That’s your lot, then. Plenty more red hot action to come - I’ll be back for Liverpool v Aston Villa later, but in the intervening hours go join the boy Ian McCourt for all the goals and so forth from the 3pm kick-offs.

90 mins + 6: City almost get that late, late winner from a Silva free-kick on the left that he clips into the box, which Szczesny flaps at something rotten, but it falls just too far away from Kompany for him to shoot.

90 mins + 4: GOA....oh no it’s offside. Some terrific play by City gives Dzeko a brilliant chance, he shoots side-footed but Szczesny makes a brilliant save, though he only manages to push it into the path of Nasri, who puts into the empty net. Alas, alack, Nasri was a yard off as Dzeko shot, and the flag rightly goes up.

90 mins + 3: Oh dear lord. City hit the post, via some top-notch slapstick. A cross comes in from deep aiming for Dzeko, but Koscielny gets there first, only to kick the ball - I think - into his own face, it loops past Szczesny and gently thunks into the woodwork. Now that would’ve made it the most Arsenal game ever.

89 mins: 95th minute City winner to complete the job...

88 mins: Eeek - what a hit that was. Kolarov might not be that reassuring at the back, but he can kick a football really, really hard, which he does from the left side of the area having beaten Chambers to the ball and it bazunks into the near post, with Szczesny grasping.

87 mins: Welbeck goes very close indeed. The striker spent a few seconds on the floor, possibly having suffered an injury of some description, then collects the ball on the left corner of the box and curls a shot at goal, but it goes just wide. That’s his last involvement - Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain replaces him.

84 mins: Dreadful shame he’s cut that ponytail off, really.

83 mins: And City are level, Demichelis rising like a formerly-ponytailed salmon in the area to power a header at goal, which Szczesny gets a hand to but can only push it into the side of the net. Flamini was behind him and probably would’ve headed it off the line, but obviously the keeper had to make a go at saving it.

81 mins: Debuchy is taken off on a stretcher, having been given oxygen, which isn’t necessarily a sign of anything incredibly serious, but equally can’t be a brilliant thing. Calum Chambers replaces him.

79 mins: Oooh, this doesn’t look good. Debuchy goes down screaming in pain with nobody anywhere near him. Either an ankle or a knee problem, I’d wager.

Meanwhile, just seen a replay of that penalty incident, and I reverse my position: Wilshere clearly moved his arm towards the ball, should’ve been a penalty.

78 mins: Change for City - Aleksandar Kolarov is on, Fernandinho is off.

77 mins: Wilshere’s been excellent in the second half. The midfielder picks out a perfect, chipped pass over the City defence for Ramsey, who attempts a similar side-footed volley to the one Sanchez scored with, but he misses his kick. A few moments earlier, the ball struck Wilshere’s arm in his own box, but it would have been harsh to give that one.

74 mins: Arsenal take the lead, and with some gusto. A cross from the left is headed half-away by Kompany, it in turn is headed back over the defence and to the far post towards Sanchez, who displays perfect technique to hit a side-footed volley into the top corner. He then takes off his shirt to reveal a rippling, completely hairless torso, and is booked.

73 mins: David Silva is an absolutely absurd footballer at times. In a position when most would simply give up and congratulate his opponents for crowding him out, Silva wriggles his way out of the tightest of spots with some fantastic control.

70 mins: A half-chance for Welbeck, as he chases onto a loose ball, but Hart gets there just ahead of him. Arsenal look the better team at the moment.

69 mins: Mike MacKenzie asks: “As no doubt many MBM participants are busy building up your deflated ego, I’m sure I don’t need to do that! I was wondering though if The Man has a ranking system for you MBMers that he uses to assign matches? Not that it helps FIFA in World Cups of course ...”

We wrestle for the big games. I put Jacob Steinberg in a sharpshooter to get this game.

68 mins: Sub for City - Agüero is off, with a hint of a limp, and Edin Dzeko comes on instead.

66 mins: Arsenal nearly take the lead - Özil plays a nice pass out to Debuchy who has a clearish sight of goal, but he skews the shot wide of the near post.

65 mins: Alexander Wells turns the tables: “That’s some top banter from David “Davo” Prentice, but I am hoping by the time Lukas Podolski comes on we get some proper A-list readers emailing in – Noble Francis, Philippa Suarez, that sort of thing.”

While Magnus Lind offers: “I liked Barney and Glendenning before they where famous. Now they are way too commercial. Nick Miller is surely the hipsters choice.”

