Manchester City and Arsenal share pyrrhic draw with Pep Guardiola left to count greater cost
The tale of how much of a loss Rodri could be for Manchester City could not have been more sublimely told than Arsenal getting their equaliser within seconds of his formal substitution off the field with a potentially serious knee injury – and the story of how they will need to keep going on without him was told in City getting theirs.
Perhaps the greatest midfielder in the world – and there are plenty who would bristle at the word ‘perhaps’ – Rodri has been the classy driving force of this Manchester City side for years, taking over the mantle of the fading Kevin De Bryune and David Silva before him. Even in a side packed with class, drive and force, Rodri’s loss, whether for a few games or the rest of the season, is even more substantial than the outcome of this title clash.
READ: 16 Conclusions on Manchester City 2-2 Arsenal
Of course, Rodri’s withdrawal had nothing really to do with Arsenal taking their lead. City’s complaints about Kyle Walker not being given sufficient time to get back in position following a word from Michael Oliver on the halfway line had something to them, with Riccardo Calafiori’s magnificent long-range strike the result.
You wonder who Walker might blame for his complete ineptitude in dealing with Gabriel as Arsenal took the lead, though. Telekinetic aliens? The sight of a schoolteacher he thought long dead in the stands? The distraction of what his next steps are in his ongoing attempts at PR rehabilitation in the national media? Who can say.
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Hilariously, Walker had been instructed to switch marking duties with Jeremy Doku after the Arsenal defender had somehow wasted a glaring opportunity just a few minutes earlier. Drawing a straight line between that sudden air of fallibility in a usually invincible-seeming City side would again be fallacious – but as metaphor, it could not be more apt.
That’s particularly true after seeing City labour their way through the second half against ten men, Leandro Trossard having been (rightly, but inconsistently) dismissed for a second yellow card just before the break.
City managed a huge number of shots on David Raya’s goal with no matching response from an Arsenal side with depleted numbers understandably digging in at all costs away from home to their title rivals. But a monstrous number of those shots were desperate efforts to match Calafiori’s earlier strike; if Jamie Redknapp needed a lesson in availability bias to counter his extremely PFM anti-xG rant, this game was it.
Rodri has made City tick over. Rodri has made City composed. Rodri has made City better not just through what he does, but seemingly through his mere presence; with him in the side, the other ten can be that little bit less forced, that little bit more natural and instinctive.
It doesn’t get any more natural than Erling Haaland opening the scoring with clever finish to the near post Raya expecting the hotshot to shoot across goal in the opposite direction. Amusingly, that strike left the marvelling Sky Sports commentary team searching for a way to describe this amazingly novel new mode of finishing. The term, to put them out of their misery, is ‘toe poke’ or ‘toe bung’.
If there is such a thing as a pyrrhic draw, that’s what both sides got here. Arsenal would surely have taken a point before kick-off, but the celebrations after Raya claimed a cross deep into injury time made clear they thought they were on course to see out an unlikely ten-man victory.
But the longer-term consequences may well be City’s. Until Stones’ late, late goal spoiled the central thesis of this piece, Raya had saves to make, but none you wouldn’t expect him to. They pulled out a point in the end, but will be left counting the loss their most talismanic figure.
As a Sky Sports graphic flashed up in the first half told us, City had before today taken 2.6 points per game in their past 48 with Rodri in the starting line-up since February 2023, losing none of them. In their 11 games without him, they have lost four times (to Brentford, Wolves, Arsenal and Aston Villa) and taken just 1.9 points per game. It’s worth saying that Brentford loss was on the final day of the 2022/23 season with the title already long sewn up and two finals to come – but that feels like something nonetheless.
It doesn’t have to be, though. Real life need pay no attention to some theories and statistics, and City should, in principle, have more than enough about them to be just as dominant as ever. Mateo Kovacic is a multiple-time title winner and European champion. That’s not exactly City taking their tedious Noel Gallagher tie-ins too far by finally giving him a run-out in midfield.
But there is that little element of doubt for them now now, and City have not had that for a long time.
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