Even though City was eight points behind Arsenal just a few weeks ago, the defending champions have extended their recent dominance over the Gunners and demonstrated that they won’t give up the title easily.
After scoring second-half goals in Wednesday’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal, Manchester City seized the momentum in the race for the Premier League title.
Even though City was eight points behind Arsenal just a few weeks ago, the defending champions have extended their recent dominance over the Gunners and demonstrated that they won’t give up the title easily.
Despite the fact that Arsenal still has a game in hand, City now leads Arsenal on goal difference. Perhaps more importantly.
It maintained a psychological advantage over its title rival because City has defeated Arsenal in 11 consecutive league games.
“We all agree that Arsenal has been the best team this season,” Haaland stated, “so it is not easy to come to their place and play against them.” However, we played a great game, scored three crucial points, and are back in the game.
City took the lead in the 24th minute when Kevin de Bruyne capitalized on a defensive error to score before Bukayo Saka equalized from the spot in the 42nd minute in a game that lived up to its billing as the biggest Premier League match of the season thus far with moments of end-to-end action.
After City goalkeeper Ederson kicked the ball up the field, Arsenal made a strong start but gave away the lead. De Bruyne lobbed the ball over the oncoming goalkeeper and into the empty net after right-back Takehiro Tomiyasu tried to pass it back to Aaron Ramsdale.
Mikel Arteta, manager of Arsenal, stated, “I’ve never seen Tomiyasu make that pass back in seven years but he did it today.”
Eddie Nketiah had missed the best opportunity of the game a few minutes earlier when Oleksandr Zinchenko crossed to him in the box and the striker headed wide.
However, Arsenal continued to advance, and the home team was awarded a penalty for an Ederson foul on Eddie Nketiah as the striker attempted to shoot from a difficult angle.
After sending Ederson in the wrong direction, Saka calmly rolled the spot kick into the left corner.
After the break, City improved and thought it had a penalty when Gabriel clumsily brought Haaland down in the area early in the second half.
However, the decision was overturned because the Norway striker was offside. However, City maintained their lead despite Gabriel’s subsequent turnover of the ball in his own half.
Ilkay Gundogan squared the ball for Grealish, who beat Ramsdale with a low shot that took a deflection off Tomiyasu after the visitors responded quickly.
After suffering a knock in Sunday’s game against Aston Villa, Haaland was able to take the field and scored his 26th goal of the season when he received a pass from De Bruyne and shot into the far corner after just one touch.
Nketiah missed with a second header late on, but Arsenal came very close to scoring a goal back.
They performed much better than we did in the first half.
City manager Pep Guardiola stated, “We were much, much better in the second half.” We claimed that we were not playing and were just defending because they were so good at halftime.
However, the second half was fantastic, and we ought to have been more active. After winning 16 of the first 19 league games.
Arsenal has now gone three games without a victory, losing two of those games. In those three games, the Gunners have lost more points than in the first 19 games. Arteta claimed that the defeat was mostly his own fault.
The game was originally scheduled for October but was postponed as a result of a schedule change following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.