16 Conclusions from Man City 2-1 Arsenal: Cherki, Bernardo, Haaland, O’Reilly, bottle | OneFootball

The result if not the game most expected, then, as Manchester City grab momentum, initiative and most decisively control of the memes in this season’s title race.

Arsenal were absolutely fine today, but repeated instances of being not fine previously have now caught up with them, and they are now set to cede top spot to City – temporarily initially – this week.

It is quite simply what both these clubs do.

1. Well that was wonderful. We’re not talking about the result, before you start. Very obviously your mileage may vary there. But the game. That was an infinitely better game of football than we dared to dream.

We were ready for housery, for Arsenal to come and attempt – who knows, maybe even successfully – to anti-football their way to a goalless draw or the jankiest 1-0 win in the history of the sport.

Sure, we’d have enjoyed the amount of p*ss that boiled. Enough to fill every one of the wearyingly inevitable Arsenal water bottles that were on sale outside the Etihad today, we’d wager. But we’d rather enjoy a good game of football, if it’s all the same to you.

2. And this was a really good game of football. It would have been captivating even if it had been terrible, of course. Its importance was too great for it to be anything other than appointment viewing. But we absolutely did not expect to find ourselves enjoying it this much as a simple game of football between two excellent teams.

It has been a difficult Premier League season to love. One that has felt defined far more by its flaws and weaknesses and its Tottenhams than by its positive qualities.

The sight of the league’s best two teams putting on an actual show in the biggest game of the season was thus strangely revitalising. Maybe everything isn’t doomed. Maybe everything is going to be okay.

3. Of course, Arsenal will still get called bottlers after this. That is unavoidable, we’re afraid. We expect plenty of noise from those who’ve spent all season moaning about Arsenal’s sh*thousing to turn around now and incredulously shake their head at Mikel Arteta deciding to let an actual game of football break out here when the stakes were highest. Why didn’t he just shut it down?

It’s a results business, and Arsenal – again – didn’t get the result when it mattered. But there should be no criticism of how Arsenal went about this. It’s hard to imagine a more fine-margins game than this proved to be. Arsenal turned a game that was supposed to banterously confirm their inescapable Arsenalness into one where any result was possible. That was no mean feat.

The xG sum was as close to a draw as makes no odds. Both teams created five big chances according to Opta’s number-crunchers. If Kai Havertz doesn’t make a bollocks of a 94th-minute header, Arsenal leave with a draw that absolutely nobody could say they hadn’t earned and deserved.

4. Ifs and buts win few titles, though. And the unavoidable fact is that however good Arsenal were today, however full their heart, however committed their fight, however plentiful their bottle, they have now squandered momentum and control of a title race they have had multiple opportunities to finish off.

Man City are purring now, but that has absolutely not been the case for much of a season where Arsenal have, at times, appeared the only grown-up big club in the room.

Arsenal may not have bottled the biggest game of the season, but the outcome was the same nonetheless. And if they do now go on to lose yet another title race there will be no escaping the memes and the banter.

Across four competitions, Arsenal have now won one, drawn one and lost four of their last six games. At domestic level, it is now four straight defeats that have ended two trophy pursuits and perhaps fatally damaged a third.

For comparison, Spurs’ all-competition record across their last six is one win, two draws and three defeats.

It is an obviously unfair comparison. We’re mucking about. There are obvious mitigations and caveats here. Spurs’ win was a meaningless one that confirmed an inevitable early Champions League exit, most obviously, while neither of their Premier League draws look like being worth a fig.

But when your bid for a historic quadruple ends in a miserable six-game run where you need to add some context to explain why it isn’t actually quite as bad as that of comfortably the year’s worst Premier League team, then you have undeniably f*cked it up.

5. But yeah, not specifically today. You could almost make a case that City’s glorious opening goal came against the run of play.

Arsenal had committed one early nonsense with an attempt to faff about on their own six-yard line that attracted Gary Neville’s indignant ire but other than that had adopted an unexpected approach that showed immense early promise.

Arsenal were all over City at every opportunity in those early exchanges. Four times in the first 10 minutes Arsenal regained possession in the final third. They didn’t do it once here last season, and only four times total the year before.

