IMO: 1. Pelligrini won over AW tactically, that was the most decisive factor tonight. 2. Generally Pelligrini has preferred using silva/nasri in one wing, and navas on the other. navas gives width, like our walcott, while silva/nasri drifts in to help build up in midfield. Tonight it was a masterstroke to start nasri and silva on both wings 3. City plays a 442, Arsenal started with 4231...so we had 3v2 advantage over midfield, but silva and nasri drifting in nullified that in middle zone. 4. City specially targeted our left side, by playing nasri instead of navas. nasri drifting in meant that monreal had to follow him to inside, leaving a lot of space for zabalata to bomb forward to(like how dortmund attacked with their left back grosskruetz). They used wilshere's not-so-good defensive sense, as he failed to track zabalata effectively a number of times and he provided good crosses in the box, one of which ended up in the second goal. ofc ozil, true to his brilliance, used Zabalata's advanced positioning and drifted to that side in a counter and assisted from there for the first goal. 5. on the other flank clichy was much more conservative and made sure walcott doesn't run behind him. 6. Silva and nasri's narrow positioning meant that our fullbacks also had chances to move up, but monreal had a bad game offensively and giroud failed to capitalize on Sagna's crosses. 7. Its noteworthy that Sagna's best crosses came in 2nd half after Walcott moved to left wing and Wilshere to right. It was a fantastic move from AW as it served 2 purposes: Zabalata could no longer run freely because of the danger of Walcott and Sagna had more space in front him, as unlike walcott, wilshere drifted inside and sagna had more space from right. lots of our attacks came in this period with diagonal balls from lw to rt, girus missed 2 and walcott scored 1. 9. another important change at the start of 2nd half was we changed formation frm 4231(flamini-ramsey double pivot) to 4141/433(flamini sitting deep in front of defense, allowing ramsey up to join ozil). i haven't seen the third city goal, so i don't know how that came to happen, but overall this was the best period of the match for us. We had over 70% possession, created chances and scored a goal, and looked stable defensively. 10. Then Pelligrini made another fantastic move by introducing navas. he went to rw and attacked monreal 1v1(as zabalata could no longer attack as much). he won 1 battle against monreal and that proved decisive as City got their 4th goal. Till then Arsenal seemed more likely to score the 3rd, than City a 4th. 11. AW gambled by taking off flamini and introducing gnabry to further enhance attack down the right. This move cost us the hold over midfield and two goal, as wilshere played the worst in his third position of the match as DM, although we did get a goal from a right sided cross (and another disallowed). 12. Milner was brought in to check sagna, but we lost before that thanks to our total loss of defensive stability and possession by moving wilshere there. 13. Intriguing battle between two fantastic coaches, and anyone who has seen the match would've seen that it was a much closer game than 6-3 scoreline suggests for upto 70 mins(we had two disallowed goals, another couple of marginal calls and at least two/three misses). However it was known that if this turned out to be an open match, City had the better chance of winning with their fantastic offense. On the other hand if it were a cagey affair, Arsenal probably had the better chance with its superior defense. Pelligrini was successful in making this an open affair by better use of his personnel. with zabalata and navas, he chose to fight where he could win. 14. On the other hand, Arsene's choices of wilshere over rosicky on LW (rosicky probably would've provided better def. cover, plus wilshere isn't effective on lw as he can't drift in with his stronger foot, nor he has the pace to attack directly), of using a double pivot at first(sometimes both flamini and ramsey were caught high up) and his later gamble in moving wilshere to DM(a position he played last against Aston villa, and NOT successfully you know) were questionable. He deserves kudos for the changes he made at the start of second half, but one might wonder whether he shouldn't have worked that out before the match, and whether he shouldn't have just continued with it when his team was keeping 70% possession and creating their best chances in that system.