These are the games that win titles
Arsenal prove they have the belief, quality and desire to go all the way
IT IS to be hoped that Arsenal and their fans enjoyed this because if Mikel Arteta’s team are to spring the biggest Premier League title surprise since Leicester in 2016, then this is how it is going to have to be.
To dethrone serial winners Manchester City will not be easy, even with a five-point advantage and a game in hand. No, nothing will be straightforward, not from here.
This was a superb, breathless game of football, high on quality but also on doggedness and cussedness. It was just like Arsenal-United games used to be, minus the fighting and no-look handshakes.
For United it served as a reminder that there is still work to do. They were in this game but didn’t deserve to win it.
For Arsenal, meanwhile, this was preparation for what lies ahead. League titles are not won by beating mid-table teams 2-0 at home when the sun is out. They are won at the death of the games that hang in the balance. They are won on days like this, in games like this, in manners like this.
Between now and May, they will need more of these moments. For now the two dates in the diary to circle are Wednesdays, February 15 and April 26. That is when Arsenal and City meet in the league.
Pep Guardiola and his City players will already be telling themselves they must win twice to keep hold of their title and here at a frenzied Emirates was the clearest indication yet of just how difficult that could be.
For a while now, we have been waiting for Arsenal to stumble. We waited as the games arrived in a hurry before the World Cup and we have been waiting since. And still we wait. The fixture schedule hasn’t derailed them, nor has the loss of forward Gabriel Jesus to injury.
ARTETA’S team continue to run hot on belief, speed and good coaching and here they cut United’s legs from them at the death in a manner their great rivals from the north will instantly have recognised. United, after all, have done this to so many teams over the years.
It was a suitably dramatic and suspenseful end to a see-saw game. With Arsenal pouring forwards like dogs desperate to kill, left back Oleksandr Zinchenko reached the byline and pulled the ball back. Arsenal players had done likewise all afternoon but time after time United bodies got in the way.
This time two substitutes — Leandro Trossard of Arsenal and United’s Fred — challenged and the ball squirted towards goal where young Eddie Nketiah somehow backheeled it in from six yards, a little like a horse attempting to batter open a stable door.
Briefly there was pandemonium, then there was some confusion and some quiet and then some VAR. This is modern football. Was Nketiah offside as the ball came his way? No, it turned out. Aaron
Wan-Bissaka’s toe seemed to be playing him on and once again we returned to pandemonium and, a couple of minutes later, three points for the home team.
Arsenal deserved this. They carried the more persistent threat. They created the better chances.
The manner of the victory will do them the world of good, though. Erik ten Hag has stiffened the soft United centre he inherited and as a result victories against his team must be hard earned.
The home team had been out of the traps quickly earlier on, pushing United’s full backs backwards while probing through Martin Odegaard down the middle and the superb Bukayo Saka on the right. But then, out of nothing, United scored.
First Saka lost the ball to Luke Shaw. Then Thomas Partey gave it away, too. Marcus Rashford didn’t need any more encouragement than that and he evaded Partey’s attempts to atone before pushing the ball out of his feet and driving a low, right-foot knuckleball from 20 yards or more that started outside Aaron Ramsdale’s right post and swerved back just in time to find the corner of the net.
IT WAS a classic United counter-attacking goal. The type that great United teams used to score and the type this United team score. As it found the net, the air went out of the Emirates frenzy, but only briefly.
Another good sign. And when the ball was recycled down their left-hand side following a corner, Arsenal equalised. The source of the cross was unusual, Granit Xhaka. But the quality was in keeping with their football this season and when Nketiah found Wan-Bissaka sleeping at the back post, he stole ahead of him to head past David de Gea from six yards.
It was an important goal, certainly in its timing. Had United been allowed to settle into a lead, they could have taken some wearing down. As it was, Arsenal pushed for a second and eventually earned it in the 53rd minute.
Shaw had frustrated Saka in the first half, refusing to let him by on the outside. So here Saka received the ball 25 yards out and instead turned infield, moving laterally across and in front of Christian Eriksen to score beautifully past De Gea from distance.
It felt like a definitive blow by Arsenal but there was to be a twist. Ramsdale saved brilliantly from Rashford but then dropped a corner at Lisandro Martinez’s feet. The World Cup winner stooped to head powerfully up and in.
That should have done for Arsenal, really. It felt like too much of an ask to come again, especially when De Gea saved brilliantly from Nketiah with four minutes left.
But this is a different Arsenal team to ones we have recently known. They don’t stop. They don’t accept. They don’t give in. So their winning goal arrived to push them to 50 points after 19 games. Half the season is gone and Arsenal are on course for a century.
It still feels like it can’t happen. There has to be a slip-up, a barren run, a sign of mental frailty. Doesn’t there? The longer they go on, the more we start to wonder.