Arsenal are still alive, but only just, after shutting one of United’s two doors to Champions League

On a strangely subdued Sunday afternoon in north London, Arsenal defeated Manchester United 2-0, courtesy of a one-two punch by Granit Xhaka and Danny Welbeck. A weakened Manchester United looked frail against an average Arsenal side. For the first time Arsene Wenger defeated Jose Mourinho in a Premier League match. Here are the match’s three main talking points:

Arsenal still alive

At last, satisfaction for Wenger and Arsenal in defeating their great nemesis Mourinho. And yet, that subsequent tingling contentment, and even valued gratification, were but a part of rivals negating each other in their tussle for a Champions League ticket – or in Arsenal’s case the right to get habitually drubbed by Bayern Munich.

Perhaps not then next season. From the kick-off, Mourinho’s intentions were crystal clear. He wants to win the Europa League as an alternative route to the Champions League and so he fielded a team to contain Arsenal. Matteo Darmian, Ander Herrera and Henrikh Mkhitaryan survived Mourinho’s rotation policy, with Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford, Daley Blind and Jesse Lingard dropping to the bench after Thursday’s 0-1 victory at Celta Vigo.

The game was often pedestrian, the anti-thesis of yesteryear’s 90 minutes between clubs in the upper echelon of the game. Where was all the acrimony and enmity? In their 3-4-3 formation Arsenal were scarcely vintage either, but they earned a well-deserved victory.

Granit Xhaka, who has become a symbol for the malaise in North London, delivered an astute match, performant and disciplined in his game. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain grew as a wing-back with incisive runs and plenty of menacing crosses.

And then, of course, there was the eternal question of Mesut Ozil’s value to Arsenal. The German was elegant as ever, offered some sumptuous touches and showed his cunning of going from the lethargic to the lethal in a nanosecond. Throughout the match, he had a fine work ethic.

Arsenal were not accomplished, but there were a few bright spots, leaving Wenger and his team with an outside chance of finishing in the top four.

Manchester United’s post-Ferguson malaise

The afternoon didn’t bring a glorious coup from Mourinho, the ever-aggrieved Portuguese coach, the persistent antagonist in football’s contemporary cosmos and the victim of so many injustices – the injuries, the grueling playing schedule and the global conspiracy against Manchester United – but rather abruptly ended the club’s invincible streak of 25 games.

From November to May, Manchester had been unbeaten, but they may still finish sixth in the Premier League. That is extraordinary and risible at once. The alternative facts Mourinho has so often presented in his defence offer little veracity. On Sunday, he fielded a team worth £230 million.

Mourinho’s preferred tactics have delineated United’s decline sharply. His team play with a bewildering conservatism. Even a makeshift United just contained and stifled, but never demonstrated a genuine ambition to attack against Arsenal, until Marcus Rashford was brought on late in the second half. This time a mind-numbing and dull draw was not the outcome.

Wayne Rooney also returned to the starting 11. He played neither as a 10 nor as a nine, perhaps more as an eight-ish or semi-winger, but whatever his position, the talismanic Englishman looked every inch a future Chinese Super League star. Perhaps his mind is already on Hebei China Fortune FC or any other CSL team with a fancy name, but United’s No 10 endured a putrid game.

Rooney is a relic from the Sir Alex Ferguson era and a metaphor for the club’s decline, one Mourinho hasn’t even come close to halting with the manner of capitulation an indictment of where Manchester United are at.

Mellow rivalry between Wenger and Mourinho

For a brief moment Mourinho couldn’t resist his compulsions and pointed a finger at his French counterpart as the latter complained to the fourth official about Rooney’s tackle on Oxlade-Chamberlain, but that was the fractious cynosure of managerial interactions on an otherwise overly mellow afternoon when the rancour of the past, the put-downs and the confrontations made way for decorum and decency on the touchline.

No pre-match mind games, no barbs, no animosity, but just a mundane shake of the hand before kick-off between Le Professeur and the Special One. Mourinho abandoned his malicious sense of pestering Wenger, with knee jerk banter or even outright malign.

Perhaps, the apparent ceasefire fitted the match and the existential questions surrounding both coaches – so different in both personal style and philosophy, a purist and a pragmatic, a pacifier and an aggravator, whose disappointing results have galvanised a growing army of detractors questioning both coaches’s proficiency.

Perhaps, Mourinho no longer deemed it necessary to put Wenger down. He enjoys a superior personal league record against the Frenchman (13-1), and in the pecking order of English football Arsenal have dropped considerably. Recent league tables suggest that may be a fallacy: ever since Ferguson left United, Arsenal have finished above their northern rivals in the Premier League.

And, yet, in the post-match press conference, Mourinho couldn’t refrain from trolling Wenger: “Do you think I enjoy the fact that a big club like Arsenal is not winning big trophies?”