Nervy Arsenal just avoid late spot of bother
ARSENE WENGER says he has long been an advocate of video technology. Just as well it wasn’t in place yesterday, though. It may well have cost Arsenal this game.
We were deep into second-half stoppage time when Nacho Monreal got into a bit of a tangle under pressure from Jesus Navas. The ball was in the air, and Monreal had lost his bearings beneath it. It dropped on his arm. He tried to move his arm away, but too late. Far from retrieving the situation, he succeeded only in flicking the ball back towards goal.
It looked an accident but, as cliche dictates, we’ve all seen them given. Using video replay, it is hard to see how it wouldn’t have been.
One man who was quite certain was City manager Pep Guardiola. As referee Andre Marriner waved play on, Guardiola screamed his disapproval at the fourth official. Of course, there is no guarantee City would have scored the resulting penalty, but the odds were in their favour. And it would have been deserved.
Wenger urged his ‘anxious’ players to use yesterday’s draw as a means to repair their shattered confidence.
But on a day Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis told fans’ groups that Wenger would be required to implement changes to his stewardship if he is, as expected, to sign a new two-year deal, the Frenchman was boosted by his team’s fighting spirit.
Wenger said: ‘We started with quite a high level of anxiety and we were punished but, overall, I felt it was a mental test.
‘You could see the team was touched on the confidence front and that the fluency in our game suffered.
‘We have shown great mental resources because we were twice down. Overall, it will help us rebuild confidence. We were under pressure. We responded in a united, strong way.’
By the eighth minute, Navas had been booked for a high tackle on Monreal and, two minutes later, would have given away a penalty had a flag not already gone up for offside. Navas had not seen that when he made the ill-timed challenge.
Luckily, though, while Arsenal don’t put wingers in key defensive positions, they sometimes play as if they have. So by the time Navas was dealing with Alexis Sanchez, City were already a goal up.
In the fifth minute, calamity reigned in the Arsenal defence. A goal-kick by Willy Caballero was headed back downfield, finding City’s Kevin De Bruyne in a deep midfield position.
He clipped a pass through to Leroy Sane. He outpaced Hector Bellerin, side-stepped David Ospina and tapped into an empty net.
City could have improved their lead soon after. De Bruyne hit a low shot which struck the right post, before David Silva forced a fine recovery save from Ospina with the rebound.
It was not until the 21st minute that Arsenal threatened City’s goal, enjoying their best spell of the game.
The move came down the left, naturally, Sanchez slipping a pass inside to Mesut Ozil, whose shot on the turn forced a first save from Caballero.
The equaliser came in the 40th minute. John Stones headed an Arsenal set-piece clear, the ball returned by a header from Shkodran Mustafi. City’s Gael Clichy played Theo Walcott onside as the ball fell tamely at the Arsenal striker’s feet.
It wasn’t his cleanest finish, scruffy by his standards, but it did the job. City went straight to the other end and De Bruyne hit the left post. Maintaining the pressure, the Belgian collected a clearance and fed Silva, who played the ball to Aguero on the right. He finished smartly past Ospina.
The game continued at a breathless pace. Walcott could have claimed his second goal had his neatly dinked shot not travelled narrowly over the bar.
Aguero missed a relatively easy chance, with an unmarked header at the near post from a Navas cross, and a harder one, flicking the ball on for an Ospina save.
Fernandinho was also thwarted by Arsenal’s goalkeeper.
Yet, in the spirit of equal opportunity that seemed to have developed, Arsenal levelled. Ozil took the corner from the left and Mustafi rose above Nicolas Otamendi and his own player, Danny Welbeck, to head home.