Arsenal settle scores as Hale End humble Man City on night to remember | OneFootball

Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri involved on landmark night

Well, he knows who he is now. Erling Haaland, meet Myles Lewis-Skelly - he’s just scored, he’s in the corner, and he is, quite frankly, taking the Mick.

With half an hour still to play, the lead only two goals at that stage and Haaland having already scored once, you wondered whether the 18-year-old had gone a bit early. Might be tempting fate. Had it been the unfortunate Kai Havertz delivering the jibe, City would almost certainly have come back to win 4-3.

Myles Lewis-Skelly does Erling Haaland’s goal celebration

Getty Images

Lewis-Skelly, though, is a young man playing with a frankly nonsensical lack of fear. The idea that a teenage defender without a goal in senior football might pre-plan his response to scoring it against the English champions is in itself joyously obscene.

In a squad not short at left-back - there were four more senior options on the bench here - he may just have made the shirt his own. Thomas Tuchel names his first England squad next month; what chance he provides a timely solution there, too?

How the kid has seized his chance since making his debut at the Etihad as an unknown quantity - certainly to Haaland - only five months ago.

And fair play, Arsenal, too for like Lewis-Skelly seizing a moment, and doing so just as it threatened to slip away. Havertz had missed a glorious chance for 2-0 and Haaland, having been utterly locked down by Gabriel and William Saliba in the first half, had equalised with his first opportunity of the game.

What will this, one of the great days of the Emirates era, mean when all is said and done in May?

So much of this season’s narrative has been about things sneaking awry, of one setback after another and the full jigsaw never quite slotting into place. Things have been happening to Arsenal; here they made them happen for themselves.

City were level only for a minute, before Thomas Partey’s strike flew in to restore the lead via a wicked deflection off John Stones. Lewis-Skelly extended it six minutes later, dipping onto his weaker right foot and firing a shot that Stefan Ortega could only tip onto the post and in.

And even then, there was no let-up, a vulnerable City put away as Havertz ended an evening that will have done little to quiet the debate over Arsenal’s striking needs with a well-taken fourth. Substitute Ethan Nwaneri made it 5-1 - maybe the most satisfying thrashing scoreline? - with what somehow has already become a trademark curler. The 17-year-old has seven goals this season despite remaining on the periphery. Hale End is doing something right.

What will this, one of the great days of the Emirates era, mean when all is said and done in May?

Myles Lewis-Skelly with Ethan Nwaneri after the game

Arsenal FC via Getty Images

Still, Liverpool could be nine points clear at the top by the time Mikel Arteta’s side play their next league game, with no sign of letting up.

The manner of their victory over Bournemouth 24 hours earlier, with Cherries forward Justin Kluivert missing an open goal that would have levelled the game, added to the air of inevitable triumph that is gathering around Arne Slot’s team.

Arsenal vs Manchester City, though, has become a genuine rivalry in its own right, one no longer reliant on its protagonists being locked head-to-head in a title race. It stands on its own merits, full of fire and fury, even a bit of hatred.

Liverpool may be clear as the best team in the country right now, but so what? One of the fiercest clashes of the old Arsenal vs Manchester United rivalry, the infamous ‘50th game’ at Old Trafford, came in a year when Chelsea won the league by 12 points.

Both managers in their eternal love-in had tried to play down lingering tensions in the build-up, but the players were quite something else. Gabriel was asked in an interview this week whether the emotions of September’s explosive encounter were now heat-of-the-moment history. “No, no - it’s still there,” he replied. But perhaps not quite any more.