The Guardian
"It was an accident-prone evening, littered with clumsiness, and it told a clear story about why these sides are already playing catch-up to Liverpool and Manchester City in the top two positions," writes Daniel Taylor for the Guardian. "Nobody should realistically expect them to win that chase.
"Not that the lack of real quality – and it was startling at times – stopped the game from burning slowly into an entertaining contest. The first half, in truth, was a bit of a stinker. Or at least it was until McTominay grew weary of the torpor and, 20 yards out, smacked in a firecracker of a shot.
"After that, however, there was lots of drama and incident at either end, not least the equalising goal when Aubameyang was initially judged to be offside in the moments before he flicked the ball over David de Gea."
The Telegraph
It felt a world away from the modern-day duelling of Manchester City and Liverpool with, in the TV pundit’s chair, Roy Keane summing it up. "There was a real lack of quality from both sides," he said, which was not a brutal assessment and was evidently true," writes Jason Burt for the Telegraph.
"The football reflected it. It was a sodden – and rotten – encounter until it fired into life with a superb strike from Scott McTominay, his first goal at Old Trafford, just before half-time. But even that ended up being imperfect, as replays showed Granit Xhaka, Arsenal’s newly chosen captain, ducked out of the way of McTominay’s drive from the edge of the penalty area, leaving goalkeeper Bernd Leno unsighted.
"Xhaka hardly looked like Captain Courageous.
"Unai Emery had already grimaced at another act by Xhaka, when he executed possibly the worst free-kick of the season as he inexplicably hooked the ball out wide to a startled Calum Chambers, who crossed high and out of play."
The Independent
"A 1-1 draw and thereby not the worst result for either side… but maybe the worst match between these sides in two decades," writes Miguel Delaney for the Independent.
"That this can even be argued illustrates how bad it got at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Arsenal. "Clear and obvious error" was the theme of the night, but VAR lamentably couldn’t call for most of them.
"The system may have even have added to the tragicomedy of mistakes if it did indeed miss a penalty for a Sead Kolasinac handball.
"You could say a fixture that is ostensibly about getting into the top four ended up looking like a mid-table match, but there are mid-table sides that seem to have better ideas about what they want to be than either of these teams at the moment."
Daily Mail
"History is unlikely to repeat in either circumstance. Arsenal are not going to win the league and United will surely finish higher than they did 30 years ago but, as things stand, the positions of the teams look about right," writes Martin Samuel for the Daily Mail.
"A point at Old Trafford remains a solid result, and Arsenal just about deserved it, while United continue to search for an identity under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. They will complain at being undone by another one of those VAR puzzles but the draw was a fair result.
"United had the best chances of the second half, Arsenal the best of the first. It wasn’t, in truth, a game of great quality, although incessant rain did not help. Then again, neither did the skill sets of the two teams.
"Yet the reality was two teams who are little different from those around them. Not Liverpool and Manchester City, for they are in a different class. We are talking the upstarts: Leicester, West Ham, even the likes of Bournemouth.
"It is not that these challengers are a lot better than Arsenal or Manchester United, just that they are no longer that much worse. This was, for long periods, a very ordinary game indeed."
