At the final whistle, Manchester City players slumped and crouched and sprawled on the pitch in disconsolate little piles, absorbing the enormity of the evening. Perhaps some of them were doing the maths. City are nine points behind Arsenal with a game in hand; they still have to meet one another at the Emirates next month. All is not lost. But the looks on their faces were of a team who felt like they’d been punched in the gut.
Of all the Arsenal players to shape the direction of this title race, not many would have guessed that a key protagonist would be a 16-year-old schoolboy who is yet to take his GCSEs. Even fewer would have suggested a giant Greek defender who played eight times for Arsenal half a career ago.
But about an hour after Max Dowman sunk Everton and became the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer in the process, a few miles across the city, West Ham centre-back Konstantinos Mavropanos thumped a header against the crossbar and down into the City goal. Arsenal found a late winner; City huffed and puffed but came away from the London Stadium with a 1-1 draw that felt almost terminal.
It is not, of course. The season is still alive. But title races are not just about raw numbers. There is a feel to them, a sway, a momentum that comes and goes. And on this cold March night, all the energy was sucked into the red corner of north London.
It was apt that Mavropanos should hurt City’s cause. It felt apt, too, that his goal came from a corner, after so much discourse this season around the significance of set-pieces and how Arsenal exploit them. Jarrod Bowen’s delivery floated through the air and over the flying fist of Gianluigi Donnarumma, who should have punched it. Mavropanos met the ball with meaning.
What followed was a second-half onslaught. Pep Guardiola, who watched on from the stands under suspension, sent on a flurry of attacking substitutes. Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku brought spark off the bench; Phil Foden, too. Chances came and chances went. Cherki shot straight at Hermansen. Reijnders hit the cross bar from a wide-angle free-kick. Foden’s outstretched hallux missed the ball by inches with the goal gaping.
The game ended with another telling set-piece. Reijnders delivered a devilish corner and after the ball bounced around West Ham’s six-yard box it fell to the feet of Marc Guehi. An entire stadium winced and braced for the net to bulge, only to watch the ball take off into orbit. It was a slow-motion disaster, the sort of moment you could imagine set against the music from Titanic.
For West Ham, it is a point that draws them level with Tottenham and one clear of Nottingham Forest, out of the relegation zone for the first time in a long time. They will not relish the idea of helping Arsenal to the title, but if this was a point towards the cause of survival – perhaps survival at the expense of Spurs – then it was a precious one.
It has been a strange season for City, who started back in August with a 4-0 win over Wolves using players like Oscar Bobb and Nico Gonzalez and John Stones, players who seem like something from a fever dream. That line-up against Wolves is almost unrecognisable and only three started here at West Ham seven months later: Haaland, Bernardo Silva and Rayan Ait-Nouri. You might say only two, given Haaland is not the same striker now as the autumnal Haaland who plundered goals every weekend.
Guardiola’s team has evolved in real time, transitioning mid-season through different personnel, different formations, different iterations of Haaland. And ultimately, at least up to this point, they have simply not been as good as Arsenal. Not at the ugly stuff: crushing counter-attacks, defending as a unit, set-pieces, game management, s***housery. Not at the pretty stuff, either, at least not over the past three months.
Guardiola admitted as much after the game. “We are good at a lot of things,” he said. “But not as good as we were.”
This game encapsulated much of City’s troubles, particularly against low-block teams. West Ham deployed a giant claret curtain across Mads Hermansen’s goal, billowing out towards the ball and back again as City desperately tried to pierce a hole.
This is what Nuno Espirito Santo brings, of course. Five at the back, and five in midfield too when they don’t have the ball. When City advanced towards the final third, the distance between West Ham’s centre-backs and Jarrod Bowen must have been no more than 20 yards.
“There was no other way,” Nuno said. “Heroic from our boys. We have a long way to go, we have hard work in front of us.”
It made for punishingly dull viewing, initially at least. Nuno’s reluctance to yield an inch combined with Guardiola’s distaste for passes longer than 10 yards meant for a game played in busy burrows and crowded cul-de-sacs. Erling Haaland occasionally made a useful run into the channel but City’s midfielders routinely ignored him.
City eventually broke through when Bernardo Silva shanked a cross which drifted perfectly over Hermansen’s head into the far corner of the goal. He could have claimed to have meant it, but could clearly be seen mouthing “pass” to the City bench while wearing a sheepish grin.
Mavropanos soon levelled, in no small part down to Donnarumma’s miscalculation. The goalkeeper has a penchant for the spectacular and his shot-stopping has been eye-catching at times this season, but data models consistently mark him down on a raft of other metrics such as distribution and, tellingly, command of his six-yard box.
So City had no choice but to throw everything at West Ham, just as Arsenal had launched an assault on Everton in the dying throes at the Emirates. Where one succeeded, the other failed. And it is in those telling minutes, on those fine details, that a title can be won and lost.
