And it didn’t take long for any optimism that Arsenal fans may have had when we went behind after just 7 minutes.
It looks like Guardiola made jut one little tweak to his tactics by swapping De Bruyne to a more forward role and leaving Haaland to be the provider. And they combined brilliantly from a superfast break with just a little touch from Haaland to De Bruyne, who curled a killer shot into Ramsdale bottom corner to give the Cityzens the lead.
The hoped for comeback from Arsenal failed to arrive and De bruyne came very close to doubling the lead after 20 mins, and the attacks kept coming thick and extremely fast from City and we were very lucky to hit the 45 minute mark still only 1-0 down. But in the 2 minutes added time, John Stones popped up at the back of the Arsenal box to head home brilliantly from a free kick. It looked like an easy offside decision but VAR struck and they proved that he was onside by a toe. The goal stood and the dejected Arsenal team traipsed back to the dressing room with a mountain to climb in the second half, especially as the gunners hadn’t even managed one shot on target in the first 45 minutes.
Not that we expected any change and sure enough within 10 minutes De Bruyne had yet again found a waypast Ramsdale, and our despair was complete.
The frustration started to creep in and of course Granit Xhaka was the first one to turn into a hothead and when he was obviously threatening to Grealish on the hour mark, Arteta immediately swapped him for Jorginho, and the tired looking Martinelli was replaced by Trossard.
It was great to see Smith-Rowe come on for the last 20 mins, and I’m glad we managed to get a consolation goal 3 mins from time, the first time we’ve scored against them in 3 meetings this season, and even more surprising that Rob Holding scored it.
Haaland inevitably had to score to make it 4-1, but to be honest we never stood a chance against Guardiola’s juggernaut, and all we can do is hope that Arteta and Edu can have another brilliant transfer summer and keep trying to close the gap ahead of going again next season.
