Manchester City play host to Arsenal at the Etihad this evening knowing a win will put them in pole position to claim their third successive Premier League title.
Pep Guardiola‘s men currently trail the Gunners by five points at the top of the table, albeit with two games in hand over their closest rivals. A loss for either side tonight may prove too damaging for them to recover from at this stage of the campaign.
Despite this being billed as a winners-take-all clash in the title race Mikel Arteta has downplayed the occasion as he insisted that there are still plenty of games left before the end of the season.
“The biggest game is the next one and the biggest game of my career was the game we played against Southampton,” he said at a press conference in London on Tuesday. “If we won that game we would have been in a much better position.
“You have to live the day. After City, the biggest one for sure because if we win, the next one will be that. If not then it will be Wolves, the last one is the biggest one.
“It is going to change every single week.”
This game may have come at the perfect time for City who have hit a rich vein of form while Arsenal have drawn three in a row despite having a two-goal lead in two of those fixtures.
Erling Haaland seems to be scoring goals for fun and will likely be a big test for the Arsenal defence who have conceded seven in their last three games without the injured William Saliba.
There is a certain air of inevitability about City at the moment but Guardiola remains vigilant and aware that Arsenal “plan to play an aggressive game”.
“I think the development of the club since Mikel took over is obvious,” he told reporters.
How to watch Manchester City vs Arsenal
“When you talk about manager, I’m a trainer, football trainer, not a manager. But I have the feeling Mikel changed the attitude of the club. Support from the hierarchy of the club and that’s why the success is there.
“It used to be a top six but now it’s going to be a top eight competing for the top because Newcastle are there now.”
Analysis: How has Guardiola saved Man City’s season?
By Mark Douglas, i‘s northern football correspondent
There is a memorable moment in City’s All or Nothing documentary when an increasingly agitated Guardiola unloads on his players in the dressing room before a game.
“I prefer to tell you now, not at half-time or full-time or in the analysis, you have not done a good warm-up. You have done a shit warm-up,” he said, building to a crescendo that involves him threatening to rescind a promised three days off.
It was vintage Guardiola, leaning into his players at the merest sign of standards slipping. It says it all that they’d actually wrapped up the Premier League title a few days before.
There is nothing performative about it, though. The Premier League’s best coach is also its most ruthless: just ask Joao Cancelo, an elite left-back who was sacrificed in the January transfer window partly because Guardiola felt his attitude to being left out could prove disruptive to the group.
That he was prepared to do that despite running with a small squad of around 17 established, elite professionals sends a message to a group who know there are no favourites and that past service counts for little.
Kyle Walker has been one of the defensive bedrocks at the Etihad but finds himself out in the cold after the change in system that he cannot adapt to. This egalitarian approach has seen rookie Rico Lewis preferred to a player with a track record of performing in the biggest games.
Guardiola believes that complacency is the enemy, and submits himself to the same harsh glare of scrutiny. After the first meeting with Arsenal in February in which Bernardo Silva was unsuccessfully trialled as a left back, he bemoaned his own “horrible tactics” and admitted that his tinkering left City “too soft”. Seven years into his Manchester City era and one insider told i they believe he is actually more driven than he was when he arrived in England.
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