CITY ADD BRAWN TO THEIR BEAUTY AS THEY CLOSE IN ON TITLE

THERE is a service tunnel under the Etihad. All away teams travel down it to enter, their coach passing underground. About 100 yards away, towards Ashton New Road, Arsenal’s two buses decided to turn around. They then slowly reversed all the way in, a metaphor with tentacles when it comes to Wednesday. For their title challenge, for their refusal to follow instructions on the height of their defensive line. Arsenal were going backwards from the off, and were forced to by City, whose form scales a new peak with each week, each extension of this unbeaten run. Seventeen games and counting. ‘Maybe they were not at their best level because we were really good,’ Pep Guardiola said, and he was right. It led to some calls that this was the finest Premier League performance of all time, with Stuart Pearce labelling it the best display he has ever witnessed. There is surely a bit of recency bias in that thinking. Even when looking at just City, there was the 6-3 mauling of Manchester United earlier in the season or the 4-1 win at Anfield in 2021. Perhaps the key difference here was the stage, against a rival running them close in a tense title race. City have rarely ground a direct competitor, playing at a similar level for much of the campaign, into the dirt with such force. So Wednesday will have added significance in the history books and it came against Guardiola’s protegee, Mikel Arteta. What’s the use in knowing the secrets if you’re powerless to stop them? The mechanics of the shellacking were worked on during the only full training session beforehand. Knock it long is too rudimentary an explanation — overloading midfield and man-marking were key ingredients — yet up it went to Erling Haaland and there was Kevin De Bruyne to feast on the second ball. It was a pattern. Kyle Walker’s first throw was long to Haaland with nobody within 20 yards of him. Guardiola rollicked Ruben Dias early on for clipping an aimless ball straight to Gabriel on halfway. But vertical was the plan, the opening goal coming from a John Stones punt to Haaland. When direct, City devastate. City are better against better opposition but that has been crystalised by slapping Bayern Munich and then their greatest threat in the league for three and fours within a fortnight. ‘Normally we have two No 8s but Pep wanted more control so we were playing a double six with Rodri and Ilkay Gundogan,’ De Bruyne explained. ‘If Thomas Partey or Granit Xhaka pressed I occupied the space behind.’ Going man-to-man, such as Dias following Martin Odegaard into midfield and knowing someone will cover, enables City to physically dominate. They are no longer a team of David Silvas and now take pride in the brawn to supplement the beauty. The team is now powerful, evident as Manuel Akanji marked Bukayo Saka out of the game in an unfamiliar left-back role on his finest night since signing from Borussia Dortmund. The blend of strength and class is epitomised by Haaland and De Bruyne, the double act who when in full flight look like they are somehow cheating. To think some suggested City are better without Haaland in the team. De Bruyne looks re-energised recently — especially since Guardiola said last month he must revert to doing the ‘simple

things’. It was also not so long ago that Guardiola suggested his team do not have the armoury to stretch matches into ‘50 or 60-metre’ transitional sprints, claiming recycling possession was their only way forward. Now they have found a way of narrowing those lines, getting De Bruyne in space centrally, and when that happens Haaland can just gallop away. Good opposition can alleviate that problem but may run the risk of out-manoeuvring themselves, exposing areas where others can hurt them instead. As a collective, the City of the last few weeks have been the closest to Guardiola’s 2018 Centurions, the Globetrotters, we have seen.