Pep Guardiola has suggested Manchester City could now be viewed as genuine favourites in the Premier League title fight after their recent Carabao Cup triumph over Arsenal.<\/p>\n
Arsenal sit six points clear, having played one game more than their rivals, with City hosting the Gunners next Sunday in a match that carries obvious title implications. Mikel Arteta\u2019s side hold a marginally superior goal difference of three, a gap Guardiola said City can close.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s 2\u20130 win in the Carabao Cup final has altered the narrative around the two clubs. Reflecting on that game, Guardiola told Sky Sports: “In the Carabao Cup final City were complete underdogs. There is not one person in this country that would bet \u00a31 that we would be much better. Maybe now it\u2019s a bit different.” He added measured praise for Arsenal while outlining the challenge ahead: “The respect I have for Arsenal, what they have done the last few years … I know the manager, the players, the quality, how they compete in every circumstance, that\u2019s the biggest job we have. There is tactical issue, maybe we will adjust something.”<\/p>\n
Guardiola underlined the difficulty of repeating such a result soon after the final. “They have been the best team in this country, in Europe, so far. Beating Arsenal once is so difficult, imagine beating them twice in a few weeks. We have to rest.”<\/p>\n
Beyond the talk, the title will be decided on the pitch, but the debate has shifted to form and mentality as much as raw points. Arsenal have faced renewed criticism over late-season lapses after another sequence of dropped results. After losing just three times in 49 games, Arsenal have now fallen to defeat in three of their last four, losing the Carabao Cup final before being dumped out of the FA Cup to turn their quadruple charge into a limp towards what would still be a famous double.<\/p>\n
City arrive at the weekend tie buoyed by a cup victory and a manager willing to rethink his side\u2019s position in the title race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
City may be seen as favourites after Carabao Cup final win; next Sunday\u2019s meeting could decide title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238,969],"tags":[1162,1066],"class_list":["post-11672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","category-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}