Why Arsenal Just FAILED To Beat Manchester City

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Right, hello everybody. Welcome to the Adam McLarry football channel. And what was being talked about legitimately as the final of the Premier League wound up being absolutely completely uh fascinating.

[00:00:16]So, buckle up. It's what they say, isn't it? And I'm not messing about here, right? This is from the very opening few minutes of the game, right? And it won't have been in any of the highlights.

[00:00:27]probably don't even remember it happening. But if you look at this part of it here and this part of it here later on in this match, that is exactly what costs Arsenal the game and maybe maybe even the Premier League title. So yeah, now your reminder at the start that ACFC is proudly brought to you by our investment pals at Trading 212. Hence Teddy Henry here. No, that doesn't uh really work. So we'll hear more from them in a little bit. But for now, that image from the start. I need you to lock that in because it's going to be very important later on. Now, Man City went with the exact same team and in fairness, the exact same approach as the one that won the Carabal Cup final for them. But Arsenal made some pretty significant and actually pretty effective changes. Specifically, what they did with the four players at the very top of the pitch. He changed three of them and the only one who retains his place, Kai Havtz, gets moved up to center forward. And straight away, literally from the kickoff, you can see exactly why they wanted to do that.

[00:01:35]Arsenal start this game and indeed continue it so so aggressively. They go really high. They go man for man which is obviously a brave way to play especially away in Man City but it absolutely worked for them. The main idea was that Delan Rice and Martin Erdigard were going to stop them playing through the center of the pitch but crucially when they would then go and jump onto the center backs they got backed up by the entire rest of the team. like pressing is brilliant, isn't it? Everybody loves it. It's like having two Christmases uh or something, but it is a complete liability in big games like this if it is not correctly coordinated across the entire team. And yes, I am going to need you to remember me saying that as well uh later on. And the thing is Arsenal was so brave with this that they even had Gabrielle just follow Ryan Shery around the entire pitch, which is really risky. That takes proper balls to play it in a game of this magnitude, but it forced loads and loads of high turnovers in the opening part of the match. City couldn't really live with it. Like this is another brilliant graphic from the always brilliant uh Mark stats. Man City lost the ball in the Kenny Loggins area, the danger zone, 30 times in this game, which is twice as many uh as Arsenal did. And then you add on to that the fact they forced four high turnovers in just the opening 20 minutes. They were so so uncomfortable with the ball in their own third. And the way it worked was as we just showed you before, Rice and Erdigard would shut off the center of the pitch, but then you would have Havitz and Maduke jump from the outside of the pitch inside to squeeze the ball and cut off the passes back out there.

[00:03:24]And you can see how it all works in this example here, right? They're set up quite nicely. But when Erdigard then jumps onto Maray, you can see the rest of the team all react quickly and accordingly. Moscara moves infield to Mark Dou. Zuba Mendy goes across to cover Silva. It looks really basic, but when City try and play out from here because all of the Arsenal team have already been proactive, there's very few options for them and Moscara is close enough to Dou to immediately pinch it off him. And if they just had a slightly better ball here from Martin Erdigard into Kai Havtz, they would have been in.

[00:04:02]They would have had a really, really good chance. But here's something else for you to remember. They let them get away with it. But the thing is, right, this is clearly Arsenal learning their lesson from the Carabal Cup final about what to do off the ball. But more important than this was that they clearly learned their lesson from the Carabal Cup final over what to do on the ball. Like Man City for their part were content to stick with the system that had caused them so many problems in that game. This 424, no pressure on the ball at the back, making it really easy for them to have it here, but incredibly hard for them to have it anywhere else.

[00:04:40]And Arsenal, as you will either remember or have worked hard to suppress in your own head, uh really struggled with this.

[00:04:47]They couldn't play through the center of the pitch here. And because Keer is not David Ryer, really struggled to play over it as well. But my dear friends, if we go and look at David Ryer's pass map from the entire 90 minutes here, you will see that not only was he joyful in his heart to kick it long rather than going uh sideways, but there is clearly this huge bias, this preference for dropping the ball into this lefthand channel as opposed to the right hand one. Hm. And if you go back and you watch it, you can see the reason for this was they were attempting to target Kushinov, whose fault mob page will tell you has an astonishingly low win percentage for aerial balls this season.