63 mins: Absolutely splendid work from Arsenal. Some neat passing in the area puts Wilshere in on goal, he takes three perfect touches, drops a shoulder then lifts a right-footed shot over Hart, who perhaps went down a little early. City players protest in rather strong terms, believing there should have been a foul earlier in the move, but they get nowhere. Agüero goes into the book for his whinge, indeed.

62 mins: Monreal goes into the book for clattering into Navas from behind, but the ball had broken to Milner in a dangerous position, so referee Clattenburg should probably have let that one go.

60 mins: Comforting words from Vicky, to my shattered sense of self-worth: “It’s more A-List to not be considered A-List...”

Thanks Vicky. I’ll stop sobbing in a minute.

58 mins: Clichy goes close, firstly robbing a dithering Özil, then breaking into the box to collect a return ball and dink it over Szczesny, but it bounces just wide. Flamini got booked a minute ago - did I mention that? No? Sorry - I have now. An A-lister wouldn’t make that mistake.

57 mins: Sanchez fair belts towards goal from deep, and has three options: shoot, Özil to his right and Welbeck to his left, the latter being by far the least attractive due to the striker being quite tightly marked. Of course, that’s the one he opts for, and it’s cut out.

55 mins: Silva nods out to Navas on the right, but his low cross is cleared at the near post. Bit of a lull at the moment. Something interesting will happen in a minute.

Oh, and there it is: Agüero cuts in from the right and swings the ol’ left boot at the ball, slicing his shot just over the bar.

52 mins: Waqas Mir LEAPS to your correspondent’s defence. Sort of. “Poor form from David Prentice. Everyone knows that Smyth, Murray, Doyle and Ashdown are the A List. No offence, like.”

50 mins: Bloody hell, this is getting silly now. Fernandinho the latest to go in the book for a cynical, high trip on Wilshere. He tries the old ‘Oooh, I’ve hurt myself ref, you wouldn’t book an injured man’ schtick, but to no avail.

49 mins: Agüero breaks past Mertesacker, who moves slower than a tank, but goes to ground under the challenge of Koscielny, but no dice/free kick given by the referee.

48 mins: Oof, Arsenal should be level. Some neat work on the edge of the box puts Sanchez in on the right side, he threads a neat low cross towards Welbeck, but Zabaleta just beats him to it and clears.

46 mins: The expected change occurs for City - Nasri is on for Lampard, presumably with Milner moving inside and Nasri taking up his position on the left.

A burn, and a very burny one, from David Prentice on the emails: “Well done for the first half minute by minute. Nice straight bat. But could we have a bona fide A-lister like Barry Glendinning or Barney Ronay for the second half? Cheers, mate.”

Guess how many fingers I’m holding up, Davo.

Meanwhile, over at St Andrews, Birmingham’s game against Leeds had to be stopped for nine minutes after Brum’s Wes Thomas quite literally broke the net while scoring a goal.

This makes sense. Lampard either isn’t fit or is carrying an injury - probably the former - and will cause City some problems if he carries on like this for much longer.

45 mins + 1: And Debuchy takes his revenge, another bookable foul that isn’t punished with a booking.

44 mins: Another foul by City. Rough boys, today. Milner takes out Debuchy down the Arsenal right, and gets a good talking to but no booking.

43 mins: Monreal plays Özil in down the left, but a reverse pass infield is, to be frank, rubbish, and finds nobody.

41 mins: Navas is a slightly unlikely hatchet man (although those eyes could probably kill), but he hacks at Sanchez’s ankles for the second time in a few minutes. Sanchez takes the free-kick himself, the cross is poor but it breaks to Özil outside the box, and he skies his shot.

39 mins: Özil finds himself in the middle and cuts across to the left, but drags his shot well wide of the far post.

37 mins: Navas clips Sanchez to the floor and gives Arsenal a free-kick to the left of goal about 25 yards out. The Chilean hitches up his shorts to a height that threatens to expose his swingers, and curls the set piece over the bar.

34 mins: It is of course the done thing to bang on about Mesut Özil, but City are getting plenty o’ joy down the Arsenal left, partly because the German isn’t doing much by way of tracking back, thus leaving Nacho Monreal exposed.

Wilshere is a lucky boy not to at least get a booking after aiming a needless, spiteful kick at Clichy’s calf with the ball comfortably three yards away. Doesn’t come across as a particularly likeable character Jack, does he?

32 mins: City go very close to making it two. Nice work from Navas and Zabaleta down the right sets up Silva in the box, who tries a low finish but it’s not particularly convincing and Szczesny makes a reasonably comfortable save.

31 mins: Lampard looks like he might turn into a liability quite quickly. He tries a shot that is blocked, and rebounds to Sanchez who scampers up field, Lampard makes a token attempt at chasing him but gives up. He doesn’t look fit.

