Are we starting to get a little bit excited about this weekend? I am. First cup final since the Community Shield. Right? Just jokes.
The League Cup hasn’t been kind to us for a very long time. It’s such a weirdly pointless comp until you get to a final, then it comes with all sorts of connotations.
Does it create more belief in the winners?
Does it derail losers?
Does it crush City more to lose than Arsenal?
Would Arsenal fans go into a spiral of negativity if we lost?
One thing we need to really clear up right now is the truth about Man City: they are not broken, they are still dangerous, this will not be a walkover.
There’s been so much average commentary doing the rounds about the state of the Premier League after the exits of City, Newcastle, Spurs, and Chelsea.
Spurs are rubbish, they had no right to be in the Champions League.
Newcastle were a match for Barca at home, they were in the game for 75% of the tie… then it all went to shit for them. But this is Newcastle, 9th in the Premier League, asking questions of one of the most well-funded clubs in the world.
Chelsea created negative headlines about themselves after losing to PSG. But that game was lost on keeping errors and just outrageous individual performances. They are still probably the best attacking side in England right now, and they will be a NIGHTMARE for Man City.
And look, as much as I can’t stand City, they could have taken the lead against Madrid in the Champions League, but they didn’t, and Madrid just had a very lucky run against them.
City is a wounded animal at the moment. They are one of the best teams in the world. They will see this game at the weekend as a chance to rally and go on a historic treble run. We’re looking at them like they’re a busted flush because they can only win the treble.
This game is going to be a war and it’s a roll of the dice who wins.
What do we have going for us? Better momentum for sure. The whole squad has renewed energy for the run-in after a fantastic run since Wolves. Everyone is fit, players are finding bang-BANG form. We look like an unstoppable machine right now.
But… we looked that way when Welbeck scored that goal against Leicester in 2016. We looked like that the year we had a breakout. There have been plenty of false dawns over the years… and football is brutal, bad form can clamp your ankles at any point and drag you under the bed.
This game is special regardless. I don’t know how you feel, but for me, this is the first time I’ve gone into a game against Man City and felt like if we put on a good show, we can do them. Think about where we were as a club when we beat them in the FA Cup semi way back when? That was ‘if 75 variables click, we could win.’ Now look at us. We are the horse that has been led to the lake, and we are about to drink glory (that’s a lake with sparkling water). How incredible is that from a fan perspective? I loved this quote:
‘All the work that has been done from day one because that’s the level. Just being the Arsenal manager and not believing that you can compete at the highest level in the competitions, I think it cannot be aligned. Obviously, there are a lot of factors, and the fact that I was there, I know in my opinion where the gaps were, and what the difference was. But not accepting it, being that it’s part of the reality, and trying to change it as quick as possible.’
I sometimes read people calling me an Arsenal shill on the internet because they don’t remember how I used to write about the club. People, back in the banter era, would ask why I was so negative about the club, and whether that was productive. One of my biggest gripes of the Wenger days was the lack of ambition.
‘Chelsea spend a lot of money, so I guess we’ll just go home.’
Instead of working out a way to be bigger than the sum of our parts, we gave up, and so did the fan base. This despite plenty of evidence to suggest there wasn’t just one way to win in the beautiful game.
Arteta, from day one, has said his mission was to restore Arsenal back to the top of the game. We aren’t quite top, but we’re now, objectively, one of the best teams in the world. We compete for everything, we have a squad that can handle being in a quad run-in late March. That is a helluva job.
But it was all underpinned by ambition. Do we spend money? Of course. But are we the richest? No. Our wage bill is the 4th highest in England. Man City spend more than us at every level and have a wage bill that affords them the equivalent of 6.6 Bukayo Sakas, 10.8 William Salibas, and 15.38 Jurrien Timbers. And yet, here we are, no excuses, the better side than Man City as it stands.
We found a way. This weekend is a chance to crown ourselves with the Momentum Cup. I’m very excited about it, I hope you are too!
Right, that’s me done. Man City Cup Special coming up later. x
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