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5 min readApr 21, 2026 06:46 PM IST
The defeat to City was a crushing psychological blow. But Arsenal found the ideal attacking blueprint, even though a game-specific tactic. (AP Photo)
Pep Guardiola uttered the reassuring words every Arsenal fan wanted to hear from Mikel Arterta. “Who is top of the league?” the Manchester City manager asked the press brigade after his team shaved off three points from Arsenal’s lead. “We are not!” he emphasised. “In goal difference, who is better?” ‘They are.” The victory over leaders, he stressed, “gives us just hope.”
Time permitting, he could have added: Who has the meanest defence? Who has scored the most goals? Who are the most prolific converters of the dead ball?
When the myopic angst dissipates, the City defeat would feel perhaps lighter. The sense of fatalism, the hyperventilating fans would realise, is a mere history-driven panic attack. It’s not hope that flutters, but belief that swirls. It’s the game they lost, but one that could stir them to greater feats. It could unburden them in the sense that their last formidable game is over. It was a game in which they found clarity and relief.
The defeat to City was a crushing psychological blow. But they found the ideal attacking blueprint, even though a game-specific tactic. To defang City’s most influential midfielder, the defensive powerhouse Rodri, Declan Rice was slotted in a more advanced role. Rice was not fully successful in containing him, but he inadvertently became a more attacking threat, pushing Rodri and City back, bullying his associates with his physicality and carving space for Eberechi Eze and Martin Odegaard. Arsenal’s creative thrust in the absence of Bukayo Saka. Rice is most intimidating when he is a box-crashing midfielder rather than a deep-lying No 6, where Martin Zubimendi puts in diligent shifts too.
The Englishman could juggle both roles with aplomb, but Arsenal is more fluid on the attacking half when he is fizzing behind the forward-line. It unburdens his forwards and gives them the assurance that there is a press-resistant figure in the eventuality of a quick counter-press.
Rice as a No 8 affords Odegaard freedom upfront. He was Arsenal’s creative axis, unpicking City’s defence with precise passes. Eze is more indulgent, and hence prone to losing the ball, but he is the closest Arsenal have to a Jeremy Doku. He could produce a defence-splitting pirouette or bobble through narrow spaces, revealing his cage-ball forebears. Often this season, Arsenal’s forwards have resembled a disparaged, rebelling group. Injuries, form and tactical-juggle have not offered them time to sink into a cohesive unit that foresees each other’s movements.
But everything is falling in place at the ripest time. Even Kai Havertz has proved his immense utility. The German spurned a glorious header in stoppage time that would have revitalised Arsenal’s title pursuit. Finishing apart, his industriousness, sharpness of movement and goal sense are virtues Arsenal bank on. Once Saka returns, possibly in early May, Arsenal’s creative spark would be fully revived. The returns of Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori would bolster them in the manic title race.
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The critics could point out towards another year without a Gunner scoring 20-plus goals, but only City have struck more often. The North Londoners had 18 different goal-scorers, which is a virtue rather than a bane. Goals could arrive from anywhere and everywhere. From open-play and dead-ball, an art Arsenal have mastered like few other teams in the league’s history.
The schedule is benign, even though they have a tough Champions League tie against Atletico Madrid. In the league, all games are in London, three at home and two away. None of them are in the top 10; only relegation-batting West Ham United have genuine stakes. Newcastle United, on a four-match losing streak, is their next opponent. Fulham, which has won one of their last six matches, would visit next, before they travel to West Ham, which could be the treacherous of all fixtures, given their steely revival in the shadow of the drop. By the time they welcome Burnley, they would have plunged to Championship next season. The season finale is at Crystal Palace, a quicksand that drowned many a title dream.
One eye would be on City, which has a tougher but not intimidating set of fixtures. Away to Bournemouth would be the sternest; Everton is no pushover, and on the final day, Aston Villa could instigate a heartbreak for City’s fans. Guardiola’s men are masters of stitching unbeaten streaks that have landed glory from improbable junctures (27 match unbeaten streak in 2020-21 for example). This edition, the most they have mustered is six (the ongoing one and another in November-March). But the current iteration of City doesn’t look as invincible as the 2019 or 2022 ones. There are holes and flaws, especially prone to defensive indiscretion. The extent of Rodri’s injury and potential absence is unknown. City could slip. The ominous forbiddings for Arsenal is that City have lost only to Villa, among the six remaining opponents, this season. And beat them all comprehensively (by a margin of 15-2).
But Arsenal would not want their fate at the mercy of other teams. For they could count ample positives of their own team. As Guardiola did.
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