On the pavement on Ashton New Road, a couple of Manchester City supporters had set up a makeshift stall selling “Arsenal tears” for £2 a bottle.
A little further down the road, outside a fish and chip shop, others amused themselves by singing: “Mikel Arteta, it’s happened again”.
It hadn’t, though. Not at that stage, anyway, with the biggest game of this Premier League season still three hours away. Arsenal were still six points clear at the top of the table, still the bookmakers’ favourites to win a first league title since 2004, yet the mood, even among many of their own supporters, was fatalistic.
They were right to be pessimistic. What followed was not just City’s fourth consecutive win across all competitions but Arsenal’s fourth defeat in six matches. Their lead at the top of the Premier League was down to just three points, having played a game more. Should City win their game in hand, at Burnley on Wednesday night, they will be top of the table for the first time since August.
“It’s a new Premier League now,” Arteta said afterwards — one in which City, champions in six of the past eight seasons, have the momentum.
A month ago, Arsenal saw opportunity at every turn. Talk of winning all four major trophies feels outlandish with any team but they were nine points clear at the top of the Premier League, through to the Champions League and FA Cup quarter-finals, and about to face an out-of-form City in the Carabao Cup final.
City’s 2-0 win at Wembley on March 23 proved a turning point for both teams. Pep Guardiola and his players have not looked back since. For Arsenal, defeat in the Carabao Cup final has been followed by elimination from the FA Cup by Southampton, a nervous 1-0 aggregate victory over Sporting in the Champions League quarter-final and now back-to-back Premier League defeats against Southampton and City. They have lost more games in the past month (four) than they did in the first seven months of the campaign.
Mikel Arteta feels the tension of Sunday’s game against Manchester City (Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
So when Arteta insisted his players felt even “more convinced” that they could be champions, having gone toe-to-toe with City on Sunday and losing narrowly, he sounded like a manager saying what Arsenal’s players and supporters needed to hear rather than what he believed.
When he said his players would not need “picking up” — laughing at the notion, given what still lay ahead for them in the Premier League and Champions League — he was glossing over the uncomfortable reality of a team who, even before the Carabao Cup final, appeared weighed down by a burden of expectation and an increasingly attritional, joyless playing style.
But where Arteta was right — and Guardiola said it too — was in spelling out how City’s 2-1 win on Sunday had opened up the Premier League title race rather than closed it.
“Who is top of the league? We are not,” Guardiola said in his post-match news conference. “In goal difference, they are better. That game gave us hope, that is all.”
Even a draw at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday would have preserved Arsenal’s six-point lead — albeit having played a game more — and stemmed the tide that has turned in City’s favour in recent weeks.
For much of this season, even in games they have won, Arsenal have performed as if wearing a tactical straitjacket. It wasn’t the case here. Their line-up looked more cautious in theory, with captain Martin Odegaard returning from injury to replace their leading scorer Victor Gyokeres, but it was bolder, more assertive in the way they sought to press their opponents and tried to play through them when the opportunity arose.
City had the greater share of possession, with Bernardo Silva outstanding in midfield, but Arsenal were defending doggedly. For an hour, Gabriel was winning his antagonistic battle with Erling Haaland.
What proved decisive, ultimately, was the quality and clinical nature of City’s finishing. Rayan Cherki’s goal, which opened the scoring, was outrageous in its conception — daring to dribble into a crowded penalty before twisting and turning inside and outside of challenges from Gabriel, Piero Hincapie and Declan Rice — as well as its execution. Haaland could feasibly have been penalised for holding Gabriel as he scored City’s second goal but he was demonstrating a killer instinct that is unrivalled in the Premier League (and unrivalled by Arsenal’s attacking players in particular).
There were moments in the second half when things could have swung the other way — City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, who was at fault for Arsenal’s equaliser, rushing from his goal to thwart Kai Havertz after an incisive counter-attack, Eberechi Eze hitting the post with an audacious effort, Gabriel’s header deflected onto the post by the excellent Nico O’Reilly — but Arteta was correct when he suggested his team’s opponents had been more ruthless.
The difficulty for Arteta and Arsenal, as they confront this new reality in the title race, is that they had the opportunity to be out of sight long before Sunday. For all the familiar talk of City having clicked into gear in the second half of the season, this is not like three years ago, when Guardiola’s team chased Arsenal down by taking 43 points out of a possible 45 between mid-February and late May, or two years ago, when they took 57 points out of a possible 63 from mid-December onwards. Between late December and mid-March of this season, they took 21 points from a possible 36, having already lost four times in the first half of the campaign.
For so much of this season, City have been a team in transition, trying to establish a way forward with a younger group of players including Abdukodir Khusanov, O’Reilly and Cherki. The signings of Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo in the January transfer window brought much-needed Premier League know-how, but even in March, they dropped points at home to Nottingham Forest and away to West Ham United. For all the experience of Ruben Dias, Rodri and Bernardo, they didn’t look like a team who could keep pace in the title race unless Arsenal gave them encouragement.
Since the Carabao Cup final, they have looked a totally different team: energised, smelling blood, sensing opportunity. It is a new experience for some of those younger players but, under Guardiola’s guidance, they look fresher and more confident as the season approaches its climax. It is not easy to look at Arsenal’s squad and make the same suggestion.
But even now, for all the wearily predictable talk of “bottle” and Arsenal “tears”, this title race is delicately poised. Arsenal’s final five games are against Newcastle United, Fulham, West Ham, Burnley and Crystal Palace, all of them in the bottom half of the table. There is also the not-so-small matter of a Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid on the horizon.
Even after a horrible month, in which their Carabao Cup and FA Cup ambitions have fallen by the wayside and their lead in the Premier League has been whittled down, the two biggest trophies are still in their sights. As terrifying as the possibility of ending up empty-handed appears to be, the opportunity in front of them remains enormous.
What might unsettle Arteta and his players is the familiarity of what has happened from what had looked almost an unassailable position. They led the Premier League for 248 days in 2022-23 only for City to overhaul them in the final weeks of the campaign. They have led the table for 206 days so far this season but now, for the first time since the opening weekend, the summit is within City’s reach.
A part of Arteta might wonder whether his team will be more at ease with a situation where they simply have to win, rather than feeling the pressure of having a precious lead to protect. But even that might feel like wishful thinking. A team who have been so consistent for the past four years desperately need a trophy to show for it. They cannot face the thought of being left with tears for souvenirs once more.
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