Wednesday night won’t come soon enough for supporters of Arsenal and Manchester City, and football fans more generally.
A genuine classic Premier League fixture awaits, with a feeling of ‘winner takes all’ very much evident.
Though nothing will be decided whatever the outcome from the game at the Etihad Stadium is, the pendulum will certainly have swung to one side or the other.
Pep Guardiola will know that a win against the Gunners will put City in the box seat given that they could then leapfrog them if they win their game in hand.
On the flip side, an Arsenal win puts Mikel Arteta’s side back to being five points clear of their nearest rivals, and so even if City won their game in hand they would still be sat behind the north Londoners.
It’s perhaps with so much at stake that Arteta has made quite the demand on his players, who have underperformed in the last three matches, dropping six points in the process.
According to the Manchester Evening News, the Spaniard has been quoted as suggesting that he wants “absolute perfection in every single ball” when the two Premier League giants collide on Wednesday.
Not even Man City can claim that, and they’ve gone unbeaten in the last 16 games in all competitions per WhoScored.
It’s perhaps with that in mind that Guardiola has taken issue with the comment, saying – per the Manchester Evening News, covering his pre-match press conference:
“Perfection doesn’t exist in football. You cannot be perfect and win the game. We know what happened against Bayern Munich and in the future against top teams your standards have to be so high. The way they play against so many teams, we have to be really good to impose our game.
“In these type of games we decide to make so intense in many things and be so aggressive, always the spaces are there. The quality of the players to have the ball under pressure, it will not be a game where one team will have 65-70 per cent possession. It’s not going to happen.”