How Manchester City can beat Arsenal in the League Cup Final

By Stephen Little | Feb 21, 2018

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 10: Josep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City gives his team instructions during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Leicester City at Etihad Stadium on February 10, 2018 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images) /

Manchester City may have crashed out of the FA Cup this week, but the Carabao Cup final against Arsenal this weekend provides the perfect chance for a bounce back and a chance to prove their status.

Former British Prime Minister famously said that a week is a long time in politics, but, for me, nothing really shows the recency bias quite like football. Perceptions can change by the minute. One minute you’re unstoppable, the next just an overrated fluke, it works for both clubs and their players on the large and small scales respectively. Good, bad. On form, off form. Winning it all, winning nothing. Wenger in, Wenger out. All of it changes game by game and it’s enough to make your head spin.

Manchester City surely encapsulates this principal to its fullest. One week they are the best club in English top flight history, the next they are all hot air, a one-season wonder, a bubble waiting to be burst once and for all. That’s the large scale, on the small you have Sergio Aguero who goes from hero to zero, world class striker to off-form liability up front. He’s both a prolific goal scorer and a prolific chance waster, and that’s just football.

So too with City’s opponents for the Carabao Cup final on Sunday, Arsenal. Leaving Arsene Wenger’s incredibly divisive hold over the club’s reins aside, you’d be hard pressed to find a club that swings from one extreme to the other in the court of public opinion.

One day they thrash Everton to the tune of 5-1, earlier this month, and all the stories about their new signings making all the difference come out. Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are back together and a combo good enough to make them compete for top four. Then mere days later, they flunk against Spurs and that’s the end of that.

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City and Arsenal, forever maligned and either overrated or underrated by the media and fans, meet in Wembley once again for a clash that will ultimately prove which of the two was better than the hype.

For Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, this clash is perhaps the most important game of the season. Really? Yes, really. Having bowed out in unfortunate circumstances to Wigan in the FA Cup, and having yet to pick up any silverware in England yet, a cloud grows above Guardiola and his side that can be once and for all dissolved. Sure, they march imperiously towards the title, but a week is a long time in football and the results cannot and will not wait.

Pep should exercise caution here. Wigan sat back and absorbed all pressure thrown at them, snatched a lucky winner against the run of play, then went straight back to the absorbing. This same tactic was employed by Wenger’s side in the FA Cup semi-final, at Wembley, against City last year and it worked then too.

How does Guardiola break down these parked buses? It’s a tactic that has plagued him from the beginning, though Barcelona had the sheer talent of Lionel Messi to break through, Bayern Munich and now City didn’t have such luxuries. The nature of Pep’s game is controlling and manipulating the spaces, the parked buses seek to remove spaces by shoving all the players into the final third and closing up any avenue to goal. It’s seems to be the perfect counter strategy.

The one problem with this method is that it relies on taking an exceedingly limit number of chances to score up the other end. In my mind, Guardiola must make the right call for the club, rather than the emotional one, and switch his goalkeeper to first choice Ederson rather than the cups option of Claudio Bravo.

Bravo has been the reason we’ve advanced so far in the trophy, but make no mistake, Ederson is the safer pair of hands by a measure and this game is important enough, nay essential enough, to demand his inclusion.

Indeed, in general, I would argue that Pep needs to dispense with previously held protocols for the cup competitions and field his absolute strongest starting XI. David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne in, Ilkay Gundogan on the bench. It’s harsh, you can be sure that Arsenal will be doing the same knowing who they are up against. A Mickey Mouse trophy can mean the world to a team that is so agonisingly close to greatness.

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The Champions League and the Premier League loom large, but they are in the very distant future even beyond the eternity that is a week. For Pep Guardiola, finding a way to smash through negative football tactics and clogging is an issue very much at the fore. Expect an answer this weekend and I wouldn’t bet against it being the correct one.

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