Awesome Aubameyang
Striker’s double shocks Pep’s City to send Arsenal into final
MANCHESTER CITY earned a momentous reprieve in one competition last week but in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley with only 90,000 empty seats as judge and jury, they could not escape their sentence.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport might have allowed them back into the Champions League for the next two seasons but Arsenal showed them no mercy here.
Their shock victory was a triumph of uncharacteristic resilience in defence, led by a brilliant display from David Luiz, and of clinical finishing f r o m P i e r r e - E mer i c k Aubameyang, who scored goals in each half to dump City out of the competition they won last year by trouncing Watford in the final.
Arsenal will play either Manchester United or Chelsea in the final on August 1.
It was also the most significant victory yet for Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta, who has only been in charge at the Emirates since December but is already effecting improvements in attitude and style.
This one was a victory for the apprentice over his old master as Arteta plotted a way past his former boss, Pep Guardiola. Arsenal are languishing in 10th place in the
Premier League but suddenly their season has new life. They beat champions Liverpool on Wednesday and this result stunned English football.
City were widely expected to win this match and claim the FA Cup as their consolation prize for losing t he Premier League but t hey spurned chance after chance and never looked at their best.
They will now be able to pour everything into their pursuit of the Champions League but if they show the same vulnerability at the back in the second leg of their last 16 tie against Real Madrid as they did here against Arsenal, the Spanish champions will fancy their chances of overhauling their 2-1 first-leg deficit. Overwhelmed by Liverpool in the League, this defeat was a rude shock for Guardiola and his team.
The empty stadium seemed particularly stark here. FA Cup semifinal day is usually a riot of colour and a feast of fan expectation and nerves. It is a day out as much as a football match, a day to dream of the final and sing about putting the champagne on ice.
Not this time. Not now. Here, there were groundsmen forking the pitch and music echoing around an empty Wembley. It is a necessary measure but that does not stop it feeling all wrong.
Even with nine substitutes, Arteta could not find any room for either Mesut Ozil or Matteo Guendouzi in his squad. It is starting to feel increasingly likely that neither will be at the club next season, although finding someone to pay Ozil’s wages has always been put forward as the biggest stumbling block to the Germany midfielder moving on.
Arteta stayed true to the same system he had used in victory over champions Liverpool and lined up with Kieran Tierney on the left side of a back three. It is the system that seems to get the best out of David Luiz — or do most to protect him, depending on your point of view — and after some heart-stopping early exchanges, Arsenal used it well.
They nearly handed City a lead in the ninth minute with the kind of comedy defending that has become one of their hallmarks. Luiz played the ball square across his own box to Shkodran Mustafi, who tried to step inside Raheem Sterling as he was closed him down. Sterling dispossessed Mustafi easily six yards out and tried to play the ball inside to give Gabriel Jesus a tapin. Mustafi’s blushes were spared when the pass was intercepted and the danger cleared. It felt already as if Arsenal were in for a long evening.
Arteta’s side were starved of possession and defending with a degree of desperation. Kevin de Bruyne floated a ball to the back post, Riyad Mahrez nodded it back across goal and it was hacked clear. By then, Tierney had already had to make a separate last-ditch clearance.
But after a quarter of an hour, Arsenal should have taken the lead.
Luiz has been roundly criticised since the restart but he received a ringing endorsement from Guardiola last week when the City manager said he laughed when he heard pundits dismissing his talent. On cue, Luiz intercepted a long ball forward, chested it down, and played a slide-rule pass through t o A u b a me y a n g . T h e striker was clean through but hit his shot straight at Ederson, who saved it easily. City did not learn from their escape though. In the 19th minute, at the end of an 18-pass move that began in Arsenal’s area and included 10 players, Nicolas Pepe curled a ball across the City box to t he back post. Aubameyang drifted away from Kyle Walker and met the ball as it dropped, clipping a right-footed half-volley past Ederson from a difficult angle, the ball going in off the far post. It was a brilliant finish to a superb move. It is easy to mock Arsenal’s talent for self-destruction but the goal was crafted from the courage to stick to their plan of playing the
ball out from the back and beating the City press. Even though they had nearly come unstuck earlier, this time they had the skill and the confidence to work it perfectly.
Arsenal nearly allowed City back into the game when Hector Bellerin played the ball straight to Jesus on the edge of the area. It looked curiously precise and deliberate, as if he meant it and it almost created the equaliser. Jesus laid the ball back to De Bruyne but his thunderous drive was blocked superbly by Granit Xhaka.
When Arsenal kept the ball long enough to fashion any kind of a foray forward, City looked alarmingly open at the back. Walker headed behind after one Arsenal breakaway and when Dani Ceballos curled in the corner, Mustafi met it at the near post and forced a fine save out of Ederson, who leapt to tip it over the crossbar.
City grew uncharacteristically sloppy in possession, too, giving the ball away so often it felt like an offence against nature.
Arsenal deserve credit for that, too, because they harried City out of t heir st ri de. As half t i me approached, Guardiola began to look increasingly irritated with the performance of his team. City spurned a golden chance to equalise three minutes into the second half. David Silva fed the ball to De Bruyne, who cut inside and slid it across the area into the path of Sterling, but he pulled his left foot wide from ten yards out.
Arsenal settled into a state of siege. De Bruyne whistled a free kick inches wide after an hour, Arsenal survived a VAR delay when a clumsy challenge from Mustafi sent Sterling sprawling and then, when Mustafi inadvertently flicked on a City corner, Sterling could not react in time to turn his header past Emiliano Martinez.
De Bruyne drilled a cross to the near post but Silva sidefooted it wide and Arsenal soon completed their smash and grab.
Pepe burst forward down the left and laid a pass back to Tierney. He l ofted a ball forward towards Aubameyang, who was played o n s i d e b y Benj a min Mendy, advanced on Ederson and slid the ball underneath him.
City’s consternation was complete a few minutes later when Sterling seemed turned past Mustafi but Luiz flung himself at it and blocked it with his right leg. His transformation from villain to hero was complete.