Man City and Arsenal look ready to go distance again after 2-2 draw
London: On this evidence, Arsenal and Manchester City look ready to go the distance again in the Premier League. Whether Mikel Arteta can finally get the better of Pep Guardiola is still unknown.
A 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium showed Arsenal can certainly go toe-to-toe with the four-time defending champion — but it also confirmed City’s powers of resilience after dominating English soccer for the past six years.
“Still we have this passion, this fire inside ourselves,” Guardiola said after John Stones rescued a point with an equalizer in the eighth minute of stoppage time.
Arsenal has been runner-up to City in each of the last two years — setting new benchmarks along the way — but still coming up short.
Arteta was Guardiola’s former assistant at City and now stands as his biggest threat.
On Sunday his team looked like snapping City’s 47-game unbeaten home run, despite being down to 10 men for the entirety of the second half after Leandro Trossard was sent off in first-half stoppage time.
But Arsenal’s resolve was finally broken by substitute Stones, who swept in from close range in the final moments.
“Obviously, it is already a miracle we played 56 minutes at the Etihad with 10 men. It is unbelievable what we have done,” said Arteta, who was incensed when Trossard was shown a second yellow card for kicking the ball away.
“I’m expecting 100 Premier League games this season to play 10 against 11 or 10 against 10 or nine against 10, let’s see,” Arteta said.
City was defending an unbeaten home run dating back to a 2-1 loss to Brentford in November 2022. Arsenal was within moments of its first victory at City since 2015 after Gabriel Magalhaes’ first-half header had put the visitors 2-1 up. Stones’ late leveler was in keeping with a game packed with intrigue and incident.
Erling Haaland reached a landmark when putting City ahead in the ninth with his 100th goal for the club in 105 appearances — firing past Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya. That later felt like an aside as the home fans began to resign themselves to a rare defeat on home soil.
