Bryan Mbeumo humbled Arsenal striker Viktor Gyokeres in the war of the debutants but Manchester United may be reconsidering that £100m Bruno Fernandes call.
1) A unique set of circumstances is required to produce a meeting between clubs the size of Arsenal and Manchester United from which the loser emerges generally happier than the winner.
The emotions usually run too high, the resentment too bitter, the rivalry too deep and the bragging rights too enticing for analysis and introspection to override outcome bias.
But a collapsed giant in 15th spending a similar amount to the perennial runners-up to bridge a 32-point gulf in quality, even just in a one-off game, only feeds the narrative of one side finding its feet at the start of a grand rebuild while the other stagnates and struggles to make the final step.
2) The challenge as ever for Manchester United is to use this platform and these foundations properly.
This was not the calibre of game Amorim’s side failed to show up in last season. He engineered a victory over Manchester City, draws with Liverpool, Arsenal and City and single-goal defeats to Spurs and Chelsea in his few chastening months since being appointed.
It reached the point where a spirited draw at Anfield left the manager “really mad” because “we have to do it against any opponent,” while captain Bruno Fernandes said he “wasn’t worried about people putting in effort today because it’s Liverpool, everyone’s going to try to do their best. I’m more worried about Southampton”.
Amad rescued them with a hat-trick in the final ten minutes of that game but Amorim was breaking televisions against Brighton a few days later and the club’s only Premier League victories from February up to the final day were at home to Ipswich and away at Leicester.
Manchester United have trampled over too many green shoots of promise they have only just planted to engender much faith in this latest long-term plan. Their modern history contains more false dawns than a Vicar of Dibley convention. Do this against Fulham and Burnley before the international break and we’ll start believing this might be different.
3) Arsenal will and should invoke the cliche about the three points being the most important thing for the next few days.
There is still some sense of achievement in gutting out a win at an invigorated but dilapidated Old Trafford, and avoiding the loss of any title race ground this early is necessary if the initial aim is to avoid complete and total head loss.
Liverpool and Manchester City can make their four-goal statements before Arsenal stumble over their words, but the final message was all the same. And Chelsea showed that the title tag can weigh heavy for those unprepared.
The run also goes on: Arsenal remain unbeaten in 22 Premier League games against the rest of the Big Six, dating back two and a half years. It is a phenomenal record.
4) But Mikel Arteta knows that there will come a time when style and substance must amalgamate, when performances and results coalesce. 1-0 to the Arsenal is a fun chant, not a sustainable diet.
The Spaniard’s measured post-match take was heartening, with a healthy balance of satisfaction with the result and contentment with certain aspects of the game, but an acceptance that the standard has to be much higher when the pre-season kinks are ironed out.
“Twenty-two years at Old Trafford without winning before I came,” he said. “Now I go into the dressing room, we won and they’re not happy. It’s a good sign.”
That mentality and the ability to grind out a result will be imperative and routinely ignored by the critics. But Arsenal have to show soon that £200m has been spent to add more feathers to their bow than set pieces in this turbocharged nuclear title war.
5) Having Viktor Gyokeres up to anything resembling speed would have been useful.
A challenger signing a brutish Scandinavian striker who ostensibly changes their entire style makes the comparison a bit on the nose but no less inevitable when it comes to Erling Haaland.
And 21 touches with four passes completed in an hour really underpinned that same all-or-nothing narrative Gyokeres will bring to the table.
The plan cannot have been for him to have more crosses or clearances than shots, although that neat centre-forward trick of relieving pressure by winning fouls on the halfway line with no teammate within 20 yards will be particularly handy when defending those narrow leads.
But really – and understandably – the team’s instincts of playing with that brand of attacking spearhead were not there and will take time to develop.
There were two moments when he was played in out wide, on either side and in either half, and the Sporting iteration of Gyokeres might have expected to battering ram his way inside before finishing with at least one plomb. But an overhit ball which soared over all three teammates, and a clumsy run which ended with him stepping on the ball in the area and fouling a defender, pointed to a player some way off the pace.
Maybe going on strike to force a move which was always likely to happen and thus missing most of pre-season wasn’t too bright an idea. A shiny penny to whomever is first to ask whether Arsenal are better without him.
READ MORE: Arsenal have signed a pub striker in Viktor Gyokeres
6) Kai Havertz gave compelling ammunition to that question in his 30 minutes. Arsenal naturally looked smoother and more coherent when he came on but the difference in sharpness, technical levels and decision making against what came before with Gyokeres was clear.
That competition and variation should only benefit Arsenal – once Gyokeres has regained the physicality which made him such an obvious addition.
7) On the other end of the debutant excitement scale, those Manchester United ‘policy’ signings look proper.
