Arsenal, Man City and how Mikel Arteta turned a sizzling Premier League rivalry on its head

City and Arsenal had never previously considered themselves rivals until Sheikh Mansour and the United Arab Emirates set their sights on the blue half of Manchester and quickly established a new empire to compete with the established order, of which the Gunners were one of the proud leaders.

City's already striking land grab of English football was turbocharged by Guardiola's appointment, and Arsenal threatened to be confined to irrelevance as a result. That was until Arteta switched sides and returned to the club where he had spent the final years of his playing career.

Having watched Arsenal's decline under Arsene Wenger from the inside, Arteta was uniquely placed to plot the club's resurgence. He developed his own critique and as coach has reshaped Arsenal in his own direction. The Spaniard has veered from the irresistible but often naive style Wenger was renowned for and instead embraced a more scientific vision of football, prioritising physical prowess and efficiency at scoring from set pieces over joie de vivre.

Like it or loathe it, Arteta has turned Arsenal into a formidable force that have reined City in and risen above them. They are nine points clear of Guardiola's side in the title race and are in the Champions League quarter-finals while the Blues are licking their wounds from yet another elimination at the hands of Real Madrid.

At Wembley on Sunday, Arsenal will be hoping to cement all the progress they have made under Arteta and beat City in the Carabao Cup final to claim the first of what could be an incredible four trophies. Guardiola has, meanwhile, admitted that his side are, for once, the underdogs: "We challenge the best team in England, the best team in Europe."

GOAL charts the history of a rivalry that has been bubbling away for years and has finally reached boiling point...

Arsenal spent big in the summer of 2022, and where better to look to take the team to the next level than Arteta's former charges at City, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus? It was a thinly-veiled attempt to imprint some of that City serial-winning DNA on Arsenal - and it worked, as Zinchenko told his team-mates soon after arriving that they were capable of winning the Premier League title.

No one believed him at the time, but he was on to something as Arsenal marched to the top of the table and remained there until April, when City, gunning for the treble, overhauled them and clinched the title with three games to spare. The Gunners were inevitably labelled as 'bottlers', but the truth is that no one expected them to be in the race at the start of the season and there was a strong sense that there would be much more to come.

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