Arsenal and Manchester City sit six points apart at the top of the Premier League after the conclusion of gameweek 21. Arsenal then went into battle 24 hours later, hosting Liverpool at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday, with the opportunity to extend their lead over City at the top of the table. It was a chance they could not take in a big game that lacked quality in the final third.<\/p>\n
With Christmas been and gone, this is the stage of the season where it really starts to matter. Neither can afford to give an inch, with City playing catchup, waiting for Arsenal to slip, and the Gunners determined to hold their nerve to land a first league title in 22 years.<\/p>\n
Both teams are competing in four different competitions. Following this week\u2019s fixtures, neither is playing again in the league until January 17; each has FA Cup third round and Carabao Cup semi-final first leg commitments to come between now and then. The final two Champions League league phase matches are also interspersed with other competitions in the remainder of January, while Carabao Cup second legs are scheduled for the first week in February, making the calendar particularly congested outside of the Premier League.<\/p>\n
Looking strictly at the league fixture list, Manchester City face the tougher run over the next month.<\/p>\n
Arsenal fixtures (next five Premier League games)
\n– Nottingham Forest vs. Arsenal (Jan. 17)
\n– Arsenal vs. Man Utd (Jan. 25)
\n– Leeds Utd vs. Arsenal (Jan. 31)
\n– Arsenal vs. Sunderland (Feb. 7)
\n– Brentford vs. Arsenal (Feb. 12)<\/p>\n
Man City fixtures (next five Premier League games)
\n– Man Utd vs. Man City (Jan. 17)
\n– Man City vs. Wolves (Jan. 24)
\n– Tottenham vs. Man City (Feb. 1)
\n– Liverpool vs. Man City (Feb. 8)
\n– Man City vs. Fulham (Feb. 11)<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola must prepare his side for three significant away tests in that sequence: Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Etihad Stadium should be a breeze, while Fulham at home is on the more favourable side of the coin, although not easy by any stretch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal lead Man City by six points. January fixtures and cup commitments give City the tougher run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1056,969],"tags":[1066,1047],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-man-city","category-premier-league","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","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=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}