Erling Haaland received his answer five months later and Kai Havertz made history as Arsenal became the latest team to sweep Manchester City aside.
It took 32-and-a-half seasons, 12,642 games and about 5,000 players but history was made at the Emirates when, for the first time ever, someone missed a chance.
A bad miss, certainly. An opportunity with an edge positively dripping in both gilt and, in the personal case of Kai Havertz, guilt. And yet more fuel for the eternally raging fire of Arsenal Need A Proper/Pure/Recognised Centre-Forward/Striker/No.9 discourse.
Manchester City undeniably have precisely one of those. Erling Haaland scored. For 105 glorious seconds it seemed like that would decide the game, the result and the narrative. It would be the difference between Arsenal, who failed to build on and take advantage of their lead, and the champions, who now had the momentum.
But as has been Manchester City’s problem all season, the idea of what they will do next was based on an increasingly irrelevant past.
When their atrocious run of form started it was just assumed that Pep Guardiola “would figure it out” or “turn things around”, with no actual explanation as to how. Many simply suspected a typically indifferent start to the season would be followed by a characteristic post-Christmas march into trophy-winning form. Upon realising that would not come to pass, the wider belief was that any and all issues would be rectified with a considerable January spend.
But there are no quick fixes to problems so fundamental, nor was there a rousing, swashbuckling victory from behind. Another mistake led to another Arsenal goal and the hosts never looked back, having all eight of the game’s shots after Haaland’s equaliser.
Seven minutes after parity was restored, Manchester City were 3-1 down. Ten or so later and Havertz rendered all the thoughts and hot takes on the preceding hour and a quarter entirely moot with a stunningly composed finish. Arsenal only briefly stopped oléing to celebrate Ethan Nwaneri’s outstanding stoppage-time goal, with perhaps a couple of moments set aside to pinch their collective selves.
Arsenal have crushed teams before and Manchester City have capitulated in a great many second halves of late; it was still unfathomable for both to happen in the same game, so foreboding is the crisis-adjacent cloud constantly hovering over the Gunners.
Their transfer frustration is understandable but this is a remarkable team, especially so when the pieces fall into place in unison. With Gabriel and Declan Rice as peerless battle-winners, David Raya pulling off excellent stops, Havertz knitting attacks together and every other player fulfilling their roles brilliantly it is difficult to see where improvements can be easily made without upsetting the balance.
The obvious position is at centre-forward and that argument was somehow strengthened by Havertz making the most efficient goalscoring decision possible when he squared for Martin Odegaard to shoot into an empty net after a ferocious press forced Manuel Akanji’s mistake. One man’s tell-tale sign of a player lacking confidence or that cutting edge is another’s very good assist.
But then Havertz skewed his later effort wide from another Manchester City error in possession and it felt as though whatever else happened in this game wouldn’t actually matter. That was The Chance, the opportunity to put an opponent down, take a 2-0 lead in the 26th minute and win by a ridiculous scoreline like 5-1 or something. It kept the door ajar for Haaland to barge in and take a flamethrower to all those touchmaps.
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The whole idea that Haaland summed up the contrast between these two teams was rather undermined by Havertz curling a delightful finish past the haphazard Stefan Ortega from what was, as it just so happened, the sort of pass from Gabriel Martinelli that the German was earlier chastised for.
Even before then the game was done. The exceptional Myles Lewis-Skelly had already capped a glorious performance with a fine goal, sensing the chasm where Manchester City’s midfield remains a mere concept, striding into the area, firing through the bodies and indulging in that most modern of footballing tropes: the copied celebration.
It does rather feel as though Haaland might now be painfully aware of him. If the recent hysteria surrounding a questionable but not fundamentally outrageous refereeing decision somehow failed to register Lewis-Skelly on that particular robotic radar, events at the Emirates made absolutely sure of it.
In only 133 days, the teenager’s transformation from “who the f*** are you?” to official Stay Humble, Eh ombudsman was complete. He picked up his first Premier League booking before making his Premier League debut against this side in September; five short months later he guaranteed no such question could ever be asked again.
“He is a competitor,” Mikel Arteta said of his latest academy prodigy then. “You look at him, in every duel he goes, the way he reacts with his teammates. It’s a special character. He can play in three positions basically, as a left back, as a No.6, as a No.8, he’s very versatile. He has some unbelievable questions every time you ask him to do something, and he has the competitive edge which I think is demanded at this level. And he really wants it, so we are going to use him in different positions.”
Not enough is made of how well Lewis-Skelly has been integrated, nor really the ease with which he has stepped up. That was a masterful display from precisely the sort of player Manchester City might have sold on the pretence his path to the first team was blocked.
But the biggest transfer disparity between these two teams lies in Havertz and Haaland, the opposing philosophies of an attacking focal point who wants to get involved and a striker who only operates across the width of the posts. The pendulum will swing again soon but on occasions like these it’s easy to see why Arsenal side with the former.
