Call it the dark arts. Call it anti-football. Call it doing whatever it takes to win.
Arsenal tried it all against Manchester City on Sunday in the latest chapter of the Premier League’s new heavyweight rivalry — and came within seconds of victory.
“There was only one team that came to play football,” Manchester City midfielder Bernardo Silva grumbled after an intense, absorbing and incident-packed 2-2 draw at Etihad Stadium. “The other came to play to the limits of what was possible to do and allowed by the referee, unfortunately.”
John Stones’ equalizer for City in the eighth minute of second-half stoppage time denied Arsenal, which played with 10 men for the entire second half, what would have been a defining victory for a team that is getting closer and closer to Pep Guardiola’s repeat champions.
City’s players know it, too.
Hence Bernardo’s outspoken post-match comments on Arsenal. Notice how Erling Haaland chucked the ball at the back of Arsenal defender Gabriel’s head in City’s wild celebrations after Stones’ late intervention. Look, too, at Pep Guardiola kicking his seat in the dugout after feeling a sense of injustice at the manner of Arsenal’s equalizer by Ricardo Calafiori.
Arsenal has gotten under City’s skin.
Roll on the return match at Emirates Stadium in early February.
“As a football match, it is a great spectacle for the Premier League,” City captain Kyle Walker said of the new rivalry with Arsenal, which has been runner-up in the last two seasons. “Probably not so much certain stuff — I think it’s part and parcel of the game and we’ll say the dark arts.”
Stones spoke of Arsenal’s attempts to slow the game down by what he perceived as feigning injuries to allow manager Mikel Arteta to “get some information on to the pitch.”
“I wouldn’t say they have mastered it but they have done it for a few years now so we knew to expect that,” Stones said. “You can call it clever or dirty, whichever way you want to put it, but they break up the game which upsets the rhythm.”
To that extent, Arteta looks to have taken a page out of former Chelsea and Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho’s playbook. Mourinho was, of course, once a huge rival of Guardiola’s and took cynical play to the extremes at times.
Arteta’s Arsenal can play beautiful football, as well. But with captain Martin Odegaard out injured and Leandro Trossard sent off against City in first-half stoppage time, the Gunners knew when it was time to change the approach to the other extreme.
“It’s unbelievable what we have done,” said Arteta, who knows City and Guardiola inside out having once been his fellow Spaniard’s assistant at the Etihad.
For Silva, matches against Liverpool — which was City’s big rival before Arsenal — were more enjoyable to play in.
“Liverpool always faced us face-to-face to try to win the games,” the Portugal playmaker said, “so by this perspective, the games against Arsenal haven’t been like the ones we had and have against Liverpool. So yes, maybe a different rivalry.”
Silva was one of many City players to get riled in what was an incendiary encounter pretty much from the start. At one stage, he curled his finger into a “0” as he faced up to Gabriel – seemingly in reference to Arsenal not winning any Premier League titles, at least since Silva joined City in 2017. Arsenal’s last league championship was in 2004.
Pressed on the difference between playing Liverpool and Arsenal, Silva said: “Maybe that Liverpool have already won a Premier League, Arsenal haven’t. That Liverpool have won a Champions League, Arsenal haven’t.”
Will this be the season that Arsenal ends its wait for the league title?
After five games, Arsenal sits in fourth place and two points behind City, the leader, having just emerged from visits to Tottenham and City — two of its toughest away games — in the space of a week with four points, either side of a 0-0 at Atalanta in the Champions League.
The stage could be a set for another City vs. Arsenal title race.
