The Sunday’s match between champions Manchester City and Arsenal is already being billed as a crucial one in the race for the championship.
The two teams have been battling it out for the past two seasons, with Pep Guardiola’s City triumphant on both occasions as they stretched their run to an unprecedented four in a row.
Nothing in the opening salvos of the new campaign suggests it will be any different this time, although many are predicting that Arsenal can finally break City’s stranglehold and a positive result on Sunday would be a psychological boost.
A hearing began Monday after England’s Premier League accused its current champions of breaching financial regulations.
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City’s sky blue horizon is clouded by the beginning of an independent commission’s hearing into 115 charges for alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules—charges the Abu Dhabi-owned club strenuously deny—which began on Monday.
But despite that distraction, it has been business as usual on the pitch, and City sit top of the table with a maximum of 12 points, with striker Erling Haaland already threatening to shatter his own records having scored nine goals already.
Arsenal came through a key test last weekend when they went to north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur without key midfielder Declan Rice and captain Martin Odegaard but still claimed a 1-0 victory to move them to 10 points from their four games.
Mikel Arteta’s side beat City 1-0 in the early months of last season and drew 0-0 at The Etihad—a result that at the time looked better for the London club.
But City won their next nine matches and clinched the title on the last day of the season by two points.
Arsenal know the margin for error in the title race will be wafer thin again, and while defeat at City on Sunday would not be terminal—a five-point deficit would already look ominous.
Arteta will be boosted on Sunday by the return of England international Rice from suspension, but their Norway midfielder Odegaard will again be absent with ankle ligament damage.
City will be keen to get back to winning ways having been held to a 0-0 draw at home by Inter Milan in their Champions League opener on Wednesday and will have a slight advantage with Arsenal having one day less to prepare after their Champions League clash against Atalanta on Thursday.
“We know Arsenal very well, they know us very well, and obviously it will be a very intense game,” City defender Ruben Dias said of the eagerly-anticipated clash.
