Granit Xhaka’s cracker caps Arsenal’s wild win over Manchester United

The game was in the balance, Manchester United pushing hard and threatening an equaliser for 2-2, Arsenal on their heels. Then, in an isolated raid forward by the home team, Granit Xhaka brought his left foot down like a sledgehammer and everything changed.

Bruno Fernandes had just missed a penalty for United. Now he was caught in possession on the edge of his own area by Mohamed Elneny, and when the ball was worked to Xhaka 25 yards out he had only one thing on his mind. The connection was impossibly sweet and the shot screamed past David de Gea.

It had been a pretty fraught afternoon for Arsenal, with Mikel Arteta’s team riding their luck. But now United were broken and it would be Arsenal’s top four hopes that were boosted. United, by contrast, are surely out of the race.

After all of the criticism in the wake of the 4-0 humbling at Liverpool last Tuesday, after all of the home truths from the interim manager, Ralf Rangnick, including the one about the squad needing open heart surgery, this was an improved United performance, at least at one end of the pitch.

United created a huge number of openings with Diogo Dalot, the right-back, twice hitting the woodwork. The returning Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored their goal, had another one narrowly ruled out for offside. Their frustration was total, encapsulated by Fernandes: he was fortunate to escape with only a yellow card on 77 minutes after he left his studs in on Nuno Tavares, who opened the scoring early on with his first Arsenal goal.

Arsenal had been the firm favourites to seal their first Champions League qualification since 2016 but it felt as if their young team had been gripped by nerves. And yet Xhaka would bend the narrative to the force of his will. The celebrations at full time reflected the scale of the result. For United, the misery goes on.

Rangnick had been forced into a defensive change after the bomb threat to Harry Maguire’s house, which is not a sentence that anybody could have imagined reading but is somehow reflective of the fury and chaos around United.

In came the fit-again Raphaël Varane in a back four and he was promptly at fault for the breakthrough goal. He was not the only one. Xhaka was given the space to waft over a cross from the left and first Varane and then Alex Telles missed their attempted clearances in slapstick fashion. The excellent Bukayo Saka shaped a shot for the far corner which was tipped out by De Gea at full stretch, but the United defence remained on their heels, particularly Dalot, and Tavares was able to tap home.

Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes sees his penalty strike a post before deflecting wide. Photograph: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images

Rangnick had welcomed back Ronaldo after the tragic death of his twin baby boy in childbirth and it was a lovely moment on seven minutes when the home crowd showed their support for him with a round of applause, as the Liverpool fans had also done at Anfield.

United responded well to Tavares’s goal but defensively they remained an accident waiting to happen. Their last line was all over the place, and soon let Eddie Nketiah in for a one-on-one chance. For the umpteenth time De Gea saved his team but he would be beaten again moments later.

What a strange goal it was, Saka nudging an Emile Smith Rowe flick through for Nketiah and being bodychecked by Victor Lindelöf in the process after the United centre-half was caught on the wrong side. Nketiah finished but VAR called him back for offside. The technology then got to work on the Lindelöf challenge. Penalty. Saka converted calmly.

It would have been easy for United to feel sorry for themselves because they had created a host of opportunities to equalise for 1-1. Anthony Elanga, who had the pace to beat Tavares, twice ran through but he could not finish; Scott McTominay wasted a headed chance; Fernandes could not unload a chip after Aaron Ramsdale had surrendered possession; Ronaldo’s touch let him down on a high ball; and Dalot rattled the crossbar from 25 yards.

The first half was wild. Arsenal were equally loose at the back, putting their fans through agonies as they tried and sometimes failed to play out from their own third. Ronaldo got in front of Gabriel too easily to convert a Nemanja Matic cross. There was still time for De Gea to save from Elneny and Martin Ødegaard, and Ramsdale to beat away a Telles blast.

Paul Pogba, missing because of a calf injury and out of contract in the summer, tweeted during the interval that he hoped to return before the end of the season. “It’s not over, United we would stand,” he wrote, the conditional tense slightly weird.

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The same could be said of Tavares’s decision to jump for a United corner with his arm outstretched. Matic rose, the ball went into Tavares’s arm and it was an obvious penalty. Although he scored, the game had turned into an ordeal for Tavares on a personal level. He was reprieved when Fernandes stuttered, hopped and dragged his kick against the outside of a post.

United continued to push. McTominay worked Ramsdale and, when Ronaldo spun and lashed home after a Fernandes headed flick, he was denied by the tightest of offside calls. Dalot then hit the post after a Ronaldo pass while Tavares was fortunate not to be penalised for a challenge on Elanga on the fringes of the area.

The equaliser felt as though it was coming. Xhaka had other ideas.