Martin Demichelis’s late goal earns Manchester City a 2-2 draw at Arsenal
By the end, there was unmistakable disappointment on Arsène Wenger’s face and a heavy sense of regret engulfing the stands about Arsenal’s failure to capitalise on those goals from Jack Wilshere and, brilliantly, Alexis Sánchez that had turned the game upside down in 11 second-half minutes. Yet they will also know it might have been worse on a day when both sides could easily have won or lost and that culminated in a rare show of temper from Manuel Pellegrini.
Martín Demichelis’s late header ultimately spared Manchester City a second successive defeat but they still had time to hit the post twice during that wild, chaotic finale when their opponents seemed to be doing everything possible to contrive a way to lose. Samir Nasri, facing his former club, was denied a stoppage-time winner because of an offside flag and City also had justifiable grievances that the referee, Mark Clattenburg, missed Wilshere’s handball inside the penalty area.
Arsenal limped to the finish but it would be unfair to reproach them too heavily when, earlier in the game, they had played as though affronted by their record against the top sides. Wenger and his players had been reminded all week about their sorry run of results in these high-importance fixtures but there was no sense of a side with an inferiority complex. They played with high skill and intensity and, more than that, they had to show considerable personality after going in behind at half-time to Sergio Agüero’s breakaway goal.
To recap, this is an Arsenal team that had taken 26 points out of a possible 90 against the teams they want to consider as bona fide rivals over the past five years. They set off like a team that wanted to show that statistic must be a glitch in the system, but for a long time after Agüero’s goal they found it difficult to get any momentum back. Vincent Kompany was a formidable opponent, as he always is in the big games, and David Silva’s nimble artistry between midfield and attack frequently troubled the home side.
It was a test of Arsenal’s character and, midway through the second half, they passed it with distinction. Wilshere equalised in the 63rd minute after running on to Aaron Ramsey’s pass, eluding Gaël Clichy and clipping a lovely diagonal shot above Joe Hart, and what followed was sensational.
This was one of Sánchez’s better performances from his brief time at Arsenal and it was a majestic volley with which he gave Arsenal the lead, even if Hart might have done better.
It was just a pity for Arsenal that everything started to unravel from that point. Wenger talked of conceding a “cheap goal” and he must have been startled by the carelessness of his team in the moments before and after Demichelis thudded a header past Wojciech Szczesny straight from a corner. “We did something remarkable to come back,” Wenger said. “The only disappointment for me is that we couldn’t keep the lead.”
Instead, there was enough late pressure from City to feel they could have added one final, dramatic twist. Aleksandar Kolarov drove one shot against the upright and then another substitute, Edin Dzeko, was denied by the other post.
Dzeko had been on the pitch, Pellegrini said, because City’s manager was convinced Clattenburg would end up sending off Agüero. Fernandinho and Frank Lampard, two of City’s other booked players, had already been withdrawn and it was rare to hear Pellegrini be so critical of a referee’s performance. Uppermost in his mind was that there were “clear fouls” before both Arsenal goals. That was an exaggeration but, overall, he was justified to say Clattenburg had a “very bad day”.
Lampard had been held back for this game so Yaya Touré could have a break after playing for Ivory Coast in Cameroon on Wednesday but the 36-year-old looked his age on a difficult City debut. His yellow card, for sliding into Ramsey, had exposed his lack of match fitness and the game was played at an unforgiving speed.
To start with, Arsenal had the clear edge but Danny Welbeck, on a debut that showed his good and bad, opted for the lofted shot, the dainty little pitching wedge, when he ran clear early on with the chance to open the scoring; as Wenger acknowledged, it was almost certainly the wrong choice of club. The ball came back off the post, rebounding into Hart’s arms, and even at that early stage it was tempting to wonder whether the £16m signing might regret that wastefulness.
Sure enough, City broke in the 28th minute. Agüero went for the same ball as Mathieu Flamini in midfield and, as the ricochet spun it to the right, the Arsenal man hesitated, believing it was going for a throw-in. Jesús Navas had read the trajectory of the ball and as soon as he started haring down the line Arsenal were in trouble. His cross was beautifully weighted and Agüero had eluded Flamini to show his expertise in the penalty area.
Arsenal lost Mathieu Debuchy in the closing stages to a badly sprained ankle and they were looking dishevelled in those moments when the champions went searching for the winner. They very nearly found it but Arsenal, on the balance of play, had done enough before that point to think that it would have been unwarranted.
