If you’re an Arsenal fan reading this on Monday morning, I have bad news and worse news. The bad news is that Manchester City just beat you 2-1 at the Etihad and cut a six-point lead down to three. The worse news is that City have a game in hand. So really, it’s one point. One. And nine days ago, you were nine clear.
Twenty-two years.
That’s how long it’s been since Arsenal last won this thing. The Invincibles. Thierry Henry. Patrick Vieira. Pirlo-level Pires. A team that went 38 games without losing and got t-shirts made about it. That was 2004. George W. Bush was president. Arsenal fans have been waiting ever since, watching one title race after another fall apart in ways that would make a screenwriter say, “Nah, that’s too much.”
And here we are again.
Let me walk you through Sunday, because the way this game went is almost too on-the-nose for an Arsenal collapse tape.
Rayan Cherki opens the scoring in the 16th minute with one of those goals you watch and think, “Oh, great, we’re doing this now? City have another one of these guys?” Matheus Nunes feeds him after a half-cleared Rodri cross. Cherki weaves around two defenders like they’re cones at youth training. Bottom corner. Etihad goes nuts. Arsenal look stunned.
Two minutes later, they’re level. And this is the part where if you’re an Arsenal fan, you started believing.
Here’s how it happened: the ball gets thrown back to Gianluigi Donnarumma. Simple pass. Goalkeeper stuff. Except Donnarumma dithers. Kai Havertz, running like a guy chasing a bus he knows he’s not going to catch, keeps coming. Donnarumma finally tries to clear. It hits Havertz. It goes in.
It’s Havertz’s first league goal since February 2025, which, fun fact, was also against Manchester City, in that 5-1 game at the Emirates where Arsenal looked like they might actually do this. Remember that one? Myles Lewis-Skelly. Partey. Nwaneri. We were all ready to declare Arteta ball the future of football. That was 14 months ago. It feels like five years.
Anyway, 1-1. Arsenal have a lifeline nobody earned. Surely they build on this, right? That’s what title-winning teams do. They take the gift and run with it.
They did not build on this.
Haaland missed the target. Marc Guéhi headed at Raya. Antoine Semenyo went close. Then Haaland hit the outside of the post. City were picking Arsenal apart, and Arteta’s side were hanging on.
Arsenal did wake up around the hour. A slick move, Ødegaard slipping Havertz through, Havertz one-on-one with Donnarumma. This is the moment. This is where title-winning teams bury it. Havertz looks up, shoots, and Donnarumma races out and blocks it. The same guy who gave them the first goal just atoned for the sin in about the most poetic way football allows.
And then, of course, Haaland.
Nico O’Reilly cross. Rodri flick-on. Haaland swivels inside the area like a guy who’s done this 400 times, because he has. 2-1. Sixty-fifth minute. You could feel the entire Premier League title race shift in real time.
Arsenal had their moments late. Gabriel thumped a header off the base of the post from a free-kick, because of course he did. Havertz sent a stoppage-time header flying over. Gabriel got himself booked pushing his head into Haaland’s face, a little flare-up that made everyone remember that these two don’t exactly send each other Christmas cards.
And then it was over. Referee Anthony Taylor blew the whistle, and the title race that Arsenal had been leading by nine points a week ago was suddenly on life support.
Here’s where it gets really grim if you’re a Gooner. This isn’t one loss. This is a fourth domestic defeat inside a month. City in the Carabao Cup final. Southampton in the FA Cup. Bournemouth at home. Now City again. In the space of a few weeks, Arsenal have gone from “probably going to win the league and maybe the Champions League” to “remember when we were nine points clear?”
How bad is the run? Look at the last month:
| Competition | Opponent | Result | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carabao Cup Final | Man City | Loss | First trophy gone |
| FA Cup | Southampton | Loss | Second trophy gone |
| Premier League | Bournemouth (H) | 1-2 Loss | Lead trimmed over the weekend |
| Premier League | Man City (A) | 1-2 Loss | Lead now 3, with City a game in hand |
Four losses. A month. Two to the same team. And the team doing the damage is chasing another title under Pep Guardiola, a manager who has already won six Premier Leagues at City since his first in 2017/18. Six. Arsenal have won zero in 22 years.
So where does this leave us? Arsenal have five games left. City have six, including that game in hand. On paper, Arsenal still have the cushion. In reality, a team that just lost four domestic matches in a month does not feel like a team about to run the table. Momentum is a funny thing in football. It’s not real until it is, and right now, it is very, very real for Manchester City.
The Haaland factor is brutal too. He hit the outside of a post early in the second half and missed the target on another chance. On a day he wasn’t even at his best, he still scored the winning goal in the biggest league game of the season. That’s what top strikers do. That’s what Arsenal haven’t had in 22 years.
Can Arsenal still win this? Mathematically, absolutely. Three points and a game in hand is not a done deal. Football produces weirder finishes every season. But if you’re an Arsenal fan, you’ve seen this movie before. You’ve seen it five times, actually. Here’s the greatest hits:
| Season | The “They’ve Got It” Moment | The Wheels Came Off When | Finish | In Short |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002/03 | 8 points clear of Man United in March | Lost 3-2 at home to 15th-placed Leeds | 2nd, 5 points back | Spring slump, Leeds stunner at Highbury. |
| 2007/08 | 8 points clear on February 11 | Eduardo’s leg broken at Birmingham, four straight draws followed | 3rd, 4 points back | Eduardo’s leg broken, title hopes with it. |
| 2013/14 | 128 days on top, peaked +7 | Lost 5-1 at Liverpool on February 8 | 4th, 7 points back | Liverpool put five past them inside 20 minutes. |
| 2022/23 | 10-point lead, ~250 days top | Three straight draws then lost 4-1 at the Etihad | 2nd, 5 points back | Three draws, then De Bruyne bullied them. |
| 2023/24 | Unbeaten in 11 league games in 2024, top on April 6 | 2-0 home defeat to Aston Villa on April 14 | 2nd, 2 points back | Villa sucker-punch, City never slipped. |
Five times. Five different ways to lose a title race, all ending the same way. The Leeds collapse. The Eduardo collapse. The Anfield collapse. The Etihad collapse. The Villa collapse. And now, possibly, the Bournemouth-and-City collapse. You could make a documentary out of this.
Every year it’s a different reason, but the ending keeps being the same. And every year, 2004 gets a little further away.