[00:05:30]That is like the bottom 2.2% of players in the Premier League and on a per 90 basis. Now, yes, no, you're right. The caveat for that is that he plays for Manchester City. So he doesn't face anywhere near as many aerial balls as defenders at other teams. But in terms of purely the percentage he wins, that is really low. It's a very obvious, very exploitable weakness in that back line.

[00:05:55]So then you take David Ryer's pass map from this game and you overlay Kai Havt's heat map from the game Arsenal's best winner of the ball in the air and bingo, you have a workable solution to an established problem. Good work. Now you probably and to be fair correctly think that Arsenal's equalizer comes as a result of their aggressive high pressing, doesn't it? Like here's Kai Havtz again. and he's going from outside of the pitch to in just like we discussed and he pretty much runs it into the back of the net. But as dearest editor Archie has pointed out, presumably as he was watching the game uh through his hands, if you actually wind that sequence back, which the sky cameras missed cuz they were showing you a replay, the entire scenario actually comes about because they go back to Ry and he launches it into that exact space trying to target Kushinov, which means in a roundabout way that Arsenal's goal comes as a combination of their two main tactical PS, which is obviously um very satisfying.

[00:07:00]It's not as satisfying as if they you know won the game of football obviously, but nevertheless, now the sherky goal of course is the flip side to all of this.

[00:07:09]Like Arsenal going man for man high up is great, but when they drop back into their own box, they now have to defend the shape and the space as well. and transitioning from one to the other. You can see that nobody's like immediately sure who should be picking up Shery as he floats into the pockets like Gabrielle can't go charging out. He's got to stay in the back line. Rice can't leave Silva here because then he'd be open and Capier is doing the right thing marking Semeno and trying to get across.

[00:07:38]He just can't do it quick enough and Ez ends up losing him when he challenges for the header which he of course has to do. And just if you're wondering why it feels like I'm just skipping past what was the best moment of the whole game, it's because it's not really got anything to do with the tactics of the match. Like getting the ball here and beating three players to open the scoring is individual brilliance somehow still thriving within an otherwise very robust uh defensive structure. And that is what players like Ryan Shery give you. That's the whole point in buying them. Like in games that are this tight, in games that are this tactical, they can then supersede all of that. They can give you the moments that win you these games. And Arsenal just don't have that.

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[00:10:25]But anyway, yes, the score is 1-1. It's all incredibly even. Despite the fact Man City come out and look the better side in the second half, it is still Arsenal that have the better chances.

[00:10:36]This structure, this high press, what they're doing is working really well for them. like they're a little bit deeper this time, but Martin Elli does well to cut off Gay's wide options with his curved run and then get back to nick the ball off him as he's forced to dribble through. And that gets them a four versus two. Like I cannot stress enough to you what an enormous opportunity this situation is in a game that is this tight. And I actually think EZ does his part absolutely perfectly in creating the chance, but the pass from Erdigard and the shot from Havz just aren't ruthless enough. Like the real real top players, they will punish you in this situation. But just exactly like we said with the clip before, right, Havit and Erdigard, they let Man City off in this situation when they should make them pay for that mistake. But then of course it happens, doesn't it? If you cast your mind back to the very start of the video, I said remember this moment here because this is exactly what wins the game. In this example, Nico O'Reilly sees Dou is getting doubled up on and he makes this overlapping run that forces Moscara to leave him alone. He isolates the man for him and then Dou puts him on his ass while O'Reilly keeps the run going into the box. And of course, Jeremy Dou having zero interest in the mouths of gift horses or whatever uh that expression is. He slips him in.

[00:12:04]O'Reilly then cuts it back. And this was probably Man City's best chance of the entire game. And almost that exact same thing happens again for the winning goal. O'Reilly this time almost physically drags Zuba Mendy away from Dou to let him isolate the fullback. And when he beats him, he has again kept that run going. and he gets in behind and he rolls it across for the goal. But if chums we wind that entire sequence back, it is actually the coordination in Arsenal's press that births uh the whole situation. Gabriel Martinelli technically I think does the right thing here and again curves his run onto Mark Gay just like how he won the ball back a few minutes ago. But the problem is that this time Arsenal as a team are not set to press. If you look at it on a wider shot, right, the play has all come down the left hand side of the pitch. So the front four are all here, but the midfield backing them up are both understandably on the wrong side. So O'Reilly is able to just slightly reposition himself off the back of Martinelli's run to get out of his shadow and receive it inside the pitch because Zuba Mendy who should be coming across to jump onto him just isn't there yet. And as well as that, Moscara, who could just as easily jump up to stop him doing that, can't leave Jeremy Dou. And I don't think either of those two could do anything different in that situation.

