It’s easier to catch up without the ball – Newspaper Kommersant No. 30 (7475) of 02/17/2023

The intrigue in the main “golden race” of the European football season has escalated to the limit. Arsenal, which had recently been leading the English Championship with what looked like a colossal margin of safety, let Manchester City go ahead after a face-to-face meeting. In it Manchester got the better of the Londoners at a party – 3:1. Arsenal are still ahead of the defending champions in terms of lost points, but it seems that now it is Manchester City that should be considered the favorite in the fight for the title.

The appearance of the English Championship standings after this match should have been a great surprise for those who followed it closely, but a month ago, for some reason, was distracted from what was happening and only now remembered the strongest continental championship. January 15 Arsenal coped with Tottenham, and at that moment there was talk in the trend that the championship title would not go anywhere from him. Everything is clear: the game is on, and the lead over the nearest pursuer, the winner of the two previous championships, seems to be simply colossal – eight points, and Manchester City have no matches in hand.

But everything that happened over the next month confirmed how dangerous it is to trust feelings and even numbers in football. Arsenal stalled in February, losing before a collision with rival Everton and sharing points with Brentford, and suddenly it turned out that they had almost no lead left. A face-to-face meeting devoured him without a trace.

She was very strange. Spanish coach Pep Guardiola took over at Manchester City in 2016, and under him the club quickly became a benchmark in terms of possession.

So, the oddity lies in the fact that in the match with Arsenal the ball belonged to Manchester only 36% of the time, as if it was not a football giant who fought with the Londoners, but an outsider who dreams of staying in the Premier League.

But the absolute anti-record of the “epoch of Guardiola” did not prevent the giant dressed in someone else’s clothes from winning a rather convincing victory.

It was that classical case when the loser is obliged to blame for a misfire first of all himself. In the first half, Manchester City did not look good, but a stupid mistake by Arsenal player Takehiro Tomiyasu, who passed back to his opponent Kevin De Bruyne, allowed the guests to take the lead. Bukayo Saka equalized from the penalty spot, but Guardiola, of course, made some adjustments during the break, for example, by untying his hands to help the attack of Bernard Silva, and everything stuck together for Manchester. Another blunder of Arsenal resulted in a goal by Jack Grealish, and then Erling Haaland finished off the hosts, dropping them to second place in the table.

The leadership of Manchester City, however, is rather symbolic. Opponents have equal points, Manchesterians are ahead of Londoners in terms of the difference between goals scored and conceded, and Arsenal also has a match in hand.

He will play in the championship 16 meetings, Manchester City – 15.

But there are pretty good reasons to believe that it was the Manchester club that turned into the favorite of the “golden race”. The BBC, in its material on the match, noted, among other things, its probably enormous psychological significance: it is difficult to digest such blows as Arsenal just missed. There is also a calendar for the rest of the season.

In it, each of the opponents has three matches against rivals from the so-called big six of unconditional giants. And the opponents are the same. Two of them are giants who are in a terrible crisis and are located in the basement of the top ten, Chelsea and Liverpool. But if Manchester City receives both at their stadium, then Arsenal will play with the Liverpool team on a foreign field. Also, the participants of the “golden race” will have another match with each other – on April 26. And he will be home to Manchester City: a nuance, perhaps decisive.

Alexey Dospekhov