Understandably, both sides - although as has been a recurring theme this season, predominantly Arsenal - were criticised for consistent delays due to grappling at set-pieces, an unwillingness to play proper, free-flowing football and more broadly, the top flight becoming an increasingly unwatchable spectacle.
Liverpool boss Arne Slot even weighed in on the matter by claiming he struggles to find many games a 'joy to watch', while the masses on social media took aim at Mikel Arteta's side for sucking the fun out of the best league on the planet.
And to be fair, they all had a point.
Having watched that game at The Emirates, and many others in the Premier League this season, the pivot towards set-pieces and their ever-growing efficacy as a weapon for scoring has been a key development - and no, it's not always pretty to watch.
But with Arsenal now seven points clear after City's slip-up at Nottingham Forest in midweek, do you think any of their fans are complaining?
And equally, with the Gunners fighting battles on four fronts and an increasingly jam-packed fixture schedule, is it really a surprise that Arteta is pragmatically scrapping any aesthetically-pleasing principles in order to find more efficient ways of scoring?
Football is ultimately about winning matches - not artistic awards - so to be honest, I've got no issue with Arteta using whatever tools at his disposal to clinch the club's first Premier League title for a whopping 23 years.
Of course, all fans would prefer to see their side winning matches playing a permanently positive brand of football.
But sometimes, particularly given Arsenal's reputation as perennial bottlers, sometimes shaking things up and using the 'dark arts' - if you can even call them that - to finally get over the line actually deserves some credit.
From a Norwich City perspective, in many respects the debate reminded me about comparisons between David Wagner and Johannes Hoff Thorup, the former who played an ostensibly negative brand of football but propelled City into the play-offs but the latter who went for aesthetic beauty but ended up not lasting a season.
From a fans’ point of view, and while obviously we would love to see our team marry success with beauty, it doesn't always work like that and sometimes, just sometimes, you've got to do whatever in your power to find a way to win.
With Arsenal still chasing an unprecedented quadruple and time on the training pitch more limited, Arteta has found a way to make his side put the ball in the back of the net more regularly but also more efficiently - if anything, a pragmatic move he deserves credit for.
The Premier League boasts such mass global appeal as a product its popularity will never be inhibited by this temporary change in strategy - and like everything in football, it will only be a cycle before the next tactical shift.
And anyway, it's not like any Arsenal fans - or those more broadly - are going to go anywhere if their teams are finding ways to win albeit slightly more scrappily.
Fortunately, us City fans have got the perfect balance under Philippe Clement as we continue to surge up the table while playing a positive, possession-based and often thrilling brand of Championship football.
That win at Leicester - who were admittedly poor - was as dominant an away performance as you could ever wish to see, and a run of nine wins in 11 while racking up 27 goals in the process tells its own story.
It’s early days, and we haven’t seen it since the heady days of FarkeBall, but maybe Clement could be the man to strike the perfect balance – even if Arteta, and many other Premier League teams, are steering clear of it at the moment.