This was an entirely different and entirely welcome balls-out approach from Arsenal. Mikel Arteta promised fire before a washout against Sporting in the Champions League. Nobody could doubt Arsenal’s burning desire here.

6. What an opening goal it was, though. We’re very nearly as fond of Rayan Cherki as Peter Drury is. He is just a wonderful footballer to watch and there’s no doubt he feels like a glorious throwback to a less regimented, less joyless, individualism-crushing age of football.

He is a naughty footballer in the best possible way. An impish, mischievous schemer, whose unpredictability makes him infinitely appealing but also gave us the fear when he first rocked up at City.

He was easy to finger as a possible flop when the season began. A City side in transition, Guardiola looking tense and haggard. It could easily have gone wrong. It was not remotely far-fetched to think Pep might absolutely Grealish all the life out of him.

But some players are simply too good and too much fun to have the joy sucked out of them or their football.

Cherki is such a player. The footwork that delivered him through the Arsenal defence was mesmerising, but the composure to apply so perfect a finishing touch through a defender’s legs and inches inside David Raya’s far post was a reminder that while, yes, it is nice to see Guardiola relax a bit and let a player like Cherki be himself, it isn’t because of some softening in the great man.

It’s because Cherki combines all the fun elements with specific and measurable results.

We’re pretty sure he’s our new favourite player, who will single-handedly save the Premier League from itself.

7. Arsenal, though, weren’t done. Within two minutes they were level. The high pressing was to the fore again and it was Kai Havertz who got the reward as he charged down Gianluigi Donnarumma and blocked the ball into the empty net, causing Gary Neville to make one of those noises that no other creature of this earth can create.

It was a horrible mistake from the keeper but a massive vindication of Arteta’s approach and his big decision to go with Havertz rather than the final-piece-of-the-puzzle centre-forward who was supposed to get Arsenal over the line in these situations.

SPOILER ALERT: This would not remain necessarily true on this occasion.

8. There then followed a bizarro world spell in which Arsenal continued to harry City high up the pitch and held possession for extended periods after they’d regained it. There was about a 10-minute spell there when City were left playing like a counter-attacking team with Arsenal the ones seemingly dictating the tempo and controlling a narrative that has been spiralling out of their control for weeks.

It didn’t last, sure, but it was definitely there. In hindsight, it might have been a spell where Arsenal really needed something tangible. Before Rodri and Bernardo Silva regained the run of themselves and got the game looking more like the kind of thing you expect to see from this fixture.

9. Silva was particularly magnificent, growing more and more into the game until eventually emerging at the end as its decisive figure.

He has only three more games at this ground before his City career comes to an end. He will go down as one of their greats, and Guardiola will be somewhat lost without him.

This was an all-action masterclass of a midfield performance. He outsprinted and outmuscled Kai Havertz to cut out one Arsenal breakaway before rising highest – Bernardo Silva! Rising highest! – to head the ball clear under pressure from the finally introduced Viktor Gyokeres as City held on in the closing stages.

An absolutely monumental performance moving both forward and back, with its defensive effort drawing comparisons to Fabio Cannavaro from a delighted Erling Haaland.

10. Haaland, of course, left his mark on the game in multiple ways. Most of them quite late on in the game or after it.

For an hour it had been the sort of Haaland performance you see so often. The games where he rarely touches the ball and you do kind of think “Is he actually doing anything, though?” yet cannot take your eyes off him and realise neither can any of the opposition defenders. Part of Haaland’s genius is that his threat is very often latent but never entirely absent. He demands attention at all times.

And then pops up with the winning goal in the biggest game of the season. And then proceeds to, if anything, escalate the gladiatorial nature of his running battle with Gabriel Magalhaes. Then side-eyes and sings into the camera at full-time before peacocking around with his shirt off and his hair loose and delivering a genuinely funny post-match interview alongside Bernardo.

The Main Character Energy is off the charts. Even when nowhere near his best form he retains near unimprovable Who Else But Him? credentials. He remains That Man. The player who It Simply Had To Be.

