The day Arsenal's title dreams died: Winners & losers as Gunners capitulate against Brighton to hand Man City the Premier League crown

When City won so convincingly at Everton earlier in the day, you got the sense that this could be a tricky afternoon for Arsenal. Everyone at the club - from fans to the players - would have started the day pinning their hopes on Everton potentially getting something at Goodison Park, so to see City win so comfortably would have been a big blow.

You could feel before the game that the energy had been sucked out of the Emirates a bit by events on Merseyside. The fans tried to raise the mood, but the players just couldn’t respond.

There was an understandable sense of real disappointment at full-time. Lots of fans had left, lots had remained and cheered the team off. This will take a bit of time to get over, but despite the painful ending it shouldn’t be forgotten what a great season Arsenal have enjoyed.

They had better starting making some more space in that trophy cabinet at the Etihad, because the Premier League title is on its way back to Manchester.

In all honesty, this outcome felt inevitable from the moment City cruised past Arsenal when the teams met a few weeks ago, but now there is no doubt at all. It’s been a relentless run of form from City, who have won their last 11 league games and ultimately that has proven too much for an Arsenal side who have run out of steam.

City can now purely focus on getting their hands on that elusive Champions League trophy, which will be a major boost to Guardiola over these closing weeks of the season.

We’ll have to wait and see how bad the ankle injury is that Martinelli suffered early on in the game, but it did not look good for the young attacker. How Moises Caicedo avoided a yellow card for the foul on Martinelli was incredible. It was a poor challenge from behind and you could see Martinelli’s ankle buckle as it rolled under the weight of both players.

Martinelli did manage to play on for a few minutes, but you could see he was really struggling and it was no surprise to see him forced off soon after.

Arsenal will desperately be hoping it’s nothing too serious, but the sight of the Brazilian limping round the pitch at full-time with his leg in a protective boot was not a good one.

This was the second weekend in a row that Arsenal were involved in a game that saw the officials lose control early. Andy Madley set the tone when he somehow failed to even book Martinelli for a really dangerous challenge which saw him clatter shoulder first into the face of Karou Mitoma. Caicedo then took revenge on Martinelli a few minutes later with an awful foul from behind which led the Brazilian having to go off. Again, there was no booking for Caicedo.

Those incidents just led to a scrappy first half, with players from both teams seemingly feeling like they could get away with anything without any punishment.

It was a really poor display from the officials, one that was summed up with a linesman inexplicably put his flag up to signal for an offside on Trossard, even though the ball had come to him from a throw-in!

When De Zerbi set off on his run down the touchline to celebrate Undav making it 2-0 for Brighton late on, you could almost see the satisfaction oozing out of him. Brighton’s fine young coach had said in the build-up to the game that he believed his side would bounce back from their disappointing defeat by Everton, and they did that and more with this exceptional performance.

Tactically, De Zerbi got it spot on. It was risky to invite Arsenal’s press on to the backline, but the reward when they played over it was obvious. They always looked a threat, especially down the left-hand side, with Mitoma causing Ben White all sorts of problems.

Brighton played the game perfectly and got what they deserved. It was yet another impressive highlight to add to De Zerbi’s ever-growing CV.

Arsenal’s right-back has been one of the most consistant performers in Arteta’s side this season. White has barely put a foot wrong since the campaign got underway, but this was undoubtedly his toughest 90 minutes of the season.

He had no answer to the trickery and pace of Mitoma, who beat him time and time again, especially in the second half as Brighton took full control.

As disappointed as White must have been by the end result, he would probably have been a relieved man when the full-time whistle went, just so he could finally stop having to chase the Japan international around.