Manuel Akanji accuses Arsenal of making a tactical error in Manchester City draw Manchester city

Manuel Akanji accused Arsenal of using mistakes to stop Manchester City in Sunday's goalless draw and questioned why referee Anthony Taylor was not punished more often.

The result at the Etihad Stadium left Liverpool two points ahead of Arsenal at the top of the league and third-placed City a further point behind with nine games remaining. Mikel Arteta's side defended with a low block and aggression, and asked if he felt they did it illegally too often, Akanji said: “Absolutely. When we arrived sometimes they stopped us with fouls. If there was no procedure for it [from the referee]Difficult.”

Akanji wondered why Taylor didn't intervene. “I don't understand. One in the first half was a very late tackle on Stefan [Ortega]He said in reference to the challenge faced by the City goalkeeper by Kai Havertz. “For me, it's clearly a yellow card. I don't want to say just against us. There were also some decisions against them and I didn't understand why he made the mistake.

“There are some rules and I think there are clear yellow cards where they should be. I remember with Jorginho when he actually made the tackle [which was a foul] He scored the second goal and did not even give a yellow card to anyone [foul]. I didn't understand some of the decisions, but in the end, we still had to be able to score a goal.

City's target of a record fourth successive title is beyond their grasp but the Swiss international remains confident they can achieve it. “How many games do we have left? Nine, so yeah, 27 points to get. That's our goal, which is to get them all and then we'll see how it turns out.” “I'm confident. Obviously we wanted to win and we didn't get the three points but it's still open to play for it. Nine games into the Premier League, we have a Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid next week. We are still in [the FA Cup]. [We can] Win them all and hopefully we can do that.”

Aston Villa visits on Wednesday and is the last team to defeat City, with a 1-0 win at Villa Park on December 6.

“It's been a long time coming,” Akanji said [since that defeat]. We are in a different place, and Aston Villa is in a different place. We try to do our best. We're playing at home now. I think we, like most teams, play different at home than we do away. Hopefully we can have a dominant game and not like the one we played there because Villa deserved to win. We didn't play a good game. Hopefully we can change that and improve the things we didn't do well today and get the three points.

Jeremy Doku and Jack Grealish impressed for City as substitutes, and Akanji welcomed the competition they provide in attack. “In the end, it is not my decision who will play in attack,” he said. “They are all doing their best to try to play in the next match when we have to show our best and hopefully we will win.”