Our 3️⃣ points after Arsenal break their Man City curse | OneFootball

Gabriel Martinelli came off the bench to score an 87th-minute winner as Arsenal overcame champions Manchester City at the Emirates.

Here is what we made of a captivating encounter in north London.

The finest of margins

For a game that had just two shots on target in the second half, this was a captivating encounter full of near misses and what could’ve beens.

How would the picture have changed had Mateo Kovačic been given what was probably a deserved red card for his foul on Martin Ødegaard?

What if David Raya’s clearance off Julián Álvarez had gone into the back of the net instead of hitting the side-netting?

Would City have been so cautious and conservative had Nathan Aké scored instead of blazing over in the opening five minutes?

Fine margins can decide titles. City know this more than many, a 94th-minute winner won them the title on the last day of 2012.

Fine margins have ultimately ended up deciding this game and they were threatening to all the way through the 90 minutes.

City could’ve been 2-0 up. Arsenal could’ve been playing against ten-men for over an hour.

In the end, a goal-bound shot from Gabriel Martinelli that may or may not have been going in has taken a huge deflection off Aké, wrong-footed Ederson and landed in the back of the City goal.

A game between two strong teams cancelling each other out for the majority of it was decided by the slightest of deflections.

Whether it will end up deciding the title remains to be seen, it’s a long road but the Gunners have just given themselves a huge boost.

Statement of intent

There’s no overestimating how big of a win this is for Arsenal.

The Gunners haven’t beaten Manchester City since 2015 – a run stretching 12 games and for long periods of this one it seemed it was going to filter out into a goalless draw.

Mikel Arteta’s side pulled together an unlikely title challenge last season but came into 2023/24 with their eyes firmly on the prize. But there was one huge hoodoo to get over – beating the champions.

This wasn’t a win that contained all of Arsenal’s greatest hits. Bukayo Saka was missing through injury, Martinelli was only fit enough to come off the bench in the second half, it wasn’t the free-flowing, exciting team we’ve come to know.

But that won’t mean one jot to the supporters tonight as they showed a different way to win. Declan Rice won everything on the ground, Gabriel and William Saliba won everything in the air and Raya shook off that early incident with Álvarez to claim everything in his path.

Wins against your title rivals are not always the prettiest but can mean the most. This was a statement of intent from last season’s runners-up.

What is going on at Man City?

The champions find themselves in an unfamiliar position going into the international break, they will need to have a period of self-reflection.

City have lost back-to-back league games for the first time since 2018 and go into two weeks without domestic football having lost their last three matches on English soil.

They mustered up just one shot on target in the whole match and appeared to be settling on a draw in the second half, which is unusually cautious for Guardiola but a sensible approach considering the state of the game.

The risk when you play for a draw is that one moment can turn it all on its head, as we saw with Martinelli’s late intervention.

City’s well-oiled machine has shown signs of wear and tear in recent weeks and the absence of Rodri for the last three domestic games won’t have gone unnoticed. Guardiola’s men look to be lacking that aura of control and cloak of invincibility at the back in the Spaniard’s absence.

Their supporters will be thanking their lucky stars that he will be back for Brighton in two weeks’ time.