The best moment of this fun, boisterous, increasingly hallucinogenic afternoon for Arsenal’s supporters came with the game still in the balance, and with Manchester City yet to collapse like an inadequately constructed French meringue.
Here Pep Guardiola cut an increasingly gloomy figure as the afternoon wore on, watching the game from deep within his thick grey woollen robes, and sat slumped on his bench looking like a sad dying Jedi by the time Ethan Nwaneri curled in an outrageous stoppage‑time goal to make it 5-1 to Arsenal.
If you’d told Arsenal’s fans after the 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium that they would win the return 5-1 to go nine points clear of City the assumption would have been, OK, someone book the giant cake with an Arsène Wenger lookalike inside.
And not least to play as he did here, as a shield, cutting edge and overload in midfield against the coach who brought that innovation into the English league, as first glimpsed in the strange, loitering manoeuvres of Pablo Zabaleta, back when the world was still young, tackles were a thing and goalkeepers didn’t do stepovers.
Lewis-Kelly strikes a pose as Haaland is riled and Arsenal savour catharsis Young full-back supplied plenty of magic moments against Manchester City but his goal celebration was the pinnacle.
