Manchester City vs Arsenal

A place in the FA Cup quarterfinals is on the line as Manchester City and Arsenal go head-to-head in a blockbuster fourth-round tie at the Etihad Stadium.

Erling Haaland halted his two-game scoring Premier League duck against Wolverhampton Wanderers at the weekend, bagging his fourth hat-trick this season to take his tally to a whopping 25 league goals. Having single-handedly netted more goals than nine of the other 19 Premier League sides, Haaland will lead Manchester City’s bid to arrest an underwhelming run of four consecutive FA Cup defeats at the hands of Arsenal. Pep Guardiola’s only competitive loss to his former assistant Mikel Arteta was a 2-0 reverse in the 2019/22 FA Cup semi-finals. But he has since won his subsequent five competitive matches against the Gunners by an aggregate score of 13-2. With the ‘Cityzens’ coming into this tie on the back of three straight home league wins via multi-goal margins, another clear-cut victory could be on the cards.

However, high-flying Arsenal are no longer the whipping boys they used to be in the previous years, as most recently witnessed by their late 3-2 home triumph over in-form Manchester United at the weekend. In addition to solidifying the club’s best-ever points tally at the halfway point of a Premier League season (50 – W16, D2, L1), Arteta’s men have maintained a five-point lead on second-placed Man City. With a game in hand over the ‘Cityzens,’ the ‘Gunners’ remain in firm control of their bid to lift the title for the first time since 2003/04. Yet this contest has no ramifications on the Premier League title race but could help Arsenal go the distance in the FA Cup as they’ve won the title the last three times they’ve defeated Man City.