The most significant event in the Premier League title race last week did not happened on Sunday.
The hearing into Manchester City’s alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules began on Monday. To say it loomed ominously over Sunday’s game or cast a shadow over the action would be tempting, but disingenuous.
In fact, that it did nothing to dull the bursting colours of City’s epic and furious 2-2 draw with Arsenal is decent evidence that the doomsters predicting the Premier League’s demise when it all shakes out are drastically underestimating football’s raw and unimpeachable appeal.
The English game faces existential crisis no matter the outcome, apparently. Guilt and total damnation would derail the brand, innocence would let the vultures in, and a fudge somewhere in the middle would leave everybody unhappy and hasten the end of the Premier League’s two-decade reign on top of the world.
That all sounds about right in the cold harsh light of a weekday, but when the weekend brings drama on that scale, brings ugliness and beauty and a raucous 90+ minutes at The Etihad, that analysis just melts away.
The Premier League always survives the politics and the fallouts, not by rising to the challenge but by sinking below it; by drowning out the noise with a product that is obsessively and unquenchably moreish.
The circus will go on and games like these will keep us entertained, come what may.
City players showing signs of pressure
That doesn’t mean the players are immune to the rumblings.
The media’s wilful forgetfulness around the whole PSR thing – partly because nobody knows what will happen, making analysis pointless, but partly because we just don’t want to think about a title challenge fought off the pitch – has made Sunday’s game seem like it was unaffected. True to an extent.
But the City players wouldn’t be human if the thought of a points deduction, relegation, and stripped titles didn’t affect them on a subconscious level at least.
“You can call it clever or dirty,” John Stones said of Arsenal’s tactics after the game, riffing on what Kyle Walker referred to as the “dark arts”. There was a lot of Jose Mourinho in Arsenal’s performance, from painful delays of the restart to the brutality of their defensive football in the second half, but it’s telling that so many at City felt a sense of injustice, acting petulantly even after the final whistle as they took the Arsenal bait.
Videos circling on social media show a number of bad tempered incidents. “Stay humble,” Erling Haaland snarled at Mikel Arteta at the end of a game that had threatened to boil over from the very first minute. There were thumping off-the-ball clashes within seconds of kick-off. Haaland threw the ball at Gabriel’s head after the equaliser.
Arsenal getting under City's skin?
This is all good news.
Premier League title races have lacked an edge in recent years and the return of teams actually disliking each other is to be warmly welcomed by the rest of us. It is partly an inevitable side-effect of a third year in battle for the title, and also of Arsenal going full Mourinho against the virtuous Pep Guardiola, whom we know has despised football played the ‘wrong way’ ever since Inter Milan’s infamous Champions League semi-final victory over Barcelona in 2010.
But might it also be a new twitch for Manchester City, a slight crick in the neck that comes with the anxiety of the unknown stretching out before them? Might it be projection onto Arsenal of that sense of injustice, of the world out to get them?
Stones’ injury-time equaliser was a moment of release not solely about Arsenal or the point swing or the hunt for a fifth title in a row. It was also a battle cry and a moment of catharsis to end week one of a hearing that will rumble on in the background, largely uncommented upon but surely infecting the thoughts of City’s players and coaching staff.
Not enough to throw a shadow over their matches and not enough for us to interrupt our usual Premier League analysis and punditry. But enough for thoughts of an ending to drift in and out of their minds; enough for feisty opponents to be recast as delinquents; enough for a Rodri injury to feel like the fates are conspiring against them; enough to let Arsenal, and everyone else, get under their skin.
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