16 Conclusions from Arsenal 2-3 Man United: DNA, bottle, retro kits, Carrick, Arteta, Mbeumo and more | OneFootball

Michael Carrick has rocked up at Manchester United and thrown the cat among the title-race pigeons by… beating both City and Arsenal to ultimately leave things exactly where they were.

But he’s got United playing again, he’s got them over their fourthplaceophobia and he’s got Arsenal wondering if it’s happening again.

It’s not bad for a fortnight’s work, is it?

1. An unlikely 3-2 win for interim manager Michael Carrick’s Manchester United having fallen 1-0 down to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.

Having taken a 2-1 lead early in the second half, Carrick’s side were pegged back by an Arsenal equaliser before managing to respond yet again and find a winner.

It was the last game of Carrick’s caretaker reign in 2021. It will not be the last game of his caretaker reign in 2026.

If you, like poor old Mediawatch, wearied of DNA talk after last weekend’s win over Manchester City then we can only advise giving football media a wide berth for a few days after this.

United really are speedrunning their now familiar ‘inspirational club man interim appointment’ storyline here. By tomorrow morning we expect to see full-blown Carrick Clamour, with his inevitable permanent appointment now pencilled in for just after he beats his other former clubs Spurs and West Ham over the next few weeks.

2. But while none of us have to drink the Kool-Aid about Carrick’s Man United DNA being the reason for their dramatic improvement over the last 12 days, it thoroughly damns the previous regime that he has been able to come in and so conspicuously change the mood and performance levels.

A manager last seen being sacked by Championship Middlesbrough has been able to turn United around in less than a fortnight.

His masterplan? 1. Pick Harry Maguire. 2. Pick Kobbie Mainoo. 3. Change the formation, obviously. 4. Put players in the correct positions.

3. None of it is complicated. All of it is obvious. It’s no criticism of Carrick to point out the changes he’s made are such straightforward and obvious ones; it would be ridiculous to think he could have done any more than that in such a short space of time with two such fiendishly difficult opening fixtures to negotiate.

What matters, and reveals so much, is just how transformative those changes have been and how fast.

This has still been unexpectedly impressive, obviously, and it does need saying that for all United were ultimately good value for their win here that it still relied on two spectacular goals. That’s not a particularly repeatable tactic.

But these first two weeks of Carrick’s temporary(?) reign have shown that it never needed to be anything like as bad as stubbornness made it for so, so long.

4. As for Arsenal… are they really doing it again? Surely they’re not doing it again? It’s an impossibly harsh but unavoidably relevant question. Arsenal’s recent history means the scope for things to become painfully self-fulfilling at this point is unbelievably potent.

It is patently ridiculous that a team losing a 24-0-0 all-competitions record when scoring first is damned for the loss of such a record rather than praised for its existence. But nobody will be making these points more forcefully than Arsenal fans themselves. Nobody will be more aware of what this might be than Arsenal fans themselves.

There was a desperate, palpable nervousness about Arsenal today as they sought to respond to victories for Man City and Aston Villa earlier in the weekend.

5. And while the point about the spectacular nature of United’s second and third goals applies just as much to not over-reacting to Arsenal’s defeat as it does to over-reacting to United’s victory, it’s not as if they were bolts from the blue. These were not rogue misfortunes that derailed an otherwise acceptable performance.

Arsenal were nowhere near it, and weirdly got more nervous and less certain after what should have been a perfect nerve-settler of an opening goal.

6. It had been an odd start to the game before it burst so dramatically to life. Arsenal were in total control, but it was an eerily sterile dominance. Arsenal had all of the ball and all of the territory but before getting their goal via a swing and a miss from Lisandro Martinez led to the ball cannoning in off his standing leg, they had created precious little.

At one point in the first 15 minutes Arsenal had completed 22 passes in the final third to United’s zero. Yet Arsenal had nothing really to show for being in such utter control of proceedings. The goal would eventually come, but it never felt like it definitely would. Never had the sense of inevitability you’d expect.

It never, in fact, felt as inevitable as United’s equaliser did almost from the moment Arsenal went ahead. As for Martinez, we can only say that perhaps that goal wouldn’t have happened if he’d just bothered to be slightly taller? Something to think about there.

7. So soon after Arsenal’s opening goal did United’s first glimmer of a chance come that Peter Drury hadn’t even finished his prepared soliloquy before grudgingly accepting the need to mention with a sigh that Bryan Mbeumo was now to be found bearing down on goal.

That chance came to nothing, but another miscommunication at the back soon after created another chance for Bruno Fernandes.

This time it required an extraordinary recovery from William Saliba to prevent an equaliser. Having initially let the ball run past him, presumably unaware of the lurking danger, he then somehow stuck out a telescopic go-go-Gadget leg to get their first and scupper Bruno’s shot.

8. But the reprieve was temporary. Arsenal’s third and most egregious error in five baffling minutes saw Martin Zubimendi, usually the most reliably safe pair of hands imaginable, make a horrible mess of a backpass after having a pass fizzed into him with unnecessary pace.

Mbeumo still had plenty to do, and did it with what is becoming customary style as he shimmied round David Raya to score his 50th Premier League goal.

He is already one of the signings of the season and is developing a happy knack for scoring premium goals.

That’s now goals in victories at Anfield and the Emirates, as well as in a home win over Man City. It’s a fine return on investment in his first season, and he was sorely missed during that dispiriting run of draws around the new year when he was away on AFCON duty.

