“I love midfield players,” Pep Guardiola once said. “They are the most intelligent players. If I had my way, I would have 1,000 of them in my squad.”
But Manchester City’s manager had overseen 600 top-flight league matches and never once recorded a possession statistic lower than 33 per cent. In his 601st, a new low by this measure.
Some of this has been coming, just over the hill: 58 per cent possession vs Wolves on the opening weekend, 46 per cent against Manchester United. But not quite this. Never before like this.
Erling Haaland strikes at the Emirates! pic.twitter.com/lNK5BBWo0O
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) September 21, 2025Abdukodir Khusanov and Nico O’Reilly had done their bit in their open penalty area. Erling Haaland did his best in both; Haaland repeatedly won headers from defensive corners and hoofed clear when the ball fell to him.
For the most part, it did work. An early goal and something to hold onto desperately was like a gold bar, stuffed into the back pocket as Arsenal arrived with tools and weapons and eventually a cavalry of attacking midfielders.
Jeremy Doku was magnificent as a one-man counter-attack, winning some fouls and asking for half a dozen others, the great pressure-relieving extraordinaire.
"What a MAGICAL finish!" Gabriel Martinelli equalises for Arsenal in injury-time! pic.twitter.com/dFllxh3eFP
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) September 21, 2025Arsenal would do six or seven things well, while City would watch. The ball would eventually be worked, waltzed or walloped into the penalty area. Arsenal had 39 touches of the ball in City’s box, the visitors just eight.
Someone you could swear was an attacker would make a tackle. Cue the process starting again from scratch: pass, pass, pass, attempted strike from some opportune angle.
In the end, perhaps there were simply too many cooks. Playing an offside trap with a three-man defence requires only two lines of communication but you try doing the same with six.
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At any other time, a draw would be a touch disappointing for the neutral. When live sport is so pronounced and strategies so astonishingly patent, a definitive result one way or the other tends to be the dream. Then we can hail our tactical deities and doofuses.
Here, it felt appropriate that we were left breathless but unable to quite know what to think at all. Long throws are back. Kick-offs are taken like in rugby. City now park the bus. If a draw means there are no certain conclusions to make just now, that only makes it more exciting, not less: we get to see if this upside down, bizarro world might continue on and on.
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