Arsenal 1-1 Man City (Martinelli 90+3′ | Haaland 9′)
“I love midfield players,” Pep Guardiola once said. “They are the most intelligent players. If I had my way, I would have 1,000 of them in my squad.”
So it’s only fair to ask whether we have now entered the age of a Guardiola team built entirely of defenders? Probably not.
But Manchester City’s manager had overseen 600 top-flight league matches and never once recorded a possession statistic lower than 33 per cent. In his 601st, a new low by this measure.
Some of this has been coming, just over the hill: 58 per cent possession vs Wolves on the opening weekend, 46 per cent against Manchester United. But not quite this. Never before like this.
Erling Haaland strikes at the Emirates!
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) September 21, 2025pic.twitter.com/lNK5BBWo0O
By full-time at the Emirates. Ruben Dias, Josko Gvardiol, Nathan Ake and John Stones were all there. Matheus Nunes was on too as an auxiliary full-back. Rodri stood very close to them too.
Abdukodir Khusanov and Nico O’Reilly had done their bit in their open penalty area. Erling Haaland did his best in both; Haaland repeatedly won headers from defensive corners and hoofed clear when the ball fell to him.
A penny for the thoughts of Jose Mourinho. Time and football are both flat circles. The best managers take ingredients from everyone they face but to see Guardiola building a blue wall might just be his most surprising construction at Manchester City to date.
For the most part, it did work. An early goal and something to hold onto desperately was like a gold bar, stuffed into the back pocket as Arsenal arrived with tools and weapons and eventually a cavalry of attacking midfielders.
Jeremy Doku was magnificent as a one-man counter-attack, winning some fouls and asking for half a dozen others, the great pressure-relieving extraordinaire.
"What a MAGICAL finish!"
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) September 21, 2025
Gabriel Martinelli equalises for Arsenal in injury-time! pic.twitter.com/dFllxh3eFP
For a while the game became a little farcical, albeit highly entertaining, a reminder of how titanic tussles are supposed to be.
Arsenal would do six or seven things well, while City would watch. The ball would eventually be worked, waltzed or walloped into the penalty area. Arsenal had 39 touches of the ball in City’s box, the visitors just eight.
This usually works, or at least works better than for any other football team in the country. But the City giants repelled them; Gianluigi Donnarumma would fly with a fist or some sky blue giant would leap, head and clear.
Someone you could swear was an attacker would make a tackle. Cue the process starting again from scratch: pass, pass, pass, attempted strike from some opportune angle.
In the end, perhaps there were simply too many cooks. Playing an offside trap with a three-man defence requires only two lines of communication but you try doing the same with six.
Your next read
The first time City edged 40 yards from their own goal, Eberechi “The Quarterback” Eze arrowed a deep throw and Gabriel Martinelli flourished in the end zone. For once, Donnarumma didn’t know where to be and ended up nowhere, one of the sixty-odd thousand waiting to see where the chip would drop.
At any other time, a draw would be a touch disappointing for the neutral. When live sport is so pronounced and strategies so astonishingly patent, a definitive result one way or the other tends to be the dream. Then we can hail our tactical deities and doofuses.
Here, it felt appropriate that we were left breathless but unable to quite know what to think at all. Long throws are back. Kick-offs are taken like in rugby. City now park the bus. If a draw means there are no certain conclusions to make just now, that only makes it more exciting, not less: we get to see if this upside down, bizarro world might continue on and on.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/rnLCzpA
Post a Comment