By Boris Mellor
January 7 2011

I stood and booed City off at the end with thousands of others. Not only that but we all chanted Boring Boring City, and that was the truth. I have seen Arsenal crowds clap off Barcelona after a draw and applaud Hull after being beaten by them.

But I have never heard them jeer an opponent off after being held to a draw before, not even Bolton, but then Bolton hadn’t spent £200 million on new, players in a season or two.

Yes it was true that City had only one player up front, and that was only very rarely. It’s also true they have spent a fortune on strikers and only had one shot on target. Yes it helped overcome the sense of futility and frustration at the end by jeering. It’s true that it showed a lack of ambition by a team that was second playing a team that was third and only playing for a draw.

Of course they are boring, that’s why they had one of the poorest away supports by a big club at Arsenal. Man U or Liverpool would have filled the away end, but they only needed half of it with barely over a 1000 fans, no wonder we forgot they were there. I can’t blame their fans for not travelling to see such dire stuff.

City entitled to play how they like

However even though this is all true at the end of the day it’s up to City how they play; and we all knew, including Wenger, what they were coming to do. Perhaps we should be grateful they had so little ambition, after all if they had sneaked a goal would Arsenal ever have equalised?

Arsenal played some breathtaking football in the first 35 minutes, they hit the woodwork several times, but until near misses count that counts for nothing. The football was great in the first two thirds of the pitch, but not that hot in the last third. Apart from one major save I didn’t see Hart struggle that much to keep the ball out of the net.

In the second half City look exhausted, but Arsenal’s tornado seemed to have blown itself out. I think Wenger should have rung the changes far earlier that 20 minutes from the end. Arshavin didn’t have enough time to pick a lock that others had failed to open for the first 70 minutes.

I had a feeling of déjà vu, it reminded me of those flops against Chelsea and Man U, where we did all the attacking but failed to score; true we cracked Chelsea this time around, but so did Wolves, I meant when Chelsea knew how to defend. It reminded me of that inability to get men in the box and be ruthless in the last third against top three teams.

If City lacked ambition how much ambition did Arsenal have? Did we have a striker? I am not criticising RvP, but he was clearly not playing as an out and out striker, that’s the managers decision. When Bendtner came on he was sent to the wing. How often was the ball crossed to an empty box?

This was hardly all out attack, certainly not in the box, the numbers were not there. I can’t help feeling that City have exposed Arsenal, like themselves, as Championship pretenders. This was more like a battle between second and third than first and second. Dropping two points at home is not the best way to make an assault on the top position.

Yes Arsenal are still in the race, but last night there was only one winner, and that was Manchester United. The league may well be their’s to lose; if Arsenal want to change that they will need to be more ruthless in the final third against teams that can really defend.