Manchester City progressed to the fifth round of the FA Cup thanks to a 1-0 win over Arsenal on Friday night. The Premier League’s top two sides played out a rather dull afair at the Etihad, with Nathan Ake’s 64th-minute strike settling the tie.
Despite that, it was a relatively lively start to the game, with Arsenal seeing a lot of the ball and creating good shooting opportunities via Takehiro Tomiyasu and Leandro Trossard, both of which were saved by City keeper Stefan Ortega Moreno.
But the hosts grew into the match, with Tomiaysu forced to scramble back and keep out an acrobatic overhead kick attempt from Erling Haaland, after Matt Turner came flying off his goal-line and dealt with the initial pass behind the Arsenal defence. Kevin De Bruyne also saw his left-footed strike from the edge of the box curl wide, while Eddie Nketiah poked the ball the wrong side of the post from a driven cross at the other end.
But it took until after the break for City to grab the opening goal, in a move that began with Julian Alvarez hitting the post and the ball rebounding to Jack Grealish on the left side of the box. He twisted and turned but couldn’t find an opening, so laid the ball back into Ake’s path and the no.6 curled a right-footed effort through the Arsenal defence and into the back of Turner’s net.
The Gunners had started the second period slowly and until the 70th minute had only registered two opportunities of note: a sliced Fabio Vieira volley and Aymeric Laporte’s inadvertent flick towards his own goal, which was saved by Ortega Moreno. The visitors did push late on to find an equaliser, with Gabriel Martinelli’s shot saved by Oretga Moreno before he dived at the fee of Nketiah to keep him out.
But City were relatively comfortable late on and held out to get a deserved win. Here’s how we rated the players...
1. Stefan Ortega Moreno- 7
Made two good saves in the first half and was solid with his kicking.
2. Rico Lewis- 5 (off 58)
Was solid enough in possession but found Trossard to be a tricky customer on the Arsenal left. Didn’t play poorly, yet to failed to offer the same impact as in recent games.
3. John Stones- 6 (off 45+3)
Found it difficult against Trossard but grew into the opening period. Stones came off with an injury in first-half injury-time.
4. Manuel Akanji- 7
Defended well and won some good tackles at centre-back.