Lewis-Skelly’s striking pose caps afternoon of catharsis
3 Feb 2025 - The Guardian Barney Ronay Emirates Stadium - The best moment of this fun, boisterous, increasingly hallucinogenic afternoon for Arsenal’s supporters came with the game still in the balance, and with Manchester City yet to collapse like an inadequately constructed French meringue. It came, of course, from the prodigiously talented Myles Lewis-Skelly. Although it wasn’t perhaps the obvious one. With 62 minutes gone, Lewis-Skelly took a sharp pass from Declan Rice and twirled inside with an easy kind of grace, one of those players who just seems to have that naturally intimate relationship with the ball. Lewis-Skelly is an interesting footballer in lots of ways. He isn’t actually a full-back, or wasn’t before he came into the first team. Then again, full-back is a mutable thing now, the whizziest, most post-modern position on the pitch, engine of tactical reinvention, new lines and angles. We’re all inverted false-flank innovators these days. It says a lot about Lewis-Sk...