JUST LIKE OLD TIMES
City exhilarating, vibrant and ambitious. Arsenal soft, hesitant and obliging. It’s. . .
The margin of victory was greater in the corresponding game last season, but the sense of ease no different. Manchester City remain in their comfort zone against Arsenal, no matter the manager. What needs to be done to close the gap between these teams cannot be achieved in a summer.
Unai emery, Arsene Wenger — it’s all the same to Pep Guardiola. he may shake hands with a different figure on the touchline after victory is confirmed, but little else has changed.
Mesut Ozil remains unconcerned by the loss of possession, Granit Xhaka would not be the steel in the centre of midfield for any team with serious ambition to win the title. While Guardiola can boast two world-class footballers in just about every position, and three in some, emery made his Premier League bow with a 19-year- old central midfielder late of Lorient — Ligue 1, not Leyton — also playing his first game in the competition.
Matteo Guendouzi has not been capped by France outside of agegroup football, and, under pressure, it showed. he did well, worked hard, looked lively.
But when faced with an up-andunder clearance in the second half — last line of defence, Sergio Aguero bearing down — he froze, missed his kick and the striker sped one on one towards goal. On this occasion, Petr Cech saved, but it barely mattered. Two minutes later, Bernardo Silva scored City’s second and Arsenal were done. Meaning emery has now played Guardiola 11 times without winning, and it is hard to imagine when that streak will end.
There remains no greater baptism for a Premier League manager than this fixture — with the possible exception of Manchester City away — and the scoreline ultimately flattered Arsenal.
For City, it must have felt like slipping into a familiar pair of shoes. The teams met on three occasions last season and City won and scored three each time. had City needed three here, one imagines a third would have come come.
While City led from Raheem Sterling’s goal there was always the chance of an undeserved reprieve for Arsenal, particularly when Alexandre Lacazette was introduced on 54 minutes, but hope ended with Silva’s goal, allowing the champions to close the game out with minimal fuss.
Sterling fed Benjamin Mendy — great going forward, unconvincing in defence — on the overlap and he cut a cross back to Silva, who buried it with power that gave Cech no chance. Now completely in charge, City began the process of getting their big hitters back to fitness. On came Kevin De Bruyne,
Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus. That this win was as good as achieved without them shows the talent City have to burn. For now, and the foreseeable future, Emery can only dream.
For long periods it felt as if we had opened a portal to the past: City exhilarating, vibrant, ambitious, Arsenal overwhelmed, hesitant, hanging on. It was unfortunate that Ainsley Maitland-Niles was lost to injury after 35 minutes, but it did not impact on the outcome.
The idea that Emery can overnight transform a group of players, even one that includes youthful exuberance and two entirely new signings, is fanciful. Arsenal are not suddenly going to become a hard-running, hard- working outfit, capable of smothering the league’s strongest opponents, with a click of the new manager’s fingers.
They were resilient, but not in the never- say- die way witnessed at Anfield when City visited last season. The sort of ferocious, energetic doggedness that might trouble a Guardiola team is beyond them.
Arsenal do have talent, though, and there are easier games than this. Just as it was hard to judge the West Ham of Manuel Pellegrini earlier in the day, so the fixture against Chelsea next week may offer greater insight into progress at Arsenal.
Think how City made Chelsea look at Wembley in the Community Shield, and how much Chelsea seemed to have improved by the time they reached Huddersfield on Saturday. Time alone wasn’t the difference. Playing City is a step up. The same might be true of Liverpool.
So within the first 10 minutes, City signalled their intent and Arsenal immediately looked stretched. Aguero played a lovely flick to Sterling who weaved into the penalty area, around redshirted obstacles, forcing a fine save from Cech. Yet just like his stop from Aguero in the second half, the work was quickly redundant. Five minutes later, City were ahead. It was an excellent goal, one that showed why Gareth Southgate kept faith with Sterling at the World Cup, despite the external brickbats.
Maybe it would help if Sterling felt some love, rather than just disdain, from the many vox pops that damned him as England’s poorest player. He was outstanding here, at the heart of all that was good about City’s forward play, and the first goal of their campaign was no more than he deserved. It came from a pass by Mendy, which Sterling collected on the edge of the area, running parallel to the goal. He ghosted past Hector Bellerin, then Guendouzi, before whipping a shot low past Cech. The Arsenal keeper was unsighted, as he gave the impression of leaving Sterling’s shot despite the ball being well inside his far post.
The Emirates became hushed. This was not so much a new era as a rerun; this was the Arsenal of old, soft and obliging. Nervous, too. In the 22nd minute, Guendouzi passed back to Cech whose attempt to square the ball to the full back position was so misjudged that he almost side-footed into his own net. It passed a post for a corner, and the panic from the locals behind the goal must have been audible, because the goalkeeper turned to them and apologised.
No contrition was required four minutes later when Aguero surged through and was fouled by centre half Sokratis. From the free-kick, inside the D, Cech made a fine save from Riyad Mahrez, but from the loose rebound, struck by Aymeric Laporte, he made a better one.
Arsenal were not without opportunities, but they were limited. The best of it came when Bellerin sprang past Mendy and forced a fine save from Ederson. That aside, there was little new to report. By the end, the Emirates Stadium was half empty again and the away end was making all the noise. It was just like old times.
ARSENAL (4-2-3-1): Cech 6.5; Bellerin 6, Mustafi 5.5, Sokratis 5.5, Maitland-Niles 5 (Lichsteiner 35min, 5); Guendouzi 5.5, Xhaka 5 (Torreira 70, 5.5); Ozil 4, Ramsey 5 (Lacazette 54, 6.5), Mkhitaryan 5; Aubamayeng 5. Subs not used: Elneny, Holding, Iwobi, Leno. Booked: Sokratis, Xhaka. Manager: Unai Emery 5. MANCHESTER CITY (4-2-3-1): Ederson 6; Walker 7, Stones 8, Laporte 7.5, Mendy 6.5; Gundogan 7, Fernandinho 7; Mahrez 6.5 (De Bruyne 60, 6.5), Bernardo 7.5, STERLING 8.5 (Sane 85); Aguero 6.5 (Jesus 79). Subs not used: Bravo, Kompany, Otamendi, Foden. Scorers: Sterling 14, B Silva 64. Booked: Sterling, De Bruyne. Manager: Pep Guardiola 8. Referee: Michael Oliver 6.5. Attendance: 59,934.