Pep Guardiola karate kicked his own chair. Mikel Arteta celebrated and despaired with equal fury. Manchester City players fumed, then labored, and ultimately ran gleefully across a rain-soaked pitch. Arsenal players, shattered by a 98th-minute goal from City’s John Stones, sank to the turf, utterly deflated.
And so it ended, a titanic clash atop the English Premier League that had just about everything — broken records, heroic defending, injuries and cards, golazos and NBA plays, scrums and heavyweight clashes and controversy.
Everything, except a winner.
It ended 2-2, and as all involved trudged around the Etihad Stadium afterward, everybody looked unhappy.
Unhappy because they’d blown a lead, and dropped two points.
Unhappy because, they all felt, referee Michael Oliver had wronged them.
As they trudged, they shook hands, but also argued. They had clashed at 0:02 — two seconds into the game — when Arsenal’s Kai Havertz threw a shoulder into Rodri. They clashed at 99:08, after Erling Haaland threw the ball off Gabriel’s head while celebrating Stones’ goal, then rumbled into Thomas Partey immediately after the restart.
They clashed throughout a game that many thought would be tactical, cagey, boring. Last season, it had ended 0-0, largely thanks to Arsenal’s conservativeness.
But six months later, it exploded into life, and set the stage for a months-long battle for Premier League supremacy.
Man City’s flying start
It started with City flying forward, and Haaland flying further into the record books. He flew past the best defense in the world, and cleverly, coolly scored his 10th goal in his fifth game of this EPL season.
He became the quickest to ever hit 10 goals in a single Premier League season; and also the quickest in soccer’s modern era to hit 100 goals for one European superclub. (Cristiano Ronaldo also scored 100 in 105 games for Real Madrid, but his 100th came in the 20th minute; Haaland’s came in the 9th minute Sunday.)
Rodri’s injury, Arsenal’s controversial equalizer
Haaland’s excellence stood as the story of the game for six fleeting, now-forgotten minutes. Then Rodri went down, and the story changed.
City’s Spanish midfield maestro, a Ballon d’Or contender, had only just returned from a long summer and a muscle injury in the Euro 2024 final. Here, he got bumped by Partey, and his knee buckled, and the entire Etihad feared. After minutes of writhing and worry, of treatment and pain, Rodri limped toward the sideline, and down the tunnel.
Minutes later, Mateo Kovacic replaced him — just as the game’s next contentious act began.
In the 21st minute, Arsenal won a free kick in the defensive half. As Kovacic sprinted onto the field, Oliver, the referee, called the two teams’ captains, Kyle Walker and Bukayo Saka, over for a chat, in an effort to prevent a simmering match from boiling over.
During their 20-second chat, Arsenal rolled the ball about eight yards ahead of where the foul had occurred.
And after the chat, as Walker was still trotting back to his right fullback position, Partey took the free kick quickly. He played a diagonal ball over Walker’s head to Gabriel Martinelli.
Walker howled at the apparent injustice as he sprinted back to slow the Arsenal attack — which he did. But seconds later, Martinelli teed up Riccardo Calafiori at the top of box. Calafiori, a defender 22 minutes into his first Arsenal start, caressed a curling shot into the far corner.
City players protested — presumably because they felt Oliver should’ve given Walker time to settle back into his position before allowing the restart.
Arsenal players didn’t care, and, for 20 minutes thereafter, steadied. They repelled City, and began to maintain some possession and control of their own.
Then, in first-half stoppage time, they turned the game upside down with a multi-layered, well-rehearsed, perfectly-executed set piece.
Arsenal’s set piece
Five Gunners congregated at the far post as Saka prepared to take a corner. They’d done exactly the same thing several minutes earlier, and City failed to adjust.
Martinelli and William Saliba snuck in to block off City goalkeeper Ederson. Calafiori targeted City’s Joško Gvardiol, and cleared space at the far post — where City’s only remaining player and its shortest, Bernardo Silva, was hopeless.
Gabriel, initially positioned at the penalty spot, looped around to meet Saka’s pinpoint cross and head it into a gaping net from close range.
Walker, who’d tried and failed to mark Gabriel, screamed into his hands.
Arsenal staffers wrapped one another in hugs, because the play had clearly been scripted — just like a basketball half-court set, with back screens and an alley-oop to a dunker sneaking behind unsuspecting, walled-off weak-side defenders.
Arsenal’s red card and resilience
For another six fleeting minutes, that was the story of the game. But it took another twist on the brink of halftime, in the eighth of six added minutes. That’s when Leandro Trossard barged into the back of City’s Bernardo Silva. Trossard had already been booked. Oliver brandished a second yellow card, and sent him off.
In the video assistant referee room, according to the NBC broadcast, the VARs discussed and confirmed a reckless challenge worthy of a yellow — and therefore a red.
But the Premier League later said that Trossard received the yellow not for the foul, but rather for kicking the ball away afterward — and therefore delaying the game.
So there was more confusion and controversy. Arteta, the Arsenal manager, raged.
Then there were 50 minutes of a training exercise — 11-on-10, blue attacking, red defending. The 10 in red sat in a 5-4-0 formation, and receded into their own defensive third — or fourth, or fifth. At times, all 10 were back into their own penalty box.
But City couldn’t break them down. The hosts — the four-time reigning English champions, the most well-oiled attack in the soccer world — couldn’t find a way through the sport’s best defense. Arsenal defenders slid side-to-side, shutting off every passing lane. Midfielders closed down space at the top of the box. Forward Gabriel Jesus came off the bench and played as if he were the world’s best left fullback.
City resorted to shots from distance, hoping for individual brilliance or a deflection that never came.
Arsenal played with unflinching focus — until, after 97 minutes, for a split-second, the visitors lapsed.
City’s Jack Grealish skipped to the endline. Saliba cleared his cross, and flexed, and roared. But as he received congratulations, Grealish sped toward the corner flag. He took the ensuing corner quickly. He dribbled back into the box, and teed up Kovacic, whose blocked shot fell to Stones, who, with one of the last kicks of a whirlwind game, tied it.
And so it ended, with City atop the table; with Liverpool and Aston Villa one point behind; with Arsenal one point behind them, still unbeaten; and with only one clear takeaway: Both of these heavyweights will be there, near the top, in the title race, for months to come.
