role in the second half, and in truth he struggled to be the outlet Arsenal could have done with. But that’s not his game and nor really is it anyone’s in that Arsenal squad. His first-half performance is the one that carries more significance moving forward in the season and it was really very good indeed.
9. Walker was at fault too for Arsenal’s second goal, which was far more of a standard Arsenal goal. To the extent that it may now be the archetypal Arsenal 24/25 goal. It was one that might make Guglielmo Vicario and Cristian Romero feel a bit better too, given that Ederson and Walker were made to look just as silly by Bukayo Saka and Gabriel here as the Spurs pair had a week earlier.
This was if anything worse because City had survived a huge scare minutes earlier, and also because City players aren’t generally and shouldn’tt be as easily confused as Spurs ones.
Gabriel’s earlier miss prompted Pep Guardiola to give Walker the task previously entrusted to Jeremy Doku of attempting to shackle the player emerging now as the most dangerous of all Arsenal’s many set-piece dangers, but Walker was eased out of it all too easily as Martinelli ensured Ederson was unable to get involved.
Lots of teams have already conceded this goal against Arsenal, and plenty more have it in their futures. But it should slightly embarrass City, given their standing, to fall into a trap that, while impeccably well set, was obvious a week ago and had been flagged up again right here before finally catching the champions out.
10. A goal to complete an unlikely looking turnaround in the first added minute at the end of the first half should have ensured Arsenal went into the break on the highest of highs, but Leandro Trossard had other ideas.
Whatever sympathy it may have been possible to feel for Declan Rice for his red card against Brighton was entirely absent here. Given what we now know and have seen, there can be only assessment of a player receiving a second yellow for kicking the ball away and that is to call it what it is: recklessly, pathetically stupid.
It doesn’t matter that the law is unevenly applied. It doesn’t matter that Doku could’ve been booked for the same offence earlier in the day but wasn’t. It matters only that it is applied some of the time. There was no need for Trossard to hoof the ball, no possible gain to be had in delaying the game in that way. It was a pointless act that served only to give Oliver a decision to make when it was entirely unnecessary to do so.
The challenge itself to concede the free-kick was also a pretty hefty and unwise one in the first place.
QUIZ: Name every Arsenal player sent off under Mikel Arteta…
11. The entire second half was transformed by that moment at the very end of the first half. We’d have been truly fascinated to see what an 11 v 11 second half would have looked like, because it will be slightly lost and forgotten now that having weathered that early City storm in the first 15 minutes Arsenal looked every bit their footballing equals at worst for the next 30.
But the fact we didn’t get to see that second half of equals is on Trossard and nobody else. It is not, despite some people’s apparent views on the subject, a referee’s job to preserve the spectacle. If it ruined the game for you and you want someone to blame, we would suggest you blame the player who did something so arse-wittedly stupid in the first place.
12. That second half really was something, though, and there is a reasonable case to make that the red card ultimately did more harm to City than Arsenal.
The champions really were pretty poor and alarmingly short of ideas in trying to pick a path through Arsenal’s committed and resolute 6-3 formation. We all know how much City can and do miss Rodri, but rarely has Kevin De Bruyne’s absence been more keenly felt than it was here while watching City guilelessly eat up more time by yet again passing the ball around in front of all those red shirts for a bit before Ruben Dias shot wide from 25 yards.
City had 24 attempts on goal in the second half, but only right at the very end did their combined xG climb above a single goal. Dias had four shots, Walker had four shots. Phil Foden had only two. Something’s not right there.
Spurs spent much of last weekend’s north London derby playing into Arsenal’s hands and remarkably it appeared like City were going to do the same.
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13. It was clear from very early on that the second half was going to be attack versus defence. Ben White for Saka – who in truth had offered disappointingly little in that first half beyond his set-piece delivery – was a change that pointed to Arsenal deploying a back five that ended up in fact being a back six. Stopping City creating chances is hard when you have 11 players and essentially impossible with 10. Arsenal did the only thing they reasonably could in the situation: made sure those chances City mustered was as low quality as possible. This they did so impressively until deep into injury time.
The only surprise was that anyone was surprised by this approach. The Sky pundits all spent large parts of the second half bemoaning Arsenal’s tactics even as yet another shot from a City defender sailed harmlessly off target.
It seemed to us that Guardiola’s refusal to make anything other than cosmetic changes was a far bigger puzzle than Arsenal’s backs-to-the-wall rearguard. Once the pattern of play was established, was it really necessary for both Dias and Manuel Akanji to remain on the pitch for the entire 90 minutes? With the more naturally attack-minded and skilful Josko Gvardiol still nominally playing in defence it felt like there was plenty of scope for City to reduce the number of centre-backs they were using in what were by this point very clearly auxiliary attacking roles.
14. Instead, Guardiola opted to increase rather than reduce his centre-back quota. He turned to John Stones and tasked him with playing up front and staying close to Haaland. It’s worth stopping and giving that some thought. This was City, with all their riches and all their resources, reduced in a massive game to chucking a centre-back up front to see what might happen.
It looked like an act of desperation, and a clear vindication of everything Arsenal had done in the second half to that point.
15. And then, of course, Arsenal switched off in the 98th minute. And from a corner. The irony that it was the set-piece that is coming to so define Arsenal’s potency that was their undoing here. We would contend that one brief lapse of concentration after the unstinting effort that second half required is pretty understandable, but no less galling for all that. This was and remains a damn fine point for an Arsenal side who are far more likely to win the title after this result than they were before it, but the sting they will feel nonetheless is undeniable.
They thought they’d done it, didn’t they? They thought they’d got over the line, and we find ourselves thinking a lot about the way Arsenal’s players went to Raya after he had (brilliantly, to be fair) come through a crowd of players to claim a corner moments before City would find their equaliser. There was a collective release when Raya made that catch; that was the moment where Arsenal’s players believed. They really were seconds away from one of the most famous and significant victories the Barclays has known; that it remains a potentially vital point can only offer a partial salve.
The goal itself was a scruffy one, unremarkable when viewed without its enormous potential significance. It may be Jack Grealish’s most meaningful contribution for City yet – showing some of the gumption that was curiously lacking from his team-mates to first win the corner and then deliver the cross after a smartly worked short corner. There was fortune in the way the ball broke to Stones, and the fact Raya still almost managed to save it despite being on the floor and facing the wrong way is no longer even that surprising given the levels to which his game has soared this season. But he could only divert the ball into the roof of the net for a goal whose eventual significance will likely not become entirely clear for several months.
16. Steven Chicken coined the term ‘pyrrhic draw’ to describe the outcome here, and it’s going to end up that way for someone. As the initial sting of the timing and manner of City’s equaliser fades, Arsenal will likely come to the conclusion that it is City and not they who have been reduced and shown their human frailty here. City, if they’re honest with themselves, will likely conclude the same.
This was a game that even at this early stage of the season could have left the title race looking troublingly capable of descending into a procession. It doesn’t look remotely like that now. That’s an outcome Arsenal cannot be disappointed about, no matter what even brighter futures were tantalisingly, fleetingly possible.
