Manchester City\u2019s Carabao Cup success produced contrasting reactions from the manager and his players over the implications for the Premier League title race. Pep Guardiola praised the performance but cautioned that the trophy might not alter the campaign against Arsenal. “I would like to have nine points in front of Arsenal,” he admitted, even asking whether he would “change” the trophy for that lead. He added: “It will have no impact,” calling the competitions “different competitions.” Guardiola also warned that “They will be more concerned when they come to [the] Etihad,” a reference to the league meeting on April 19, and suggested the win could help his side against Liverpool in the FA Cup quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Players presented a starker assessment. Nico O\u2019Reilly told the CBS Sports studio: “Yeah, 100%. The blood never went\u2014we\u2019ve always smelt blood. We\u2019re confident in ourselves, we know we can do it, they\u2019ve got to come to our place which is a tough place to come to as everyone has seen this season. So we do smell blood and we\u2019ve got to keep going. It does a lot for us [winning the final], builds momentum and just push on now. Obviously it\u2019s a big blow for them. They were going for everything, just as we were [before defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League].”<\/p>\n
Rodri echoed those sentiments, calling the match\u2019s effect “A lot, a lot,” and explained: “That\u2019s why I say it\u2019s a game not only for this title [Carabao Cup] but to show that we can beat them.” He conceded “There is still a lot to do,” and reflected on City\u2019s Champions League exit: “and it\u2019s clear we didn\u2019t want to go out of the Champions League, but we went out and now we have to take the positives, we have more time to prepare for the games. So that\u2019s something to take into account\u2014but we also have to celebrate this. The Real Madrid game was pretty tough [losing 5\u20131 on aggregate ] but the team has recovered. We knew it was a very important game against Arsenal not only because of the title but also because we had to face the best team in the league. Now we need to rest, go back to the next round of internationals and come back with the optimism that we still have two more competitions to fight for.”<\/p>\n
Arsenal retain a nine-point lead, though City have a game in hand and can reduce the gap to three with victory at the Etihad on April 19. Mikel Arteta vowed: \u201cWe\u2019re going to use this disappointment and this fire in the belly to have the most amazing two months that we have ever [had] together,\u201d adding: “That\u2019s on us and we\u2019ll manage that energy in the right way. Now we have to go through that pain and disappointment and it\u2019s normal and it\u2019s part of football.” Arsenal have lost only four matches across all competitions this season and have followed earlier defeats with double-digit unbeaten runs, a pattern they will seek to replicate after Wembley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola downplayed Carabao Cup impact; players insist momentum has revived City’s title hopes. etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1067,238,172],"tags":[1066,1047],"class_list":["post-9461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-carabao-cup","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9461","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=9461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}