Gunners show heart but City’s steel stands out
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.
Yet, domestically, Arsenal still have a lot of ground to make up. They might have more than played their part in a titanic struggle yesterday but, with a touch more composure from Samir Nasri and a clinical finish to match his work rate from Sergio Aguero, City would never have had to see out a nervy final few minutes.
Still, a proper Christmas cracker of a game it was, and not just because what had come earlier in the afternoon had been so uninspiring, with Manchester United putting together a routine win over QPR and an average Liverpool side winning by the same margin against a truly atrocious Aston Villa.
Everything that Villa couldn’t seem to muster — urgency, spirit, imagination — City and Arsenal served up in abundance. And, as much as Arsenal’s resurgence as a fighting force has confounded earlier predictions, so too have City erased the now seemingly ancient caricature of Roberto Mancini as a dour tactician.
True, his late substitutions yesterday were a bid to restore some order to what threatened, at times, to become thrilling chaos but for those of us not professionally involved it was a touch of conservatism which was as unwelcome as it was correct since, up to the last 15 minutes, City’s gung-ho and even reckless attempts to add to their narrow lead had only added to the sense that we were watching the game of the season so far in the Premier League.
Ferocious tempo, end to end momentum, plenty of goalmouth incidents, a host of stirring individual battles and the whole thing overseen with intelligent and — rare thing — even affable authority by referee Phil Dowd: here was an example of top class English football which made the wearying ‘Super Sunday’ hype seem, for once, like an understatement.
The problem with City’s relentless forward motion was that it left wide open spaces into which Arsenal could counter-attack almost at will and, if the final ball from the likes of Gervinho and Theo Walcott had been better, Robin van Persie might have enjoyed a better return than one superbly taken but offside goal.
But credit City’s rearguard too, with Kompany and company doing all that was required of them to keep the flying Dutchman under wraps while, as the very last line of defence, Joe Hart’s performance was a reminder of why he could see off even Shay Given for the number one shirt.
So, a reality check for Arsenal as their fine run of seven wins and a draw in eight outings comes to a halt but, after the big freeze of a few months ago, still plenty here to warm the cockles for Arsene Wenger once he gets over his initial disappointment.
But the game’s greater significance, especially in terms of the destination of this year’s title, was that, even with match-winner David Silva having an otherwise uncharacteristically sloppy afternoon, City still had enough about them to not only rebound from that defeat by Chelsea but regain their place at the top of the pile.
I picked them to go all the way at the start of the season and nothing in yesterday’s compelling 90 minutes gave me reason to change my mind.
