Sunday, January 25, 2026, gave us the type of game that ruins confident predictions. Arsenal came in as league leaders and started like a team that expected the crowd to carry them across the line with territory, pressure, and that familiar Emirates rhythm where the opponent spends too long defending their own box.

The opener arrived with the kind of cruel comedy football loves: Lisandro Martínez turned a situation into an own goal, and Arsenal had the lead without needing a masterpiece. For a moment, it looked like the usual script, with Arsenal ahead, and firmly in control. The United needed to survive the squeeze.

Then the match committed its first act of betrayal. Arsenal made a single, costly error in possession: Martin Zubimendi’s backpass went wrong, and Bryan Mbeumo pounced and brought them level, instantly changing the mood from “comfortable control” to “why do we do this to ourselves?”

Early in the second half, United found a goal that belongs to the internet: Patrick Dorgu struck a spectacular volley. There was a VAR check for a possible handball in the build-up, because of course there was, but the goal stood. Suddenly Arsenal were chasing a match they thought they were managing.

Arsenal did what good teams do when the game starts slipping: they pushed, they loaded the box, and they forced moments. The equaliser came late through Mikel Merino, in the sort of messy, set-piece chaos that doesn’t look pretty but counts the same on the scoreboard. For a few minutes, it felt like Arsenal had dragged the match back onto their terms.

But this match wasn’t interested in sharing comfort. With the clock running down, United substitute Matheus Cunhah it a long-range winner around the 87th minute, a strike that turned the Emirates from roaring to stunned in the space of one shot. Arsenal had rescued the game, then immediately lost it again, football’s most brutal emotional whiplash.

The wider picture stings for Arsenal. Their lead at the top was cut to four points, and the result handed United a huge statement win as they climbed into the top-four, opening another chapter in the narrative that Michael Carrick’s side are finding bite in big moments.

Betting takeaways

This match was a reminder that game-state beats “dominance”. Arsenal had long spells of control, but United were ruthless in the moments that actually decide outcomes: punishing errors, striking when momentum tilted, and keeping enough threat to make Arsenal’s pressure feel nervous rather than inevitable.

It also reinforced a key live-betting truth: an 84’ equaliser doesn’t “settle” a match—it often heats it up. When one team is chasing and both sides are stretched, the pitch becomes bigger, decisions become faster, and one clean strike can end the debate. Cunha’s winner was exactly that kind of late-game swing.

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