Arsenal vs Man City: The twists and turns of the Premier League title race

As tales of title races go, you don’t get better than Arsenal against Manchester City this season.

Historical giant versus modern force. Young squad up against a group of seasoned champions. Mentor manager against old mentee. Everywhere you look, you’ll see a tasty narrative.

As we head into the last month of this intriguing battle for the title, here’s a look at the key moments of the season.

Arsenal’s five-star start

After a habit of starting slowly, Arsenal gave their supporters a welcome positive injection by starting the season with five wins out of five.

Gabriel Jesus had just signed from City and looked like he had a point to prove. Gabriel Martinelli was developing a great understanding with his compatriot. Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka were ever-present in attack.

Thomas Partey was also providing the necessary muscle in the middle before he got injured and his absence was clear for all to see when their winning run ended against Manchester United.

The general consensus was that the Arsenal squad was not quite ready for a proper title charge, but they now looked like strong contenders for a Champions League berth after a five-season absence.

City’s Brentford sting

Pep Guardiola’s team have always looked like a well-oiled goal machine and the addition of Erling Haaland made their attack look even scarier.

Despite starting the campaign with many dominant performances, some performances started to raise doubts around the defending champions.

Then came the game against Brentford that just didn’t seem to make any sense. City were at home, had 75% possession and still lost the game.

That loss in November left them five points adrift of the Gunners and while their star quality was never in question, vulnerabilities were starting to show.

The first meeting between the top two

Due to some scheduling complications around the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the first meeting of the season between the teams was postponed which only added to the drama when the game finally came around.

On a midweek night in February at the Emirates, we finally got to see a proper litmus test for this Arsenal team. It ended up being a test that they failed.

Kevin de Bruyne opened the scoring for City (as he so often does in big Premier League fixtures). While Saka equalised for the Gunners, Jack Grealish pounced on an opportunity to regain the lead. Haaland provided the cherry on top in a 3-1 victory.

So the defending champions had shown the new upstarts who was boss. They had leapfrogged Arsenal and were now on top of the league. Normal service had resumed.

Surely the stage was now set for them to build up a substantial lead, right?

Arsenal in seventh heaven

After the disappointment against City, Arsenal went up a gear.

From February through to the start of April, the Gunners won seven games in a row. They weren’t just ground-out 1-0 victories either. In those seven games, they scored 23 goals as they blew most of their opposition away.

The one exception was against Bournemouth where they were saved by a dramatic injury-time winner by Reiss Nelson in a 3-2 victory. Just the sort of victory that always seems to happen to title-winning sides.

After that run, they had built up an eight-point lead over City. Surely the underdogs had now become the favourites?

City get their groove back

After Arsenal’s run, City followed it up with their own seven-game winning streak with the seventh coming in a 4-1 win against the Gunners.

Arsenal went into the game on the back of three consecutive draws which meant their lead had shrunk.

In their clash at the Etihad, De Bruyne scored twice to continue his own impressive personal scoring streak against Arsenal. John Stones also got on the scoresheet along with the obligatory Haaland goal.

The result means that City are now only two points behind Arsenal with two games in hand. Does that mean that the defending champions have now become the champions-elect?

If this title race between these two clubs has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t assume anything.

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