Man City rue Tottenham curse amid gloomy Arsenal title reality

Manchester City had Tottenham beaten but somehow managed to throw it away in a frustrating Premier League draw

Will the Tottenham curse last forever? Manchester City have been burned too badly and too often to begin to think it would end, but it felt like the most comfortable explanation for Blues trying to explain how their team had thrown away a game that should already have been won.

Pep Guardiola's side were home and dry, two hands on a fourth consecutive win at this stadium as they led by two goals at half-time against opponents who looked down before the game had started and out when Antoine Semenyo doubled City's advantage.

The atmosphere inside this ground is not what it once was when it first opened and the frustration of the home supporters certainly did not help Thomas Frank and his beleaguered team in a pretty desperate first half. If City had played anywhere better than average, they would have led by more than two goals.

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But, for the fourth time in their last six Premier League games, they did not and were made to pay for it. Never mind catching Arsenal, every team City play at the minute knows no comeback is ever too difficult.

The first half had been largely about City's relative veterans in midfield making sure that their advantage counted. It was Bernardo Silva who won the ball to allow Rayan Cherki to score early and Rodri who won it and passed forward for Silva to square to Semenyo.

That should have been that, and then the wastefulness from Semenyo and Erling Haaland could have been forgotten about and the gap at the top of the table reduced to four points. In what has become a worrying new trend though, City came out for the second half looking like a team that were playing a different game.

Gianluigi Donnarumma had already done brilliantly to stop a thundering effort from Destiny Udogie when Dominic Solanke got the better of Abdukodir Khusanov and in his desperation to stop him Guehi could only knock it into his own net. A stadium that had been completely flat was now alive, and City only had themselves to blame. What was worse, they didn't show any signs of recovery and the changes that Guardiola made to sure things up immediately backfired.

Nico Gonzalez came off the bench and Nico O'Reilly shifted to left-back in the 69th minute, and in the 70th they both left each other to dispossess Conor Gallagher and the midfielder surged forward and crossed for Solanke to somehow flick the ball over Donnarumma with his heel. Having been going backwards all half, a spluttering City had to snap out of their paralysis and start to threaten again.

That proved too hard for them to do, and again they can't say they didn't have the chances to win it. Erling Haaland shook his head in disgust at full-time and there are times when you have sympathy for him - being manhandled from corners by Radu Dragusin and getting no fouls, for example - yet this was another game where City's top scorer had not scored the goals he should have done and the Blues had paid the price.

He wasn't the only one who was poor, but as one of the leaders in the team and someone who should be chasing the Ballon d'Or every year he has to be doing more. Having been gifted multiple lives in this title race, City keep crumbling under minimal pressure to return the favour for Arsenal.

If they can't end the Tottenham curse, they can't keep being this bad for a half every week.