There has been plenty of talk about how Arsenal approached the second half of their Premier League match with Manchester City last weekend. The Gunners, down to ten men following Leandro Trossard's first-half red card, turned in an incredible rearguard performance and almost took home all three points.
Arsenal pretty much put ten men behind the ball against the champions and almost held out for a win, but John Stones' 98th minute equaliser broke their hearts.
The arguments have been plentiful. As manager Mikel Arteta said, the Gunners have continued to play their football against City with ten men before, and ended up losing 5-0 back in 2021/22. They did things differently this time around and got a point, but some pundits have questioned how a team challenging for the title can just sit back like that and take all the pressure.
Arteta defended the tactics, saying strongly: "We learned from the past because unfortunately we have been in that situation with them three times recently. One was with Granit [Xhaka] after 38 minutes and we conceded how many? So we better learn, if not we will be very thick."
Speaking on The Overlap, Roy Keane said: "If Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce, Steve Bruce or Neil Warnock set up a team like that for the second half, they are ‘dinosaurs’. When Arsenal do it, it’s called ‘brilliant’, it’s ‘concentration levels’.
"When they won the ball back, which they did every now and again, try and look after it and try and get up the pitch. There was an incident when [Ben] White just kicked it out of play, [Declan] Rice a couple of times, just kicked it up the pitch.
"This is Arsenal we’re talking about – not a Championship team in the FA Cup – that’s hanging in there. They got a clean sheet last year, so they can get results. I’ve got nothing wrong with them defending and going deep, but when they got it, they didn’t do anything."
Now Arsenal have been handed another sly dig - by north London rivals Tottenham. Spurs beat Qarabag 3-0 in the Europa League on Thursday night, having played for 82 minutes with ten men after Radu Dragusin was sent off.
Against a different calibre of opposition, of course, Ange Postecoglou did not deviate from his philosophy and continued to employ his attacking football, with a few nervy moments at the back symptomatic of the way the Lilywhites play under the Australian.
And after the match, the Spurs social media team could not help taking a little swipe at their rivals in the red half of north London with a nine-word message.
With a photo of Dominic Solanke and the stats that showed 469 passes, 10 shots and three goals, the caption read: "10 men and we never stopped playing our football." Shots fired!