Staying humble: Arsenal thumping of Man City 5-1 only helped expose need for Gunners to sign a clinical striker

Staying humble: Arsenal thumping of Man City 5-1 only helped expose need for Gunners to sign a clinical striker

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Arsenal dominated the Premier League champions at the Emirates Stadium, beating Manchester City 5-1 to keep pressure on Liverpool at the top of the table.

Mikel Arteta’s side took the lead within two minutes through Martin Odegaard before Erling Haaland equalised with a thumping header early in the second half. City were only level for a minute or so, though, before Thomas Partey restored Arsenal’s advantage.

From then, the home side were in total control. Impressive 18-year-old full-back Myles Lewis-Skelly and forward Kai Havertz added more goals, before an outstanding curling strike from 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri, on as a substitute, added further gloss in stoppage time.

Arsenal are six points behind leaders Liverpool, who have a game in hand, while this defeat leaves City in fourth, 15 points off the title pace and ahead of fifth-placed Newcastle United only on goals scored.

James McNicholas, Sam Lee and Thom Harris analyse the key talking points.

In September, Arteta gave Lewis-Skelly his senior debut when these two teams met in the reverse fixture at the Etihad Stadium. It was a huge statement of the manager’s faith in Lewis-Skelly, then 17 – especially as he had already been booked that day for urging David Raya to go down injured from behind the Spaniard’s goal while warming up.

Since then, Lewis-Skelly has gone from strength to strength. For this game, Arteta selected him ahead of £42 million ($52 million at current rates) summer signing Riccardo Calafiori. After scoring Arsenal’s third goal, cutting inside before bending the ball in with his weaker right foot, he will be difficult to displace. The Emirates Stadium crowd have a new hero.

He further endeared himself to the fans by replicating Haaland’s meditation-pose goal celebration – a call-back to a brief flashpoint between the Norwegian striker and Lewis-Skelly during that 2-2 draw in Manchester.

The emergence of Lewis-Skelly and fellow academy product Nwaneri has been one of the positives of Arsenal’s season. Nwaneri even found time to put the icing on the cake with his second gorgeous goal of the week to make it 5-1.

With Stefan Ortega’s perilous pass to Mateo Kovacic midway through the first half presenting Havertz with a gilt-edged chance, City reached a bleak landmark in north London.

It was their 23rd error leading to an opposition shot in the 2024-25 Premier League – even with 14 games to go, it’s more than they have committed in each of their previous 10 full seasons. (They soon made it 24, with a wayward Phil Foden ball cut out by Partey, in the second half, which the Arsenal midfielder scored from to make it 2-1 to the hosts.)

The sequence was nothing we haven’t seen before – a carbon copy of what The Athletic described as the most dangerous pass in football in December – but Ortega fell straight into the trap. His pass was short and Kovacic, not for the first time in a dreary first half, got crowded out.

Aside from the obvious risks, City’s approach to build-up throughout today’s game was rarely inventive enough to break through Arsenal’s defensive shape. Matheus Nunes pushing up from a full-back role meant City formed a back three on the ball, with Kovacic often the sole option to progress the ball through the middle. That forced them to go wide, but passes out to Nunes usually came straight back. On the opposite wing, Savinho struggled for space.

It helped when City’s attacking midfielders dropped deeper, but new signing Omar Marmoush was loose in possession with his back to goal. When City could zip the ball up to Foden, they struggled to pick up the pace and move with him into the attacking third, usually meaning he had to come back.

With the champions still so fragile in their defensive third, errors in possession are the last thing they need. But an inability to consistently find their way through the first two lines of pressure is just as damaging to their struggles to control such big games.

In some respects, this Havertz performance demonstrated the complexity of Arsenal’s striker situation. The biggest talking point of the first half, aside from Odegaard’s early goal, was the chance to make it 2-0 that Havertz spurned.

Arsenal could have a more clinical No 9. It’s remarkable that, in Havertz and Gabriel Jesus, they have ended up with two centre-forwards who share a common and crucial weakness: finishing. With Jesus now sidelined, Arsenal have spent much of the winter window chasing a new centre-forward. Their attempt to sign Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa has seemingly failed, they now have just over 24 hours to try to fill that vacancy before tomorrow’s 11pm (6pm ET) deadline.

The curious thing is that, even if Arsenal do manage to land a striker before the window shuts, the new guy will have difficulty dislodging Havertz from the team. For all the attention on that missed chance, the German continues to tick all the boxes Arteta wants from a forward out of possession. His pressing and physicality contribute to the team’s structure.

And yet in the second half, when a more difficult opportunity to score came his way, Havertz finished with aplomb. His finishing is inconsistent, but many other aspects of his play are reliable. Everyone agrees Arsenal need a striker. But can Arteta find one in the next few hours who he’ll value more than Havertz? That’s more difficult to say.

There were the bones of a good City performance here, considering the issues they have had this season, but the errors that Thom Harris mentions above derailed any hopes of getting something out of this.

That Foden pass straight to Partey was the real killer for City – conceding a goal so soon and so cheaply after getting back into the game at 1-1, with Foden playing his part in it, really took the wind out of their sails. It is hard to look at errors like that without recognising the broader context of their patchy form since November: during this run, which has improved somewhat of late, they have contrived to make things worse for themselves even while things are going well.

The most famous example was against Feyenoord in the Champions League, when they were three goals up with 15 minutes to go but drew 3-3, something that destroyed confidence. Even as results have picked up recently, they threw away a 2-0 lead at Brentford to draw 2-2 and a 2-0 lead at Paris Saint-Germain, again in Europe, to lose 4-2. They are conceding goals like never before under Pep Guardiola (illustrated below).

The players continue to fight and continue to try to play the type of football that would get them back to the top, but this habit of individual errors (and conceding goals in quick succession) is thwarting any chance of progress. On Sunday, City just kept digging holes for themselves.

How did Haaland get on after his ‘Stay humble’ comments last time?

Following his “Stay humble” advice to Arsenal players following that 2-2 draw in September, Haaland bore the brunt of the home fans’ hubris on Sunday.

Given what unfolded during the game, in terms of the celebrations and chants, the Norwegian’s point was probably proven quite well, but when you make a comment like that, you have to hope your own form is in order.

For a couple of months at the end of last year, with Haaland struggling to score as City’s form nosedived, the backlash was hard to complain about. Here, though, he more or less did what he could. Sure, Arsenal’s centre-backs did pick his pocket a couple of times, but his equaliser on 55 minutes gave City hope, only for those further down the pitch to undo his positive contribution again.

Haaland generally lives and dies by the service he gets, and often these days that is lacking. Today he did the business and could only watch on as mistakes from team-mates squandered his good work. Still, the Arsenal fans will enjoy his and City’s downfall on the day, and possibly beyond.

What does this result mean for Arsenal’s season?

It turned into a cathartic early evening for Arsenal as the cries of “Olé!” rang around the Emirates with their three-goal lead intact. And then they added another.

Aside from needle surrounding Haaland, Gabriel and Arteta, this was the first time Arsenal have scored five against City since February 2003, and a fourth league game unbeaten for them against Guardiola’s side, after a run of 12 consecutive head-to-head defeats in the top flight.

Today’s result effectively ends any hope of City winning a fifth straight title but keeps Arsenal’s chances of their first since 2003-04 simmering.

The confidence this win will give them cannot be understated and, with two games against sides in the bottom six to come in their next two league matches (Leicester City away, West Ham United at home), they have the chance to extend their unbeaten run in the division to 16 games.

All they can do is what City have done to them in previous seasons – stay in touch with the leaders.

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