The Premier League has always marketed itself as a feature film, a big-budget epic, an action franchise, a landscape of superheroes and supervillains. Pep Guardiola’s Mission Totally Possible Volume 8 delivers compelling packaging, even if the reality is often more mundane, dominated by remakes and familiar star turns.
It still seems surprising that 10 years have passed since the world’s strongest league has seen a treble title race as close as this season’s. But this one seems to be narrowing down to a truly blockbuster ending.
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Hence perhaps the unusual degree of excitement about Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City gathering at the top of the table, the hunger to see every moment in the story as a moment of potential resolution, the final car chase, the decisive fisticuffs on the roof. .
The last match to decide the title, the Liverpool-City match played at Anfield three weeks ago, ended in an entertaining 1-1 draw that everyone seems to have long since forgotten. In the title decider, Arsenal’s trip to the Etihad on Sunday afternoon looks set to provide a decisive lead. At the very least, this feels like a pre-ending, a bridging sequence, the resolution of the final plot.
Not so for City, who had previously reached the season final and thought they could get there again and still feel good about it. But more importantly for Arsenal, who have no muscle memory of winning anything anytime soon, who carry the pressure of being the best team in the league to date in all the important numbers – goals, points, defense – and can feel it. A chance not to be missed, this is truly their game.
The inventory list plays a role. A look at the remaining 10 matches of Seven of City, while conditions are constant, the kind they usually pass through: West Ham, Wolves and Luton at home; Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Brighton and Crystal Palace are away.
Arsenal have a slightly tougher encounter with Manchester United away and some facing the threat of a North London derby. Logic and precedent suggest that someone will need to take points away from City to prevent the presumed champions from making it four in a row. The most equipped team to do this is Arsenal itself. A draw would be good. But there’s a fair case that they should win on Sunday.
This will include the added attraction of doing something new. Arsenal has a good away performance. What they lack is the “statement” of away wins. The Premier League’s last big away win was against Newcastle in May. The best away results this season were the win at Sevilla and the draw at Anfield.
It’s an omission that Arteta will be keen to address, especially when it comes to his truly abysmal history at his former workplace. Five visits to the Etihad as Arsenal manager brought five defeats (scores: 3-0, 1-0, 5-0, 1-0 and 4-1). No member of the current squad has scored for Arsenal at the Etihad; the last was an 86th-minute consolation from Rob Holding in a match that essentially ended his time at the club. This would be the ideal moment to disrupt the dominant paradigm.
So how? The key ingredient is the intensity of the method rather than a false tactical change. Arsenal are unlikely to surprise. The game plan on its best days is to be Arsenal, even more so, with the belief that the strongest parts of this team, the patterns that consistently place their best players in the best attacking positions, getting in and out of the ball will get even better with movement and pressing, say it in the end. This was key to Arsenal’s win over Emirates City in October; They sucked all the air out of the game that day and found themselves bursting at the seams late on.
The approach will be to do more of this, not less, as the season winds down. Arteta was thinking of periods like this when he talked about the need for champion players to continue to produce the same high-intensity play every three days, even if their tendons are sore.
International chatter aside, Arsenal haven’t played a match in 17 days. This is the players’ second rest period since Christmas. A younger team than City, City essentially have three main players under 28, while Arsenal have William Saliba, Ben White, Gabriel, Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard, Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz and Declan Rice all aged 26 and up. There are six. This group will not have a better chance to impose their own superpowers.
There are other details too. Erling Haaland is an important asset for both teams. It has been suggested in recent weeks that nullifying City’s advanced technologies is key to containing this iteration. Very good one-on-one defenders, they managed to restrict Haaland’s movements in the areas where he scored, and in the process managed to effectively clear a City player off the pitch given the limited playing space.
Haaland has been lackluster by his standards, scoring in three of his last 10 Premier League games. And despite the mind-boggling overall numbers, they still have work to do. Haaland’s iconography is big goals at big times. It didn’t quite happen that way. Last season, he failed to score a decisive goal against an important opponent in the first game of the season. He has one goal from open play in the first half of a league match since 21 October.
Considering his contribution to a three-win season as a 22-year-old, nearly five goals against Luton, straight-course tyrant, hammer of the minnows etc. The sounds are ridiculous. More challenging games are even harder. Everyone has less individual influence. But this would be an ideal moment for him to re-express his value; or alternatively for Arsenal to continue this run.
Otherwise, Martinelli feels like an important role on Sunday as well, fitness permitting. This is the offensive player whose impact goes beyond basic numbers. Martinelli’s ability to run with the ball with astonishing speed, drift down the left flank as a sort of pioneering, forward defender and always be ready for quick passes gives Arsenal the sense of a threat lurking all over the pitch.
Yet the decision-makers are very rarely the real decision-makers; There are eight matches left until the last Super Sunday. But this feels like a moment for the season to enter its final act; and perhaps a more vital moment for Arsenal in their struggle to establish their own protagonist energy.