De Bruyne and Haaland run riot as Gunners fold

This wasn’t the titanic title tussle that we were promised. Manchester City are too strong for any of that nonsense, as Arsenal found to their cost.

1. It felt as though we’d been waiting a long time for this, didn’t it? And in a sense, we definitely had. Arsenal and Manchester City have been in first and second place in the Premier League for 256 days, cemented in those top two spots since the second weekend of the season. We’ve had plenty of time to look up when the fixtures between these two were scheduled for, with the wait all the more prolonged by the first one being put back four months so that Arsenal could complete their Europa League fixtures.

2. And while you don’t want to go anywhere near ‘Master vs Apprentice’ analogies, sometimes they just present themselves in too obvious a way to ignore. Mikel Arteta had five and half years with Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, and it oftentimes felt throughout this match as though this was being represented on the pitch. Arsenal have the youngest squad in the Premier League this season, at an average age of 24.4 years of age. Manchester City’s is 26.7, and it showed. City were too strong, too hard-pressing, too precise with their passing, and too clinical with their finishing. Put simply, they were too strong in every department.

3. It has felt over the last few weeks as though Manchester City have been playing as though they have a point to prove. There was a period this season in which they won only seven and lost four games from twelve. Pretty much everything they’ve done since being charged by the Premier League with multiple counts of breaking financial fair play rules in the first week of February has felt like a raised middle finger to the entire rest of football. Interpret that as you wish. It’s likely that the supporters of two – perhaps three – Premier League clubs will take one view, while the rest might take a very different one indeed.

4. There remain few more enjoyable players to watch in the world than Kevin De Bruyne when he’s on his game, and my God he has been on his game, this season. There is a pared-down simplicity about his football which flourishes because his peripheral vision is so extraordinary, his decision-making is imaginative and his use of the ball – whether running with it, passing or shooting – is so finely-tuned that he can play the game as though through a series of optical illusions. Now you see him, now you don’t.

It took just seven…