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With two minutes of stoppage time played and the sun setting in north London, it felt like the lights were about to go out on Arsenal’s Premier League season.
We are still in September, so the notion of a top team dropping out of title contention so prematurely sounds preposterous.
But having lost at Liverpool and with a trip to Newcastle — where they rarely do well — next up on Sunday, defeat on their own patch by Manchester City would have felt like a hell of a wound, if not quite a mortal blow.
So what happened next feels like the most important passage of play in this short league season so far.
With City edging towards the finish line and holding on relatively comfortably to a lead given to them in the ninth minute by Erling Haaland, the ball broke loose in the Arsenal half. City midfielder Rodri looked favourite to reach it, but by then exhaustion had overcome him. For once, the great Spaniard — still recovering from a long lay-off — was second best.
When one Arsenal substitute Eberechi Eze picked out another with a pass over the top, Gabriel Martinelli ran clear of City’s back four to lift the ball over the advancing goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma with the outside of his right foot and into the far corner. It was a beautiful, artistic and perfect finish. It had to be all of those things to come off and it was, rivalling that of Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch for goal of the weekend.
Liverpool have already beaten Arsenal this season and won five out of five. The Gunners would not have deserved to lose again here, though. Pep Guardiola’s team had only 33 per cent possession, which would have made it all the more crushing for Arsenal had the visitors held on. As it is, they have something to cling to and lift them.
If Arsenal go on to make a fist of this season’s title race then they will surely look back at this as a significant staging point.
Mikel Arteta’s team were not at their best. At times, they were too emotional. Their crowd does not always help. Why does the Emirates always feel so fretful? Maybe that’s what two decades without a league title does.
Regardless, Arsenal were rocked by an early City goal and took an awful long time to recover. It was a fabulous goal, too.
City had hardly been out of their half when Haaland collected a loose ball after an Arsenal attack broke down 35 yards from the visitors’ goal. But the great Norwegian’s five-yard nudged pass to Tijjani Reijnders was a decisive contribution as it allowed his team-mate to gallop into acres of space.
With the Arsenal defence torn open and Haaland keeping pace with him on his right side, Reijnders chose the right moment to complete perhaps the longest one-two of the season. His pass back to Haaland was perfectly timed and the City forward was able to control the ball and side-foot it past David Raya.
It was a goal that came out of nowhere and it set Arsenal back. Without key players such as Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard and Eze in the starting line-up, they needed a foothold quickly and although they enjoyed decent spells of possession, they lacked composure and a cleverness in the final third.
Not until Noni Madueke drew a save from Donnarumma by his near post just before half-time did Arsenal really threaten.
Before that, City — for all that they hardly had the ball — had created two decent chances of their own, Bernardo Silva and Rodri coming close. But Arteta’s half-time changes were positive and important as Saka and Eze were brought on to replace Madueke and Mikel Marino.
This was a pattern that continued through the second half as the Arsenal manager and his players strove to make things happen, to change the story. Credit to them, because Arsenal were far better almost from the first moment after the restart.
There was an isolated City chance in the middle of it all as Jeremy Doku freed Haaland to shoot weakly when he should have squared to Phil Foden.
That apart, it was Arsenal on the front foot as Martin Zubimendi drove over, Eze thumped in a volley that Donnarumma saved and Saka had a shot blocked. Donnarumma, City’s new Italian goalkeeper, was impressive. His willingness to come and punch at set-pieces nullified Arsenal’s threat from corners. What a difference a genuinely committed and authoritative goalkeeper makes.
Donnarumma was helped in no small part by his defenders, who seemed to grow in stature and confidence as the game wore on. Meanwhile, when Guardiola took off Haaland with 14 minutes left, it was a signal that City saw only one way to see the game out — without the ball.
It was strange to see City play this way. It shows where they are in terms of their evolution after the disappointments and failures of last season.
Still, this would have been a huge victory for them and as the clock ticked past the 90th minute it seemed they had taken the sting out of Arsenal.
But substitutions are so important. And just as Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca made the wrong ones as he tried to overcome Manchester United on Saturday night, so Arteta got it right here.
Martinelli, talented but out of form, was not sent on until the 80th minute, but the Brazilian was exactly the kind of player a tiring defence did not want to see.
On the face of it, a 1-1 draw between two rivals does not speak to drama and significance. But those who filed out of the Emirates into the dusk shortly after 6.30pm knew exactly what it was they had seen.
