Gunners show heart but City’s steel stands out

ARSENE WENGER was well-wrapped up against the cold at the Etihad Stadium but then it was really back in the balmy late summer that he would have been shivering.

As Arsenal put it up to City in Manchester yesterday, it was extraordinary to think that only as recently as August 28, the Gunners were enduring of the most humiliating days in the club’s history, hung, drawn and quartered 8-2 by Manchester United — the same day, incidentally, that City were putting five past Spurs.

You’d have got long odds then on the apparently fanciful notion that, come December, Arsenal would be looking forward to a Champions League round of 16 game against AC Milan while the two Manchester clubs would be planning for the joys, or otherwise, of life in the Europa League.