Arsenal thrash Man City 5-1 At Home
Arsenal vs Man City, Arsenal beat Man City 5-1 at home in the 24th round of the English Football League, and remained 6 point behind leader Liverpool.
A day after Liverpool won 2-0 away to Bournemouth, the Gunners were forced to win to avoid letting the Reds slip further away at the top of the Premier League, something they clearly achieved against four-time champions Manchester City.
Norwegian Martin Odegaard gave Arsenal the lead in the first half, after just two minutes, but his compatriot Erling Haaland equalised in the 55th minute, which was the forward’s 250th goal in club games.
The draw was short-lived as Ghanaian Thomas Partey put the Londoners back in front a minute later, before youngster Myles Lewis-Skelly (62) scored his first goal in the Premier League, with German Kai Havertz (76) and Ethan Nwaneri (90+3) making it 5-1 in Arsenal vs Man City match.
Manchester City, which had Portuguese internationals Matheus Nunes and Bernardo Silva in its starting eleven, conceded four or more goals for the fourth time this season, something that had never happened in coach Pep Guardiola’s career.
Arsenal vs Man City, While Arsenal remain six points behind Liverpool, who lead with 56, and are now in second place, moving ahead of Nottingham Forest, led by Nuno Espírito Santo and who are in third place with 47, Manchester City are in fourth place, already 15 points behind the ‘reds’ and with one more game played.
It wasn’t a subtle dig. It wasn’t a veiled reference to an opponent. None of that faux ‘respect’ for a player who’d achieved plenty in the modern game. This was in-your-face, brash, swagger dripping-from-every-cell arrogance from an 18-year-old – and it was beautiful.
There was plenty of needle coming into this game, the 2-2 draw at the Etihad in September was still fresh in the minds of the Arsenal players. Erling Haaland had ended that game as City celebrated a last-gasp draw against 10-man Arsenal with the words ‘Stay humble, eh?’ to Mikel Arteta. He’d also thrown a ball off Gabriel Magalhaes’ head in celebration and shouted ‘who the f*** are you?’ at Lewis-Skelly.
The Arsenal players gathered round, senior pros in adulation for a youngster making the Emirates his own. Almost a renaissance painting, the moment captured by the cameras seemed to finally answer Haaland’s question in Manchester — ‘Who the f*** are you?’
‘This is who I am.’
For re-kindling rivalries, for not yielding to sanitized requirements of footballers nowadays, for simply grabbing his moment, Myles Lewis-Skelly takes our Moment of the Week.