28 mins: Against the run of play somewhat, but City counter down the right, Navas bursts towards the right side of the box and puts a low cross to the near-post, where Agüero is waiting to clip it beyond Szczesny and into the net. Lovely finish.

26 mins: Ooof, that was close. Milner drifts infield and launches a shot at goal, tailing away with the curl from the effort in the middle of the pitch, but it goes just over the bar.

Meanwhile, Arsenal fans ask their City counterparts where they were ‘when they were shit’. Well, there, probably.

25 mins: Samir Nasri warms up. Arsenal fans boo Samir Nasri. Samir Nasri grins.

24 mins: Arsenal try another counter-attack, but Monreal dithers for too long, plays a pass behind Ramsey who in turn launches an aimless cross into the box, and nothing comes of a promising situation. Meanwhile, Zabaleta gets a booking for a pretty spicy challenge on Sanchez earlier in the move.

22 mins: Ramsey tries to launch a counter-attack through the middle, but Lampard clanks after him and whips his legs away with a foul from behind/the side, and rightly gets a booking.

“City’s shorts should be white,” wrote Paul Ruffley about 30 seconds before that. “And Lampard looks a bit behind the pace.”

That he does Paul. That he does.

20 mins: City really are trying to rough Arsenal up, here. Kompany advances from defence to batter into Ramsey, conceding a free-kick in a dangerous position. Alas, they do nowt constructive with it.

18 mins: Debuchy gets out of a spot of bother with some nifty footwork on the right side of his box, but James Milner yomps across and takes the ball with one leg but absolutely wipes the French full-back out with the other. Not sure why that wasn’t a free-kick.

16 mins: Fernandinho finds himself in some space outside the area, he tries to thread a pass through to Zabaleta, but it’s too strong.

Meanwhile, wistful and worried United fan Michael Hood writes: “As a wistful and worried United fan, really feel that Welbeck will click with Arsenal. Will give them the pace and directness that they’ve sorely lacked with their tippy-tappy play of past years. This despite Wenger’s bizarre welcoming comments made on Thursday.”

15 mins: Arsenal looking pretty good here. Sanchez dances around a couple of City midfielders and tries to feed Welbeck, it’s cut out but falls to Ramsey, who tries a shot from the edge of the area, only for Hart to make a relatively comfortable save.

12 mins: Welbeck hits the post! So close for the new lad, as he runs onto a through-ball, is one-on-one with Joe Hart and dinks a near-perfect dink over his England colleague and looks for all the world like it will be a debut goal, but it just strikes the inside of the post and rebounds into the grateful arms of the City keeper.

10 mins: Sergio Aguero, who often fits that brilliant description of Bryon Butler’s about his former father-in-law, wriggles himself some room on the left side of the box and puts in a low cross, but Silva is muscled out before he can finish.

9 mins: Welbeck looks shorter in an Arsenal kit, oddly.

7 mins: More neat work from Arsenal puts the ball across to Sanchez on the right corner of the area, he tries a low shot and Hart does well to save a ball dipping and bouncing just a bit in front of him. The ball then breaks to the left and it’s crossed in by Wilshere, and with City playing an unsuccessful offside trap Hart has to come out and punch the ball away before Sanchez can nip in.

6 mins: Ach, bad call from Ramsey. A promising move sets up the Welshman around 25 yards out, and he tries to shoot when he had better options. It goes miles wide. Silly Aaron.

5 mins: Wilshere goes on a tumble after Clichy sticks out a leg, but referee Mark Clattenburg was having none of that carry-on, and waves the protests away.

4 mins: Fernandinho gets a talking to after a robust challenge on Ramsey. Gael Clichy has a beard now. Not much happening yet.

2 mins: Arsenal knock the ball around basically in their own penalty area, which brings a few ‘Olés’ from the home crowd, but it’s pretty daft and a bit dangerous, really.

1min: We’re off. I don’t like Manchester City’s shorts. There. I’ve said it. Nike will presumably come crashing to the ground after that blast.

The players are out on the pitch, and I can confirm that Welbeck in an Arsenal top looks weird. Too weird, really.

Aaron Ramsey: also a pretty face.

“As a Chelsea fan,” writes Raghuram Cadambi, “I do feel that there’s something vile about Lampard - IMO our greatest ever player - turning out in a City shirt. Perhaps Arsenal fans can mail in some pointers on how to cope? They’ve had sufficient recent experience of watching their club heroes play for rival clubs (and Man City in particular).”

