Arsenal 0-0 Manchester City: Paint dries

I wanted to expand a bit on my three-paragraph recap from yesterday. It was a boring game and a result that's very annoying, but nothing catastrophic.

Manchester City came into the game with a lead over Arsenal in the table, and they were desperate to maintain that lead. They employed a clearly defensive formation (see Zonal Marking for more on that), with Jo and James Milner playing the "winger" position in name only, and Carlos Tevez playing a lone striker role starting mostly from his own end. They put all their men behind the ball and hoped for the draw, and that's what they got, despite an early Arsenal assault.

I feared that when two Arsenal shots hit woodwork, a loose ball in the 6-yard box wasn't slotted home by van Persie, and another RvP shot was well saved by Joe Hart, it would all come back to haunt the Gunners. While a point was earned, two more would have been theirs had any one of those chances been converted. In short, bad luck and Man City's tactics were the keys to the draw.

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One of the main reasons that I'm an Arsenal fan is because of the style of football they play. I'm not old enough to have experienced the offside trap, "Boring Boring Arsenal" days so the way I think of Arsenal football is Wengerball. This is why I'm so annoyed by the match yesterday. I can respect any team that comes out to play, regardless of what style they choose. A team doesn't have to play modified Total Football in order for me to consider their existence relevant. But there are two kind of teams that I will never respect - those that park the bus and play totally defensively, with little to no attempt to actually score; and those who try to kick the opponent off the pitch, simply to stop them playing. Yesterday, City were the former.

The connection is that neither, in my eyes, is really trying to win the game. I've grown up watching American sports, and my favorite is baseball. Baseball is structured such that a draw is impossible; extra innings continue into infinity until one ends with a team holding a lead. You have to try to win. This doesn't mean that I cannot appreciate a sport in which draws are possible - the simple fact that the game ended in a draw is not what annoyed me. The cause of my rage is the fact that Roberto Mancini was not trying to win, not even a little. The draw was sought and obtained, and that's not how you play sports in my book. You don't play not to lose. Losing the two points is annoying, but particularly so considering the circumstances.

The consolation is that we got 4 points out of 6 from City, and with a little luck yesterday on any of about 5 chances on goal we’d have had all six and a season sweep against an important title rival. Recently I've tried an experiment - I'm trying to divorce emotion from my analysis of sports. It's nearly impossible to do that in the moment, and that's not what I'm going for. What I mean is that in big picture issues, there's not a lot of room for emotion. This is a situation appropriate for that kind of analysis.

Like I said, there were a handful of chances that Arsenal didn't convert; that wasn't because of anything they did wrong, it was just bad luck. The process was sound, even if the result was not optimal. That is what any team should seek. Good process is more important than good results, because a good result obtained via bad process is far less likely to be repeatable than one obtained by good process. (If you'd like an example, look at the 2006 Mets season record, then the records for the rest of Omar Minaya's tenure as general manager.) So when the process is sound, even when the team doesn't win, it does no good to get angry. If van Persie's shot saved by Hart had gone three inches higher, it's 1-0 to the Arsenal and the conversation changes. What I'm saying is that whether or not the goal is scored, everything that needed to be done to score the goal was done. Bad luck shouldn't change decision-making.

Speaking of the process, I'm not certain how I feel about either of the in-game substitutions. I wanted Walcott in the starting XI, but when he was subbed out for Arshavin I supported the move. It didn't end up working out. When Wilshere was subbed out for Bendtner, I supported the move. It didn't end up working out. I'm not going to subject Wenger to my 20-20 hindsight, because I agreed in real-time with what he did; I will say that when I saw Bendtner come in I was expecting him to play more centrally.

On the red card: I am not happy. I don't think that should have been a red to either player; however, it was a goddamned stupid thing to do on Sagna's part, and it's a situation that he shouldn't have put himself in. He now has to serve a three-match domestic ban, effective immediately. Now on the bright side, because of the vagaries of scheduling, Arsenal get a little bit lucky here. Sagna’s missing two cup games and the worst team in the league. We must not take Ipswich, Leeds, or West Ham lightly, but if I had to choose three matches to play without Sagna, these are probably the three that I would choose. However, I firmly believe Bacary Sagna to be Arsenal's best defender - especially with Vermaelen still injured - and one of the better defenders in the league. He will be missed, even if Emmanuel Eboue is a relatively effective replacement.

I'm quite annoyed by this match, but it is not a mortal blow to Arsenal's title chances by any means. We can still win the league. I don’t know if we will, but this is a team that’s good enough to win real silverware, and it’s a team that’s in position to be able to win four competitions. The process is sound, no matter whether or not it will deliver victory. As a fan, that’s the most that I can ask.