The Premier League premium can be excessive but the plug-in-and-play performances of Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo showed why clubs charge and pay them.
With no time needed to acclimatise to the league and its demands, an entire attack was transformed. Cunha and Mbeumo had as many shots as Arsenal between them, and more on target. Even Benjamin Sesko looked bright and busy in his cameo.
Worra trophy indeed. And ultimately it did still end with Harry Maguire chucked up front. But it turns out spending £200m on a completely new frontline while loaning out all the previous composite parts can rejuvenate it.
8) It is not worth contemplating how much needs to be spent fumigating and then rectifying their other glaring problem positions.
The hosts’ midfield was semi-functional. It turns out Casemiro lacks mobility and Bruno Fernandes is often stretched across a few different roles and responsibilities. A more coherent side would have exploited the gaps Mason Mount didn’t frequently drop deep to plug.
But the substitutions were revealing. Kobbie Mainoo was unused and instead Manuel Ugarte was given a half-hour cameo summed up by an atrocious shot from 30 yards out to waste some excellent Sesko link-up play.
Brighton are going to extract a comical amount of money from skint Sir Jim next summer for Carlos Baleba. Whether this midfield can hang on for long enough is unknown.
9) The goalkeeper situation is untenable. Leaving Andre Onana out was a choice and the justification of him having barely trained after recovering from injury stands up to reason, but when his back-up is inhibited by the exact same issues of reliability to the extent that conceding a corner is tantamount to conceding a goal regardless of who stands between the posts, investing hundreds of millions on forwards is pointless.
Altay Bayindir had almost nothing to do besides – certainly in terms of saves – but flapping at that corner was a game-changing moment.
10) It did not help that early in the second half, when Cunha had purchased one of his many fouls from William Saliba by the corner flag, David Raya confidently and competently punched the delivery away despite being pinned on his line among a raft of bodies.
The way Raya has transitioned to becoming a genuinely brilliant keeper is not spoken of often enough, nor how Arteta absolutely nailed such a ruthless decision.
There were a couple of shaky moments on the ball in his own area but also some fine saves from a man starting his hunt for a third consecutive Golden Glove in decent fettle.
11) That sort of brutal, cutthroat call really might need to be made on Arsenal’s left wing at some point. If Gyokeres is going to be slightly detached from team play and judged on the quality and decisiveness of his touches rather than volume, Gabriel Martinelli cannot afford to do similar.
It surely wasn’t by design that two-thirds of Arsenal’s attack were isolated but Martinelli had even fewer touches and completed passes than Gyokeres despite not even being close to the sort of peripheral player in the link-up who comes alive in front of goal.
One quick break collapsed due to the Brazilian’s dreadful pass, while his opportunities to test Bayindir were snatched and wasted.
Arsenal could charge a sizeable rent based on the room for improvement in that position; it really could hold them back.
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12) Mbeumo was electric from the first minute, when his combination of sublime touch and forearm into Martin Zubimendi’s face drew roars from the crowd.
He earned bookings for both the left-backs he faced, pulled out an overhead kick and looked like he belonged.
Cunha was arguably even better and that dribble from midway inside his own half through three opponents to manufacture a shot must have been manna to supporters who didn’t realise forwards were allowed to do such things.
Their character and instincts are a massive upgrade on what came before. Fernandes has finally been relieved of that attacking burden, albeit at great expense.
13) But where the captain fits on this ship is unknown as the issues in slotting him into this system persist. His midfield pairing with Casemiro is not viable and the duty he has to drop deep in the build up is not always beneficial.
The corner Arsenal scored from was conceded unnecessarily when Fernandes played a six-yard pass backwards to Leny Yoro inside his own area as the centre-half was being closed down in plain view. Bayindir, Luke Shaw and Patrick Dorgu were guilty of similarly careless turnovers of possession in dangerous areas.
Fernandes still created five chances because that’s what he does, but maybe £100m in exchange for a brilliant but incongruous 30-year-old wasn’t the worst deal.
14) A key difference between Arsenal’s first and second-half performances could be seen through the prism of Martin Odegaard, who capitalised on those midfield spaces to complete the most take-ons of any player in the opening 45 minutes with three.
Those chances were squandered but Manchester United were struggling to cope at times with his dribbling.
Then Odegaard made precisely no take-ons in the second half, with the only possible explanation being that his inane half-time chat with Sky Sports drained him of all energy and enthusiasm.
15) Matthijs de Ligt was really good. In both boxes actually. That late block on Bukayo Saka was exceptional. He might yet start successive seasons under the same coach, the lucky sod.
16) Justice for either Celeste or both Tinie Tempah and Eric Turner.