When the whistle blew at the Etihad, the emotions of the managers were so spent that they could emote no more. The victorious Pep Guardiola, after a fleeting hug and a whisper in his defeated rival Mikel Arteta’s ears, rushed to greet his troops with a warm smile. Arteta, hiding his grief inside a defiant face, staggered back into the tunnel.
Emotions had run them ragged. Guardiola had leapt, sunk to the touchline turf and copped a yellow card for his revolting, the old rebellious spirit seizing him. Arteta slumped and performed half a roll on the ground in the angst of Kai Havertz stoppage-time header speeding over the crossbar, Arsenal’s golden chance to draw level in the game that ended 2-1, preened and pirouetted. His men would leave Etihad top of the table, but with a crushing numbness.
Arsenal had offered everything they could, defended stoutly as the meanest backline in the league is meant to do, attacked vigorously and showed more creative energy than they had in the previous weeks. But they know the shadow of Manchester City is creeping on surreptitiously. The familiar, dreaded shadow of doom.
The Gunners are still three points ahead in the table, albeit having played a game more, have a more favourable run-in (all bottom 12), as opposed to City (all top eight), but they know the symbolism of the defeat, the icy clutches of Guardiola’s renaissance artistes, the shift in momentum.
What would hurt them the most is that City were not supremely superior to them, but were more resolved, more imaginative and blessed with individuals who could decide the game with a single stroke of genius. The game never hit the pulsating, end-to-end tempo of the first 30 minutes, but was engrossing, suspenseful, and a nudge away from a full-blown brawl.
City’s unseemly revival was intertwined with personal redemptions and triumphs. Erling Haaland, notwithstanding a 20-plus goal season, has not been the infallible marksman of City’s title-winning editions. He was agitated and edgy in the first but when the ball broke for him, across the face of the goal from Nico O’Reilly, he held off Gabriel’s frame and fight, and battered the ball into the net with all his might. It was a goal he scored with his will, more than technique and instinct. He needed a statement goal in a clutch game to punctuate his season.
A moment of magic and madness had defined the match until then. Rayan Cherki, a free-spirited gnome, over-indulgent to the merry annoying of his manager at times, handed City the lead with a strike that left Guardiola wrap his face in disbelief.
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Receiving the ball just from just outside the box, he wove past Gabriel and Declan Rice, through the narrowest of alleys, their feet groping thin air, winked at an onrushing Cristhian Mosquera and pinged the ball past David Raya’s outstretched hands into the far corner.
“There are moments,” his manager had remarked. “I just want to shout at him and there are moments I want to kiss him.”
He would have blown a hundred kisses at him for the sumptuousness of the goal. The rest were playing rugby; he was performing a ballet.
Game-breaker
Cherki is unlike the classical, no-frills Guardiola forward, an agent of chaos wrecking the regimented order that the Spaniard preaches. Even in that instance, the classical City manoeuvre would have been to drag the ball beside the goal-line and cut back. But Cherki is anti-system, he breaks moulds and patterns. Guardiola must have hired him to tear his own templates and tactics.
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“If you don’t play with pleasure, you can’t show what you want,” Cherki once explained his philosophy. The Frenchman lives by that on the pitch too. His centrality to the team embodies Guardiola’s departure from system and structure to individual prowess.
As though to offset the spurt of improvised genius, City contrived a moment of school-boyish sloppiness. Gianluigi Donnarumma, one of the most feted goalkeepers around, took a heavy touch from a throw-in. Kai Havertz, blessed with an uncanny sense of occasion, pressed forth. Donnarumma’s attempt to hoof the ball away only ricocheted off Havertz’s feet into the goal.
Donnarumma slumped in disbelief; his colleagues wrapped consolatory arms around him; Guardiola, at his theatrical octave, emptied a water bottle. It was such a game where the majestic and the farcical frictionlessly co-existed.
Later, though, the Italian atoned with a feisty block from Havertz’s power-packed shot and the quick and accurate throw to Jeremy Doku that resulted in City’s winner.
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The game reached the first-half crescendo. The intonation fell for the remaining half, where both teams settled into mid-pitch baritone. as though the dramatic intensity convulsed their mind. It was in tune with the game’s flow. It had begun like a boxing bout where both teams desired to land out the knockout blow before retreating to the rearguard. Punches and counterpunches flew. Both defences were pressed into last-gasp defensive acts, preluding the dizzy drama that would unfold.
Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya nearly gifted Erling Haaland an opportunity with a heavy touch; Gabriel’s block, off his upper arm but with the arms behind the back, spun onto the inside of the far post.
The second half wasn’t as free-flowing, both teams mindful of errors. That’s when the title race gained pace and edge, leaving the audience restless for the climax.
