Below is the analysis from The SUN UK
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW it's a question of who blinks first.
After a remarkable afternoon of see-saw football and jam-packed incident, the title is now a straight fight between the two Manchester clubs.
City may have felt the pressure creeping up on them over the last couple of months but now the squeeze is really on.
They got all the breaks against Spurs yesterday in a win that probably ends Tottenham's interest in the title.
As for Chelsea, they were never in it. Arsenal? Dream on.
The only question is the identity of the man who had the greatest influence on yesterday's traumatic events.
Some might point the finger at Jermain Defoe for his extraordinary miss at the end of the match between Tottenham and Manchester City at the Etihad.
Others will castigate referee Howard Webb for failing to see the stamp on Scott Parker's head by the unspeakable Mario Balotelli.
That allowed the thuggish Italian to stay on the pitch and both win and convert the injury-time penalty that gave City three points they never deserved.
And some will have no doubt that, later in the afternoon, it was a remarkable blunder by Arsene Wenger that led to Manchester United escaping from the Emirates with the victory that keeps them on City's coat-tails.
It was an extraordinary decision by the Arsenal boss to substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain not long after the feisty, hugely-impressive, young winger set up the Gunners' equaliser and replace him with the hopelessly out-of-form Andrey Arshavin.
It was the first time in footballing history an Ox had been replaced by a carthorse.
It was almost as if Wenger, defying common sense,WANTED to wind up his own supporters by suggesting the very people who have kept the club going down the years knew nothing.
Suddenly the juice was taken out of the whole Arsenal performance — almost as if the cable carrying the electricity to the team had been ripped out of the wall.
Worse was to follow when Arshavin turned his back on Antonio Valencia and allowed the winger to move into the box and set up the winner for Danny Welbeck.
Wenger, barracked by his own fans for the first time in his career, then tried to explain it away by saying Oxlade-Chamberlain had been suffering from fatigue.
Fatigue? It may have been the 75th minute but the 18-year-old still looked as fresh as a daisy four minutes earlier as he ran at the United defence to lay on the chance for Robin van Persie to squeeze home his 23rd goal of the season.
It was an absurd excuse and one that further reveals just how much Wenger is losing the plot at the Emirates.
The match, Arsenal's eighth defeat of the season, ended in a chorus of boos with furious home fans screaming: 'Spend some ****ing money'.
It graphically summed up the belief of so many supporters that the club has now become a bank rather than a football club.
Arsenal now have just 36 points from their opening 22 games — their worst ever under the Frenchman at this stage of the season.
They now trail Chelsea by five points and their hopes of Champions League football would have been hanging by an even slimmer thread had Chelsea not spurned so many chances in a goalless draw at Norwich the day before.
At the top, three points still separate the two Manchester clubs after City dug out their late win over Spurs.
Leading 2-0 some 15 minutes into the second half, they seemed home and hosed. Only for goals from Defoe and Gareth Bale to make it 2-2.
And with one minute of normal time left, they should have been staring at a first defeat in 16 home league games.
0 Comments