Three things we learned after Arsenal beat treble winners Manchester City 1-0 at the Emirates on Sunday by Alan Alger

Here's Gooner Fanzine print writer Alan's essential take on the vital victory over City at the weekend 

1 - Arteta knows best (most of the time)...

While we have had to take on the slight burden of Mikel Arteta learning on the job and making his first-time management errors with us. His ideas are mostly right in theory and, fortunately, mostly right in practice. The boss did something very interesting in the first half when the crowd were getting on David Raya’s back for not distributing the ball quick enough.

He moved down the touchline to clap Raya enthusiastically to show the keeper that he was doing right by ‘the plan’. It was Arteta’s signal to the crowd that sometimes we have to keep the faith that things are being done for a reason.

Slowing the game down, forcing Manchester City to press and not ceding ground around the centre-circle were all part of a blueprint to beat the Champions. Every substitution and tactical move throughout the second half looked as though it was based on ‘not losing’ instead of winning the game. Four subs contributing to our goal as we nullified City by not giving Haaland such easy hold-up situations to bring others into play, then taking advantage.

The players involved in the goal were a perfect illustration of a squad that know their own jobs and more importantly the job at hand. Takehiro Tomiyasu a case in point, delivering at the opposite end of the pitch from where he is usually asked to do his work.

Kai Havertz getting his first assist on top of last week’s first goal is another huge boost to squad morale, something Arteta has also mostly got right from the off.

2 - Officiating in the Premier League is still questionable…

Conspiracy theories will always be frowned upon, but it never hurts to have a healthy scepticism of anything we experience in life.

What we have seen from Premier League officials in the past few years as Arsenal fans has often seen us scratching our heads for explanations. Let’s be very clear – refereeing football matches is not an easy job and often comes without any credit or praise. That said, we have been on the wrong end of so many bizarre decisions it’s not hard to build up a firm case of mistreatment.

We saw Liverpool jump to the front of the hard-done-by stakes last week, but there’s obviously still room for Arsenal to be on the wrong end of things. We certainly saw that with the failure of Michael Oliver to dismiss Mateo Kovacic at the weekend. With both incidents enough to have been deemed red cards in isolation, how he doesn’t at least receive two yellows is unfathomable.

Especially from a ref who deemed it fair to give an Arsenal player two yellows in the same passage of play recently. If you want to pour any more fuel on the fire and the theory that referees seem to make decisions based on the badge on the shirt rather than actual incidents, then I’ll illustrate it with a stat from a player that has played for both clubs involved in yesterday’s game.

Gabriel Jesus picked up his eighth yellow card of his Arsenal career on Sunday. The game was only number 32 for us since joining just over a year ago. To put that into perspective, the very same player picked up just seven yellow cards in his final four seasons in total for City – and across exactly 120 games. Once every four games in red, and just once every 17 games in sky blue. And if you suddenly think that’s because there were a lower number of fouls given against the striker in that time – then take in the following – he was allowed to commit around 13 fouls per yellow at City, while being under the very strict one yellow per seven fouls playing for us. That’s rather alarming...

Top class performers now the norm…

Let’s end on the very positive assertion that even if we don’t have world class officiating in the league then we have top class and sometimes world class performers throughout our squad. For starters, there aren’t many players we’d swap out for those at another club.

Add to that the kind of performances we saw from Declan Rice and William Saliba that make it clear they are in the top ten in their positions globally. Which is high praise indeed. Contributing shifts from players of relatively lower profiles ensured it was a team effort that finally overcame our City hoodoo.

The whole team making amends for the lacklustre display in Lens in midweek. We can’t afford to rest on such a big win and I do still fear Chelsea (as I said in this column last week). They’re hitting their stride with purpose as that ridiculous overspending is now starting to pay small dividends.

We cannot allow them to scoop a bigger dividend at Stamford Bridge after the break if we don’t go there and take them seriously.

I hope Mikel will have a plan or two.

Limbs here at The Arsenal pic.twitter.com/2KSfZjIai5

— Layth (@laythy29) October 8, 2023