Kai Havertz collapsed in stages before laying flat out in a starfish position. David Raya hunched forward onto his knees, interrogating the grass for answers. Gabriel pulled his shirt over his face to deny what he had seen, while Declan Rice held his arms out looking for someone to blame. He could find no one bar misfortune.
Arsenal were forced to face the cruel reality that they had succumbed to a fate they had so valiantly refused to accept.
After garrisoning their penalty box with ten men for the entire second half, their defence finally caved in the 98th minute as John Stones made it 2-2. They had held a first win at the Etihad since 2015 in their hands, only for it to evaporate with less than 100 seconds remaining.
The euphoria those Arsenal players would have felt had they held on would have been unrivalled. It would have been the strongest retort they could have sent to Rodri and anyone who doubted their ability to meet City eye-to-eye, but they still left an enhanced impression on their rivals such was the spirit they displayed.
Within the opening two seconds Arsenal sent a message they would not be intimidated by City, nor do they see themselves as second best. As the ball was played back to Ederson from kick-off, Rodri tried to block Kai Havertz from pressing. The German responded with a shoulder barge to the chest that sent the City midfielder flying.
It was an immediate signal that this is no longer an amiable affair. Everything that happened in the rest of the game came with an air of menace and grievance lurking. This was a thrilling, mean-spirited match between two teams prepared to be physically brutal and loose with the rulebook.
David Raya wasted an age at goal kicks and six different Arsenal players went down for medical treatment in the second half, which was the trigger for an impromptu Arteta team talk. Arsenal were in all-out disruption mode but it was not just because they were defending a lead earned by two first-half goals. It was enforced because Leandro Trossard’s sending-off seconds before the break had left Arsenal disadvantaged against a team who have not lost at home in 22 months.
Trossard’s first booking for stopping a clear counter-attack was blatant. The second, for kicking a bouncing ball away, was more subjective as he was about to go into a duel right after he fouled Bernardo Silva. After Declan Rice was shown a second yellow for the same offence against Brighton earlier this month, while also 1-0 up, the Belgian gave the referee Michael Oliver a decision to make.
Arteta claimed afterwards that there will be 100 games this season reduced to nine or ten men if similar decisions are taken but he did not have time to feel sorry for himself during the break. As a manager who looks for inspiration wherever he can find it, he sent his players back out with a Spartan mentality. This was going to be a last stand, and it was going to last 45 minutes. In the end, the onslaught lasted 56.
With a goal advantage, Arsenal’s proposal to to City was simple: if you want to reach our goal, you will need to come through every one of us first.
Stand-in captain Bukayo Saka was sacrificed for a half-fit Ben White and the usual 4-3-3 ditched for a 5-4-0, which quickly turned into a 6-3-0 and soon became an indecipherable mob of red shirts.
Within minutes it looked like a futile endeavour. A team can be backs-to-the-wall for 15 minutes or so, but for a full half, against a team of City’s firepower? It felt inevitable that someone would switch off or the extra man would eventually tell but Arsenal would not acquiesce.
City failed to thread the needle with Haaland often looking claustrophobic in the Arsenal box with so many bodies around him, reduced to watching his centre-backs shoot from range.
City shuffled it across the edge of the box one pass at a time, again and again, but every pass saw another Arsenal player emerge from their position just in time to deny the space to shoot. There were no passengers. Not even Jorginho on the sidelines, who was doing an unofficial coaching job, nor 17-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly who was booked on the sidelines for encouraging David Raya to seek treatment before he had even come on to make his Premier League debut.
Havertz’s opening challenge on Rodri and Thomas Partey’s bump on the Spaniard, albeit soft, which saw him land awkwardly and come off set the tone.
City were enraged by Arsenal’s delay tactics, most notably Bernardo Silva. “There was only one team who came to play football. The other team came to play to the limits of what was possible and allowed by the referee unfortunately,” he said after the game.
The home side argued Kyle Walker was out of position at the first goal due to being summoned by the referee and claimed interference on Ederson for the second. But this was a game played on the edge with aggressions and microaggressions from both sides, as shown by Walker’s repeated prodding of Gabriel’s stomach before his goal.
The antagonising was constant. Early on, Riccardo Calafiori and Savinho got into a pushing match, Arteta refused to give Ruben Dias the ball back, while Walker pretended to throw the ball at Gabriel Martinelli’s face at a throw-in. Haaland actually did throw it off Gabriel’s face when City scored their late equaliser.
The animosity could be felt on the benches, too. When Arsenal’s players went down it led to words being exchanged between the two staffs and after Stones scored there was a fracas that saw both security teams step in. The next action that happened on the pitch was Haaland sprinting straight into Partey from kick-off, in the same vein as the match started.
Arteta referenced the nine minutes of stoppage time with a hint of sarcasm. When it was put to him that his side’s time-wasting tactics had perhaps backfired, he said. “If I haven’t made a comment about the first action, I’m not going to make a comment about the consequence to acting in a certain way”.
It was not the victory that Arsenal so desperately wanted but given the red card, the absence of their captain Martin Odegaard and two full-backs starting in positions they had not played in for Arsenal before, it was a triumph of mentality.
“I’m so proud. They put their heart and soul into every action,” Arteta said.
“Then to be punished in the last minute — well it was 97, then was 99 — they were gutted. What I can tell you is 99 out of 100 times if you play 56 minutes against this team with ten men, you’re going to lose and you’re going to lose by a lot of goals. They know they have made another big step today to do what they’ve done as individuals here.”
(Top photo: PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
