Manchester City’s loss to Newcastle United has put their title challenge in peril. While Liverpool did drop points against Leicester City, City find themselves five points behind Liverpool with 14 games to go. With the pace that these two teams are on this season, City will need to win most, if not all, of their remaining matches. They will come out needing to win and will look to blow Arsenal away.
Arsenal are also in a place where they will need to go on a strong run to achieve their goal as they slid into fourth place after Chelsea’s 4-0 loss on Wednesday. Now they need to stay there. While Chelsea are having issues, Manchester United have been on fire and are making their own run at fourth place. The Gunners will need to up their performances to hold off United and that includes getting something from this match.
Team News
Benjamin Mendy, Vincent Kompany and Claudio Brave are all expected to miss this match through injury for City.
On Arsenal’s side of things, Danny Welbeck, Rob Holding, Hector Bellerin and Sokratis Papastathopoulos will all miss out, while Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Laurent Koscielny are all major doubts, according to Physioroom.com.
Key Players
Manchester City: Leroy Sane
Sane has a huge opportunity to cut Arsenal apart on Sunday. The Gunners’ right back options are Stephan Lichtsteiner and Carl Jenkinson. Sane can eviscerate both of them without even getting into second gear. His presence on the left can help City create chance after chance after chance and that can just win City the game.
Arsenal: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
City don’t have as many exploitable holes as Arsenal do, but every team struggles with a striker as talented as Aubameyang. He is the main reason why Arsenal have as good a chance at the top four as they have. Aubameyang is the second leading scorer in the league, only one goal behind leader Mohamed Salah, despite not being Arsenal’s starting striker all season. He is always a threat to grab a goal or two and him finding a converting a few chances is Arsenal’s best chance of winning this game.
Prediction
City should win this with relative ease. They are a better team and Arsenal are a bad away team. City’s title chances are all but dead if they fail to win here, so they will be extremely motivated to do just that.