Jake Humphrey just paid tribute to Primal Scream guitarist Throb, who died this week, which affords us the opportunity to listen to ‘Loaded’. Enjoy:

Mark Scott’s been on, talking about one of BT Sport’s pundits: “Is Ian Wright on a “pay-per-sentence” pundit contract? For about the 265th time this season, he’s followed a Steve McManaman comment with “Well, there’s not much you can add to that...” before, well, adding a whole lot of not much to that. Two ears, one mouth, Ian; let’s use them accordingly, eh???”

Won’t have a bad word said against Wright, largely because of this. Man, dusty in here...

Manuel Pellegrini is being interviewed on the telly, which should be everyone’s cue to go make a cup of tea.

Meanwhile, Tony Walton in Crete has another theory about why Nasri might not be playing: “Because the home crowd will harass him till his game falls apart. As at Wembley for the Shield. Which we won.”

It was when these two played last season of course that Mesut Özil got a right good telling off from Per Mertesacker, on account of not saying thank you to the fans, or sommat.

If there are any United or Chelsea fans reading, feel free to mail in your thoughts about how weird seeing Danny Welbeck and Frank Lampard out there is.

Some, if not all of the players will be wearing these bootlaces today, designed to promote anti-homophobia in football. Which, unless you’re a massive homophobe or one of those dolts who things sport and politics/society shouldn’t meet, we can probably all agree is a pretty good thing.

Anyone know why Samir Nasri is only on the bench? Seems odd. The suggestion in the office is that it’s so Milner can provide greater defensive cover, but that would be a pretty negative move from ol’ Manuel Pellegrini, wouldn’t it?

Homer and Langley Collyer were, as their shared surname might suggest, brothers. They lived together in a large Harlem house, and were, to use a quite spectacular understatement, hoarders. Their house was full of every sort of rubbish imaginable, detailed thus by their Wikipedia (only the finest sources of information for the Guardian) page:

Items were removed from the house such as baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, photos of pinup girls from the early 1900s, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer’s hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child’s chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the chassis of the old Model T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and other fabrics, clocks, fourteen pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old, and thousands of bottles and tin cans and a great deal of garbage.

After Homer lost his eyesight, his brother left his job to care for him, and the pair basically became shut-ins, withdrawing from society and Langley would only leave the house after midnight to buy/forage for food, and of course collect other miscellaneous items to join the rest of the clutter in their house. The house became a warren of tunnels created in the piles of rubbish, and the brothers slept in ‘nests’ they created. Langley died after inadvertently setting off one of the booby traps he set up to ward off intruders, and Homer passed away a few days later, unable to care for himself, from starvation. They were, to say the least, set in their ways.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us on to Arsene Wenger. It’s doubtful that Wenger lives in a garbage-filled house, but he is a stubborn old sort, much/sort of like the Collyer brothers. Why, tell us dear reader, would Wenger not buy another defender in the summer transfer window? He only has six of them, and a 19-year-old is the first back-up in at least two positions. Why, also, did he not buy someone else with a bit of presence in midfield, the problems of which become particularly stark if Aaron Ramsey, injured on that 5-a-side pitch in the week‎, is missing against Manchester City today. Sure, buying Danny Welbeck is grand, but largely because Wenger is such a stubborn sod, they enter the beef of the season with a squad with more holes in it than Sonny Corleone.

Still, the good news for them is that forward line. The pace, oh-me-oh-my the pace. Welbeck, along with Alexis Sanchez, Santi Cazorla and even Mesut Ozil when he gets his bottom into gear...well, it’s enough to make even the least-Catholic defender in the world reach for the rosary beads & recite frenzied Hail Marys. And if Ramsey is good to start, which we will discover shortly, then they’ll have half a chance in midfield.

Manchester City are an odd team, in many ways. They don’t really have any discernible we‎aknesses, aside from possibly - possibly - being a little light up top for a side that usually plays with two strikers. And then you remember one of the strikers they do have is Sergio Aguero, and you suddenly stop feeling all that sorry for them.

And yet, they’re capable of some fairly sensational brain fades, cock ups and inexplicably-losing-to-Stokes, last time out allowing Mame Biram Diouf to power through their defence without having the sense to crop him up. For a really good team, they don’t half look like a really bad team sometimes. Today will be interesting for no other reason that Yaya Toure won’t be available, having played on Wednesday for Ivory Coast against Cameroon. Will Funtime Frankie Lampard start? Who knows? Well, us, in a few minutes, to be exact.

Nick will be here shortly. In the meantime, a quick look at Arsenal’s lunchtime fixture indigestion: they have lost 10 of their 39 Premier League games played at 12.45pm since 2004-05 – and half of those defeats have come in the last two seasons.

And here’s some video chat from Manuel Pellegrini, looking ahead to today’s game.