Arsenal emerge winners from day of draws as Chelsea capitalise on ‘sleepwalking’ Man City
On a day of draws, it was Arsenal who ended up the big winners.
Manchester City’s baffling decision to approach the second half of their game against crisis-addled Chelsea with all the vim and vigour of Thomas Frank’s Tottenham Hotspur bit them on the bum at the last as Enzo Fernandez’s three-putt equaliser drew wild celebrations from the travelling fans but surely even bigger ones in north London.
There was always something puzzling about the sheer physics of how and why Arsenal’s lead at the top of the Premier League had ever been reduced to a mere two points.
It didn’t really feel like either they’d done enough wrong nor City enough right for it to be anything less than the eight or nine points that felt about right.
That lead is now once again stretching out at six points after two Arsenal wins have been followed by unconvincing City draws. Not since the Invincibles have Arsenal looked more compellingly like Premier League champions.
City, handed what appeared to be the very ideal time to play Chelsea after a week of familiar yet nevertheless sizeable upheaval at Stamford Bridge, once again look way off it.
City were the better side in a low-key first half and deserved the lead smartly handed them by Tijjani Reijnders. We will always be suckers for a ball-roll, and the way he fashioned that precious half-yard before firing past Filip Jorgensen was a delightful moment in a half short, in truth, on compelling quality.
But it was a curiously low-energy City who emerged for the second half, sleepwalking through the rest of the game apparently unaware of the latent threat Chelsea still posed.
That might, admittedly, have been because so many of Chelsea’s moments of opportunity fell at the stumbling, pratfalling feet of Pedro Neto. Bless him, he had a terrible time.
There’s a particular type of cursed performance where you are doomed to have everything break your way, and thus your failings to be harshly spotlighted. For Neto, this was one of those days.
His contrast was Enzo, Chelsea’s best player by a margin yet one who seemed doomed to watch all that good work go to waste until his vital contribution at the very end.
That it came from just about his own least convincing and most Neto-like moment of the game was a further bit of fun business.
Pep Guardiola was not smiling, though. The draw at Sunderland was frustrating, but following it with another stalemate where his side were so far off it physically and mentally is a worry.
Erling Haaland is mired in one of those occasional fallow periods he has experienced in each of his absurdly successful seasons in England.
Reijnders has now scored three Premier League goals since Haaland’s last. Given the way Haaland scored pretty much all their goals in the early weeks of the season, it’s an eye-catching adjustment.
At times like these Haaland can look an astonishing burden on his team. We all know by now how low his touch count can fall even at his deadly best.
But that’s not necessarily because City aren’t looking for him. All the time. This manifested most clearly when, in the closing stages and with the game there to be killed off, Phil Foden attempted an outrageously high-tariff pass to play in the Big Man when a far easier pass to create a far more presentable chance was on offer. It would prove deeply costly.
It now requires Arsenal errors that appear unlikely to reignite any real race for the title.
They didn’t really need dispiriting draws for Liverpool, Man United and Tottenham but they’re all a nice little bonus in what has been a lovely start to the new year for Mikel Arteta and co.
As for Chelsea, a real bonus of their own to emerge from this awkward, caretakered trip with a point at the end of a challenging week that has put the future direction of their whole faintly ludicrous project under the microscope.
It seems unlikely caretaker boss Calum McFarlane emerges as a genuine contender for the permanent gig despite coaching Chelsea to a hard-won and entirely unexpected point here. But maybe he can have the Strasbourg job as a thank you?