As Erling Haaland sashayed across the Etihad pitch, blond hair unleashed and torso out, it felt like we had just seen the defining image of the Premier League season: a swaggering and confident serial champion taking down the pretender.
We have never seen a Premier League title race like this one – in that everybody feels Manchester City are heavy favourites despite Arsenal actually sitting on top of the table.
It’s a bizarre, virtually unique situation; one club in freefall, in full ultra-bottle mode, and the same club in the driving seat to win their first title in 20 years.
It fits with the paradoxical nature of this campaign that although the best team won on Sunday the most prominent strain of optimism is coming out of the loser’s camp.
Arsenal turned up at the Etihad, defying all expectations we had of the league-leaders to get heroically beaten. They pressed aggressively, they asserted themselves in possession, they created chances: all the things nobody thought possible of the club that’s been top of the league since October.
And when they lost, a lot of people started to feel more positively about their chances of lifting the title than they had before kick-off.
None of it really makes sense, although it doesn’t really have to, because assuming Man City beat Burnley on Wednesday night the two clubs will be locked on points and with almost identical goal records.
We will have a straight sprint to the finish line. None of what came before will matter.
Certainly that is how Arsenal must look at things today. They could, if they choose, focus on the frustration of failing to get at least a point, on the maddening inability to put in a performance like yesterday’s a week earlier at home to Bournemouth, on a record of one win in six in all competitions.
But the good thing about a nonsensical set of oxymorons is that Arsenal can choose to see things however they please.
They can choose to notice that over the last six rounds of Premier League matches Man City have only actually gained two points on Arsenal, that Man City are only on a two-game winning streak in the competition.
And they can choose to take a positive, fearless, energetic performance at the Etihad as a platform to win all five of their very winnable remaining games.
Do that and the title is probably theirs, because despite Man City clicking over the last few weeks (thanks almost entirely to Pep Guardiola moving Bernardo Silva into a deep-lying midfield role, where he again flourished on Sunday) this is not a perfect City side.
They have FA Cup games to navigate, a busy schedule, and slightly more difficult fixtures.
At this stage of the season what matters far more than the opponent’s league position is their motivation, and here Arsenal could hardly have it easier.
Newcastle (h) are in terrible form and have nothing to play for. Then it’s Fulham (h), West Ham (a), Burnley (h), and Crystal Palace (a), all teams with an eye on the summer, aside from a tricky game at the London Stadium that comes straight after the Champions League semi-final second leg.
Mikel Arteta’s side won all five corresponding fixtures last and all five reverse fixtures this season.
Man City’s sequence after the trip to Turf Moor starts with three teams fighting for European football - Everton (a), Brentford (h), and Bournemouth (a) - before they have two extremely easy games to finish against clubs already on the beach, most likely with European trophies lying next to them: Crystal Palace (h) and Aston Villa (h).
City won all of the reverse fixtures except for a 1-0 defeat at Villa Park, and all but one of the 2024/25 versions, losing 2-1 at Bournemouth.
And so in theory, in a rational world, Arsenal would be slight favourites to win it from here. But perhaps never before have we seen a Premier League title race so clearly, so painfully, defined by psychological strength and frailty.
There is widespread assumption Guardiola will know how to accelerate away while Arteta won’t be able to stop the limbs from seizing up. It isn’t the reality that matters but the perception of it.
Thinking makes it so, and as always, Arsenal’s only real opponent is themselves. As always, that opponent might prove to be unbeatable.
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