[00:13:34]Like they can't be in two places at once. And I don't think Martinelli even makes a mistake in choosing to press because you can see Erdigard and Havitz are telling the whole team to do it.

[00:13:44]It's just a small breakdown in communication from front to back that allows Man City to take the ball here and run it all the way to here completely unchallenged. And that is the difference here. like Arsenal somehow let Man City get away with this error here, but Man City punish Arsenal for this one here. And yeah, there's a bit of luck with how the ball breaks to Harlem, but it's a bit of luck born out of a mistake by one team and as you saw from the start of the game, the deliberate game plan of the other. And just the brutal reality of this is that if you reverse those two situations, I would still fancy Erling Harland to take this chance, whereas I wouldn't think anyone in the Arsenal team would physically get in front of the defender to put this chance away. Man City had a lot of moments in this game of individual excellence working beyond the system. Like O'Reilly gets out of this really tricky spot. Shery weaves through three challenges. Bernardo Silva who was unbelievable in this game to the point I might do a video just about the season uh he's having he somehow makes this recovery run that he's got absolutely no right whatsoever to make whereas Arsenal who are probably don't get me wrong the best system team in all of Europe like this does work for them it's got them to the top of the Premier League but they do lack those individual moments certainly in games like this by comparison. And I know this might feel like a bit of a weird video given I'm heaping praise on a team who have ultimately lost the biggest game uh of the season, but it's a good example of how in football we quite often let the results dictate the narrative of the match when they can be two very separate things. Cuz I think Arsenal got it about as close to spot on as they possibly could have done in this match. It's just that it doesn't feel like it when you lose. They were brave on the ball, which they're always accused of not being.

[00:15:45]They were really aggressive, which are also told uh that they're not, and they created much the better chances, which is not, I think, what people would have expected. And just as a final point, right, a draw is as good as a win for them in this game. And in the very dying embers, the vinegar strokes of this match, right, they're presented with this. But again here, just like with that 4v2, just like Öza hitting the inside of the post, just like Erdigard not quite finding that pass, they let Man City get away with it. And they definitely did enough in this game to get that point. Probably even all three, but because they didn't, it sort of looks like they did something wrong when they also didn't. And that is also just just football, isn't it? Um, if it makes you feel better though, which I suspect it won't, I do still think uh this team wins the league. And don't get me wrong, there is stuff you can criticize for. I thought Yakare should have been on the pitch a lot sooner than he was.

[00:16:49]The game appeared quite stretched. He would have suited it a lot more than Havz. I don't think Bernardo Silva gets back and stops this if that's who he's up against in that situation. And if you want to bring Trussard on, fine. But it would not have been uh for EZ. I would have just I would have hooked Martin Ellie again. There's no there's no law stopping you uh from doing that. EZ is your moment's player. He's the one that can make magic things happen. And instead of relying on that, you went more into the system, which not for me.

[00:17:21]Anyway, yes, uh that's that. But before we go, uh all the housekeeping. Thank you to Trading 212 sponsor uh the channel. Their link is in the description. And thank you also to Fot Mob whose graphics have been used throughout. It is an app on your phone.

[00:17:33]It has like heat maps, uh, pass maps, stats, fixtures, results, everything you want from a football app. We loved them before they ever even emailed us. You can download them uh down below as well.

[00:17:44]And I'm going to start banging the drum now every single video because we're 27 days away. I'm doing the Hackne half marathon for calm, the campaign against living miserably. They are a mental health charity here in the UK who do absolutely vital work in bridging the gap between what people need and what this country currently uh offers them.

[00:18:03]They're an amazing charity. If you want to donate anything, a five or a tenner, it all goes to a really really awesome place. It's a cause that is uh very dear to my heart. The link for that is also in the description. And of course, you're an Arsenal fan. There is a comment section there. And it would be very nice to know how you're feeling.

[00:18:21]Are you okay? Do you still think you can win the league? Do you believe me anymore even though I've been saying it uh since August? All thoughts, feelings, verse, poems, whatever you've got uh down below. And if you haven't already, please do subscribe to the Adam football channel because that makes the world go round or something like that. Right, I've been Adam Clear. That's been the game. I'll see you later. Love you. Bye.