9. It would have been easier to forgive Arsenal’s first-half sloppiness and nervousness had they been shaken out of these navel-gazing afflictions at the interval. But they weren’t.

The second half began very much as the first ended, with United encouraged to believe there was far more here for them today than anyone might have anticipated.

Of course there’s an air of freakishness to Patrick Dorgu scoring what Gary Neville called on commentary ‘a goal of a lifetime’ but these are the things that can happen when you offer opponents as much seemingly unnecessary encouragement as Arteta’s side has taken to doing.

Having played a sort of double one-two with Fernandes, Dorgu arced his shot spectacularly beyond Raya even before we’d fully completed the thought that we hoped he didn’t do that because it would force us to try and describe the set-up and ‘double one-two’ feels entirely unsatisfactory.

10. We do feel we have to take some responsibility for Arsenal’s shoddiness here. You can’t go around publishing Quadruple Content on the morning of a match without expecting egg to be instantly administered to faces.

Of course, nothing is f*cked here today. Arsenal are still four points clear. They are still heavy favourites to win the league. They probably haven’t just commenced a bottlejob. But we must all accept they are slightly less compelling quadruple candidates this evening than they were this morning.

But whatever happens over the weeks and months ahead, they will have one quadruple to look back on thanks to the mass Hail Mary substitution Arteta attempted just before the hour to try and rejuvenate what was by now a thoroughly moribund performance.

Four substitutes, Mikel? Four? That’s insane.

In fairness, the introductions of Mikel Merino, Eberechi Eze, Ben White and Viktor Gyokeres did energise Arsenal a bit.

11. Or at least, they energised the crowd. There was a conspicuous cheer for the introduction of Gyokeres in particular. It might not have been a good day for Arsenal, but Gyokeres wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel something at the sight of Gabriel Jesus so utterly failing to stake a claim to a regular starting spot when handed the chance in a big game.

12. And we were certainly invested in the idea of Ben White scoring an equaliser and then celebrating in Steve Holland’s face. Although even here we saw doubt and uncertainty from Arsenal where none has existed before. Hincapie’s return and White’s deployment in the reshuffle from the bench meant Myles Lewis-Skelly once again reduced to a watching brief.

There still appears to be a lack of real belief in the youngster when the chips are truly down.

13. Arsenal scored an equaliser of such unparalleled Arsenalness that it barely requires description. The words ‘corner’ and ‘Merino’ and ‘bundled’ and ‘goalline technology’ are all you need to know to form a perfect image of it all in your mind. Or failing that, in your planet-melting AI of choice.

A subdued Emirates suddenly came alive with expectation. A horribly unpleasant afternoon was now pregnant with the possibility of some real Hallmark of Champions behaviour and possibly even some stern words and tut-tutting from the Celebration Police. There was surely only one winner from here, you thought to yourself.

14. And you were right. In fairness, this is where a degree of caution must be particularly advised for those going all-in on Carrick’s club-knowing DNA-possessing Unitedness being the difference maker in a big away game at a long-term rival.

Because really what United went and did here under Carrick is just what they went and did under Amorim at Anfield; after conceding a late equaliser, they went and found a late winner.

It was another stunning goal, wonderfully and precisely worked with no panic or late-game-bluster before Matheus Cunha calmly curled the ball into the bottom corner from 25 yards like it was a tap-in.

And as a general point, it does become even harder to avoid the temptation to compare this United to previous all-conquering iterations when they do this sort of thing to league leaders while dressed as the 1994 team in that wonderful black Eric Cantona kung-fu tribute kit.

15. Victory finally takes United into a wide-open top four that has been waiting for them all season long. Nobody appears remotely interested in what is for now (but almost certainly won’t end up being) the final Champions League spot, with United among the most egregious offenders with all manner of daft results against daft teams when opportunity knocked previously.

Now, after back-to-back wins against teams that are not daft, the chance has been taken. And there really does seem no good reason to think United can’t remain precisely where they now find themselves given who they’ve now eliminated from their fixture list.

Nobody could accuse United of appointing an interim at a time designed to give him a straightforward start, but having beaten City and Arsenal it really could get even better for a while yet.

United, infamously, are not overburdened with fixtures for the rest of the season, but even so they have what looks like an outrageously gentle February after this potentially punishing end to January.

If they can avoid the classic ‘win the hard games, then mess up the easier ones’ trope, then a February featuring Fulham and Tottenham at home before trips to West Ham and Everton could be a rewarding one. Haircuts all round if that lot goes the way current form suggests it should.

16. For Arsenal, a first home defeat of the season. And the loss of that 24-0-0 record in all competitions when scoring first. And three goals conceded in a Premier League game for the first time since a 4-3 win over Luton Town in December 2023.

We haven’t crunched all the numbers but are going to say that it must at the very, very least be rare to concede three goals against a team that is relegated twice before you concede three goals to anyone else. If United get relegated twice before the next time Arsenal concede three then we’re all in trouble.

The ridiculousness of that stat and indeed the nature of the goals Arsenal conceded today – two worldies, one silly gift – should also be a reminder of just how ridiculous and unbreakable that Chelsea goals conceded statistic really is.

There was some talk earlier in the season that Arsenal could threaten the absurd 15-goal mark of Terry and Carvalho and Cech and, above all, Mourinho. We get it; Arsenal are an exceptional football team who at their best specialise in denying their opponents any chances whatsoever.

But the fact that record is already off the table with 15 games still to play should give anyone pause next time someone comes along with an impressive pair of centre-backs and high-class goalkeeper.