Man City end Arsenal’s quadruple hopes with League Cup final humbling
Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City
As Nico O’Reilly headed home his and Manchester City’s second goal, Pep Guardiola danced down the Wembley touchline, gleefully conducting the crowd. He skipped along like a child – not a 55-year-old manager who has already won the lot. More than once.
It may have only been a Carabao Cup final, but it showed how much it meant to Guardiola and City – as did the celebrations for the first goal when he jumped, punched the air and kicked the advertising hoardings. And afterwards, he seemed to hug everyone he could find connected to the club. And some of them twice.
Who knows, it may be his 16th (19th if Community Shields are included) and last major trophy with City. There could still be another FA Cup to come, but there was no hiding how much this meant to Guardiola.
Five of those trophies have been League Cups. No manager has won the competition more than Guardiola, who loves to break records and who now moves one ahead of Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Brian Clough, who have four. And he will be aware of that.
But then dominating the apparently best team in the country, Arsenal, like this may also persuade Guardiola to stay. Such was the gulf he may also wonder how City are nine points behind them in the Premier League, albeit with a game in hand and a fixture between them at the Etihad to come next month.
In the closing stages, with the final won, the City fans waved their flags and sang Blue Moon with Guardiola rubbing his head and turning to watch them. It looked like another big moment. One he wanted to take in – because he is pondering his future, or because he was just absorbing it all? Too much can be read into this, but a penny for his thoughts. After a decade in charge, can he really walk away?
To say Arsenal were schooled would not be an overstatement and this was a humbling and chastening lesson for Mikel Arteta. Talk of a quadruple always felt fanciful but was impossible with Arsenal playing in such a conservative, defensive, unambitious, passive way – apart from a flurry in the opening period. What were they thinking?
One team came to play. After that opening burst, the other did not. It was as simple as that, especially in an incredible 25-minute period after half-time. That is a long time to be in total control.
This was a game where Arsenal’s percentage football had its comeuppance and where claims that they play the way they do because teams go man-for-man against them or defend in low blocks, preventing them from being more free-flowing, were exposed.
So City pressed them and they could not cope.
The memories from this final – apart from O’Reilly’s goals and a howler from Arsenal second-choice goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga – was a masterful, swaggering performance from Rayan Cherki (complete with keepy-uppies), Antoine Semenyo and Jeremy Doku running down the wings and Rodri and Bernardo Silva dominating the midfield.
Where were Martin Zubimendi and Declan Rice? How did Bukayo Saka, Viktor Gyokeres and Leandro Trossard fade so badly? What happened to Arteta trying to change the momentum?
This was the first time in seven matches that City have beaten Arsenal and, on this evidence, you wonder how that can be the case. Such was their dominance.
What effect will it have on several City players? For them – four of the starters – this was their first trophy for the club and the joy from Semenyo, for example, was unbridled as Guardiola cradled his face and talked to him. Will it drive this new team?
“Winning titles helps you to win more,” Guardiola said in 2018 when he won his first trophy – his first League Cup – with City again beating Arsenal. He reiterated that after this victory.
Arsenal may well end up Premier League champions – the title is theirs to lose – and even Champions League (and FA Cup) winners, although it does remain to be seen whether there are deeper ramifications and any psychological damage from this show-piece result.
For now, Arteta and Arsenal have fallen woefully short and it has been six years since he won his one and only trophy as manager. If there was any desire to make a statement of intent here, it was lost. Just like this final. The statement belonged to City.
The focus will also fall on the two stand-in goalkeepers with both managers sticking with their second-choices. For City, James Trafford made an outstanding triple save early on, when the game was goalless, to deny Kai Havertz and twice thwart Bukayo Saka.
For Arsenal? Arrizabalaga will have hoped to avenge his appearance in the 2019 final when he was in goal for Chelsea, refused head coach Maurizio Sarri’s orders to be substituted and then lost in a penalty shoot-out to City. Or the 2022 final when he came on as a 120th-minute substitute and ballooned his spot kick over in another shoot-out.
Instead, he gifted City their first goal having perhaps been fortunate to only escape with a yellow card after pulling back Jeremy Doku outside his penalty area. Soon after he misjudged a Cherki cross, allowing it to slip through his fingers with O’Reilly beating Zubimendi to stoop and head in from close range.
Then Matheus Nunes crossed, again from the right, with O’Reilly making it his to head in again.
What a game for the 21-year-old Manchester lad whose birthday it was on Saturday. Until recently, the City fan and academy product lived just a couple of miles from the Etihad Stadium and in an age when the team he plays for – like every Premier League club – is full of stars from around the world, it felt important.
Arsenal twice struck the goal frame after going 2-0 down but making much of that would suggest they almost mounted a comeback and were unfortunate. That simply was not the case. City deservedly won and we must wonder what the repercussions will be.
For Arsenal and their trophy hopes, for City and for Guardiola.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