11. Gabriel also owes him a pint. Their battle today and more generally has become one of the Premier League’s most intense personal duels. It’s one obviously built on respect, but the kind of respect that makes you want to kick the other one’s head in.

It really stepped up after Haaland had scored. One tussle left Haaland with a ripped undershirt. But the biggest flashpoint saw the two men head to head before Gabriel jerked his forward. Had Haaland reacted as we suspect the vast majority of Premier League players would have reacted, Gabriel would probably have been sent off and he could have had absolutely no complaints about it.

It was a stupid, reckless act that would have surely ended Arsenal’s chances in this game as well as putting himself out of vital ones to come.

12. We find ourselves once again wondering, though, just why it actually needs Haaland to over-react for the proper punishment to be forthcoming? If you want to know why so few players do stay on their feet, this is why. Simulation and exaggeration would be so much easier to eradicate if they weren’t so obviously effective.

Haaland himself knew this, saying after the game: ‘I think if I fell on the floor… it would have been a red card.’

He chose not to fall on the floor, favouring dignity over outcome in that moment. Most wouldn’t. If we must have VAR, is this not the perfect opportunity for it to actually be useful? Haaland’s lack of reaction makes it easy to miss for the referee, but VAR can see it. Why not get involved? Why not say ‘Hang on, there might be more to this than you thought from your one and only look from a slightly obscured angle’?

All that’s happened now is the providing of further encouragement for players to make a bigger fuss in the future.

13. At this time there was also widespread agreement that Gabriel and Haaland were pretty much constantly just fouling each other in their one-on-one joust, but also that this constituted great entertainment and good #product so they should just largely be left to it.

For what it’s worth, we totally agreed. It was great to watch, it was very much both of them who were at it, and we were as happy as anyone else to let it play out while it was restricted to slightly over-the-top but broadly harmless physicality where the only real victim was a sky blue baselayer.

But don’t think we haven’t noted down the strength of this consensus that it’s fine for persistent fouling to be ignored if the vibes are immaculate for the next time the same voices sigh, throw their hands in the air and say “Look, all we’re asking for is a bit of consistency.”

14. But the goal was the thing. An extremely Haaland finish – although what goal actually wouldn’t be? – but it owed much to the work of Nico O’Reilly through the build-up.

There are many players who have stood up and established themselves as key figures in this unlikely tilt at a treble from City.

Some have merely recaptured days feared lost, like Rodri. Others have doubled down on existing status like Rodri. Some have arrived and immediately looked part of the furniture, like Marc Guehi. Some have overcome adversity and troubled starts so thoroughly you start to wonder if you’d imagined the struggles, like Abdukodir Khusanov. His partnership with Guehi is already alarmingly good given just how new it all still is.

But O’Reilly might stand tallest among them all. He has speedrun the journey from promising youngster to gnarled senior pro in startling time. It’s now almost impossible to imagine Pep Guardiola’s Man City 2.0 without him.

He did have one moment of extreme and double good fortune, though, diverting an effort onto the post via his hip with his hand in a position that would have been a certain penalty had the trajectory been slightly different.

15. And that’s not the only way it could have been different today. City weren’t undeserving winners, but any result would have been fine. Havertz showed his good side with the endeavour and opportunism for the equaliser but also the bad.

He should have scored when through on goal at the end of what had been a torrid opening 15 minutes of the second half for Arsenal. He definitely should have equalised in stoppage time. He probably should have been able to win a footrace with Bernardo Silva.

Those chances and Eberechi Eze’s wicked curling effort that thudded off the inside of the post, across the goalline and agonisingly out to safety will haunt Arsenal’s dreams should what now seems likely transpire.

16. Despite everything Arsenal got right today, their occasional sloppiness all season and specific recent stumbles means they will almost certainly lose the lead in the Premier League on Wednesday night. By then they will have held it for 197 days this season. It will be 973 days that Arsenal have spent top of the pile since that translated to an actual title.

City have won eight league championships in that time from 1200 days on top of the Premier League. No team is more efficient at this than City, no team less so than Arsenal.

And increasingly hard to escape the notion that it’s happening again.