It was a meeting of the Premier League’s two best teams, a battle of tactical masters, a clash of technical brilliance and pure drama.
Manchester City versus Arsenal just five games into the season lived up to its billing in many of the conventional ways and served up a memorable ending.
Yet it also proved that no heavyweight contest cannot be enhanced by a bit of s***housing (or, to be more precise, a whole lot of s***housing).
There was plenty of time for it. The match lasted 109 minutes and 17 seconds, which surpassed the previous day’s 109-minute, eight-second epic between Aston Villa and Wolves as the longest game of the season so far.
And despite some valiant timewasting efforts (more of that later), the ball was in play for 63 minutes and 28 seconds overall — the fifth-longest total in a game so far this season — and 58.1 per cent of the available time, which compared favourably to the 56.8 per cent average for the season so far.
But with City having almost 88 per cent of possession in the second half, Arsenal’s 10 men had to employ every trick they knew to withstand the barrage.
So forget for a moment the nuances of formations and the analysis of sublime skill. Here is a breakdown of the dark arts.
“Set the tone early, lads.” “Yeah, maybe not quite like that.”
It took just three seconds from kick-off for Arsenal’s Kai Havertz to barge Rodri to the ground as City shifted the ball back to goalkeeper Ederson and Rodri tried to block Havertz’s route towards the City goal.
Medics were on the field and straight away there were players in the ear of referee Michael Oliver, who was probably already wondering why he’d agreed to miss a Sunday afternoon on the couch for this.
VAR checked this incident and, while it could have merited a foul on the pitch, it did not merit an intervention — which would only happen in the event of a red card incident.
“Our striker’s bigger than yours.” Havertz is hardly a slight figure, but you would not want to get in the way of Erling Haaland in full flight.
Well, William Saliba did on four minutes as, to use the old-school vernacular, the Norwegian “left a bit on” the Frenchman. The result, predictably, was Saliba being flattened, although he dusted himself down admirably quickly.
Like Havertz on Rodri, this was also checked by VAR.
Just when a game of football was threatening to break out, the games of shoving returned in the 16th minute when ‘take one’ of a Manchester City corner was aborted after Thomas Partey followed Havertz’s lead by clattering Rodri off the ball, this time with a knee to the upper part of the Spaniard’s leg.
It all happened while City’s Manuel Akanji and Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber engaged in a spot of Greco-Roman wrestling a few yards away. A rare moment of double-dark-arts — and one with serious consequences, as Rodri was forced off with an injury.
Six minutes later, it was Oliver’s effort to put a lid on things that raised the temperature to a new level.
After calling captains Kyle Walker and Bukayo Saka together for a chat about controlling their team-mates, Oliver allowed Arsenal to take a quick free kick while Walker was still regaining his bearings. Gabriel Martinelli’s cross was cleared as far as Riccardo Calafiori and the Italian bent a shot into the top corner.
Needless to say, Walker was not happy. Neither was City manager Pep Guardiola, as his seat in the home dugout would confirm.
If Walker could claim the award for the afternoon’s most aggrieved man, he could add the one for the most hapless proponent of the dark arts.
His weird poking of Arsenal defender Gabriel as they awaited the delivery of a corner in first-half stoppage time might have been quite funny had the Brazilian defender not drifted easily away from the England man to leap and head home his side’s second goal at the far post.
Got him, got him, got him…
… yeah, lost him.
Not to be outdone, Leandro Trossard seemed to be out to prove he could be bad at s***housing too. Even deeper into first-half stoppage time, he was penalised for a foul but continued by booting the ball away. He would claim the whistle came too late to stop himself from acting on instinct.
Oliver disagreed and out came a yellow card. It was Trossard’s second of the half and a red immediately followed.
#MCIARS 45+7′
The referee issued a second yellow card to Leandro Trossard for delaying the restart.
— Premier League Match Centre (@PLMatchCentre) September 22, 2024
There was a period of dark-arts calm at the start of the second half as Arsenal’s 10 men held on for grim life in the face of waves of City pressure, but 19 minutes after the restart, the war of tricks resumed as Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya went down requiring treatment.
It is possible the Spaniard was in genuine pain, but the ensuing stoppage allowed visiting manager Mikel Arteta time to conduct an impromptu team talk.
To add to the madness, Arsenal youngster Myles Lewis-Skelly was booked for unsporting behaviour — he ran down the touchline and behind the goal. At the time, he was a substitute, having not played in the Premier League before — thereby collecting his first yellow before his first appearance. Lewis-Skelly made his Premier League debut later in the game.
And the delay was in keeping with the general approach of Arsenal, who took 42.7 seconds on average to restart the game after being awarded either a corner, goal kick, free kick or throw-in, the second highest of any team in any game this season.
By the 83rd minute, Arsenal were trying whatever they could to eat away precious seconds with Declan Rice booked for delaying a restart before, two minutes later, Martinelli went down in the centre of the pitch. He had limped on with cramp in less pivotal parts of the field.
And just to prove that anything Martinelli could do, Timber could do better, Arsenal then sent medics running on to the field to treat the Dutchman, despite goalkeeper Raya’s kick-for-touch failing to make it off the field, leaving Oliver having to bring play to a halt as City attempted to start an attack.
Timber was helped to his feet after initially going down in front of goal.
He limped away signalling to the sidelines for a substitute.
Having seen Timber fall again, a medic prepared to enter the field once Raya had hooked the ball out.
And, when Raya failed to find touch, the medic ran on anyway.
Martinelli was eventually replaced by countryman Gabriel Jesus, who proceeded to get involved in some skulduggery almost immediately by picking up a booking for blocking a corner from a yard while lying on the floor.
And then, in the aftermath of John Stones’ dramatic City equaliser eight minutes into stoppage time, City apparently could not resist the urge to turn the tables of chicanery. Guardiola and one of his coaches were booked for breaching regulations on behaviour in the technical area.
Haaland recovered the ball from the net and pinged it off the head of an unsuspecting Gabriel as the Arsenal defender hid his face in his shirt.
Just to ensure Gabriel was really angry, Haaland recreated Havertz’s earlier barge on Rodri when the game restarted. Both of Haaland’s incidents would have been checked by the VAR.
And Haaland continued the theatre after the final whistle in a seemingly needless and yet oddly entertaining clash with Arteta in which the Arsenal boss seemed as baffled as viewers to be told repeatedly to “stay humble”, which all went to show that there is no contest between two heavyweight teams that cannot be enhanced by a bit of random aggro.
“Stay humble” Haaland is wild for saying this to Arteta 😳 pic.twitter.com/XkU4oCg3Sr
— Football Hub (@FootbalIhub) September 23, 2024
(Top photo: Getty Images)