I can imagine Ben White doing exactly what Haaland did lol so I can’t get too mad at it. That’s good banter.
Sky asked Opta how long the ball was in play in the second half…35 mins, the most of any half in the league this season
And i don’t think City did anything egregiously offensive today. Got away with things (Haaland drilling Saliba in the back, Doku kicking it away, everyone always circling the ref) but that’s a gripe with Oliver not City.
That’s interesting, and I feel like there could be two different things going on.
The ball will be “in-play” more when one team is just passing it back and forth between CBs who can’t shoot outside the box.
It was a very passive game state for most of the game in that sense (i.e. the ball never going out of play).
That doesn’t mean Arsenal didn’t make the most of the times it was out of play
The whole thing went to hell at the first whistle when Havertz took out Rodri and it wasn’t handled. Led to everything being off kilter and Oliver lost complete control of the game… Was a circus throughout from Arsenal’s goal on the restart, the second yellow, just seemed like the game was out of control. (But also felt like Arsenal wanted it that way to me.)
Blasting the ball half way across the field on a yellow is a dumb decision by Troussard either way though.
Either way, I’d have much rather lost the game and not had Rodri blow out his knee though. Phyrric draw.
Yeah, I’m not here to defend Ederson on that one. Embarrassing to have Arsenal do the same thing twice and defend it so poorly both times.
Not really up on the rules of set pieces but sending three guys to set a moving screen on the keeper is definitely smart as hell if it is legal. And even if it isn’t legal, there’s like a 50% chance it isn’t called.
That was absolute CONCACAF straight out of the Panamanian playbook.
I hate Michael Oliver, completely lost control of that match. Happy to get a point, but I don’t know if this version of City has the depth for the annual post Xmas death march.
David Raya had 12 of these, and took full advantage each time. Each one took him 45.3 seconds on average to complete, meaning that in total Raya wasted over nine minutes of the game on goal-kicks alone.
I also love that Arteta sent the young kid warming up to tell Raya to slow down and he got caught and YC’d.
Considering he was one of the more outspoken players on the current schedule, wonder if this particularly injury becomes a catalyst for an eventual strike.