The Gunners were six seconds from a statement win

Six seconds. That’s all there was of the game left. Michael Oliver ended the match exactly six seconds of playing time after City’s equaliser. That’s how close the Gunners were to a statement win.

I thought they were terrific. If they’d held on they would’ve deserved the win. I don’t buy the accusation their performance was ‘anti-football’. No it wasn’t.

There are two sides to a game of football - offence and defence. Arsenal took the game to City in the first-half - then, after shooting themselves in the foot again, put on a magnificent show of dogged defending.

It made me laugh when I read David Silva making those allegations - and whining about Arsenal’s ‘dirty tricks’. My goodness, what a glorious irony. Guardiola teams have always engaged in dirty tricks. He invented them at Barcelona and developed them at Munich and City.

Having said that, you’ve got to be careful if you go down that route. I’ve no sympathy for Trossard. What he did was just plain daft, so soon after Declan Rice was punished for kicking the ball away. He deserved to go.

But if he hadn’t been booked for doing that, he could easily have been booked for the foul that led to the incident. There was no need make that clumsy challenge - right on half-time, handing City a chance to have a crack at goal from the free-kick.

I do agree with Arteta that Doku should’ve been booked. He too kicked the ball away, but let’s not forget it would’ve been a simple yellow. Trossard was on a yellow when he committed his crime. The guy must have the brains of a rocking horse.

There’s no question Oliver dropped a bollock by not booking Doku. We want consistency.

He was also a bit naughty allowing Arsenal to take the free-kick - from the wrong place by the way - in the build-up to Arsenal’s first goal. Walker was a bit slow getting back in position, but protocol demands he should’ve been allowed to do so.

There’s an argument Arsenal’s second should’ve been disallowed. Ederson is clearly stopped from getting to the corner by two Arsenal ‘blockers’. They do it all the time and I’m a little surprised officials haven’t cottoned onto it yet. I thought it was a foul.

So both sides have reason to be a little miffed, but I enjoyed the game. It was great to see Arsenal go toe-to-toe with City, whilst also believing they could win it. That was a massive change in their mind set from last season

Oh dear Rob Jones. What were you thinking? Let’s take the sequence of events, that led to three red cards being shown at Brighton, in order.

Gibbs-White’s challenge on Pedro was poor and he should’ve been booked. In fact, there’s a case he should’ve seen a straight red. There was an identical challenge by Preston’s Sam Greenwood that saw him sent-off in their game v Blackburn.

The problem at Brighton was that Jones saw nothing wrong with Gibbs-White’s tackle. He clearly signalled he thought Gibbs-White got the ball and he gave a throw to Brighton.

It was the 4th - Antony Taylor - that changed his mind. I know there’s always a conversation between the 4th and a match ref, but Taylor shouldn’t have got involved once Jones had made his decision.

And it got worse. As all hell let loose in the dug-outs you can see Taylor telling his more junior colleague to send Nuno off. That can’t be right. Suggesting yes. But making decisions from the touch-line? No. It was not Taylor’s place to do that and he made Jones look a fool.

There was a lot of confusion as to why Tottenham’s Vicario wasn’t sent-off for handling outside the box. I’m not convinced John Brooks saw the offence as Vicario got himself into a real mess, juggling the ball on the edge of his box, but it didn’t matter.

The first two times the keeper touched the ball he was inside his area. The third time he wasn’t, but it wasn’t a red card offence. It would’ve been if Vicario had denied Brentford a clear and obvious scoring attempt, but that wasn’t the case - so VAR couldn’t get involved and Brooks was off the hook

Interesting times at West Ham eh? For the first time in their history they’ve lost their first three homes games. They were poor - very poor - against Chelsea and fans were leaving the Taxpayers Stadium long before the end.

I read Jacob Steinberg in The Guardian Saturday morning referencing the ‘style revolution’ that’s supposed to be happening at West Ham. ‘It’s moving slowly’, he wrote. Adding ‘West Ham look no less dowdy after swapping David Moyes for Julen Lopetegui’.

Is that the David Moyes who picked the Hammers up when they were in the drop zone - took them to a sixth-place and seventh-place finish and delivered a European trophy? How many times have we said ‘be careful what you wish for’?

And finally. At last - execs at the European Clubs Association are talking about shutting the transfer window before the season starts. I hope they do it. It makes a lot of sense.