Mikel Arteta has Arsenal ‘fired up’ to beat Man City - but there’s a twist

While the Manchester City squad have been full of exuberance in the exact way you want for such a week, it hasn’t been so free and easy at Arsenal . They had a high-stakes Champions League quarter-final against Sporting, for one. Some on the Arsenal side felt there was a typical edge to Pep Guardiola ’s words on Sunday, when he mentioned how European elimination has freshened City’s preparations.

Such comments are all the more conspicuous given how it was a new Guardiola gameplan that won the Carabao Cup final , that has only fed into all of this noise around Arsenal. There has long been a concern that some of Mikel Arteta ’s players are too conscious of that noise. It adds to the weight of everything, and the sense of a team toiling through mental and physical fatigue.

Who will win the clash for the Premier League title? (Getty) That sense isn’t everywhere, though. Despite the perceptions, there are Arsenal players who can see history and are determined to drive through this.

Some, like Riccardo Calafiori and Eberechi Eze , are also following their manager in constantly pointing to the positives; that they can this week go to City and “win the league”. Such accounts remind of a story from perhaps English football’s most famous title showdown, that has so many other parallels with now. Back in the week before 26 May 1989, the Arsenal squad were feeling much more down about their chances than the current team.