FA Cup has helped Man City in “attack” on premier League tittle race

FA Cup has helped Man City in “attack” on premier League tittle race

Manchester City are back in Premier League action for the first time in over two weeks on Wednesday but have improved in the meantime

Pep Guardiola embraces Bernardo Silva after Manchester City’s win at Tottenham

Pep Guardiola embraces Bernardo Silva after Manchester City’s win at Tottenham

Manchester City have returned from Abu Dhabi with a sense of purpose.

 

 

Nathan Ake said it allowed the players to ‘relax a bit mentally’, and it was almost undoubtedly nicer for them to be training in T-shirts rather than coats and the rest. And what did the relaxing allow? According to a relaxed Ake, “to get ready to attack the second half of the season.”

 

Such a contrast sums Pep Guardiola’s City up: one minute they can be calm, and the next they are breathing down everyone’s necks and moving past. The feeling creeping into the Etihad is that it is becoming that point in the season when they start to wheel into action.

 

Or, as Kyle Walker put it after the Tottenham game: “The players that we’ve got here and the amount of trophies that we’ve won, we know what it takes to get over the line. This is the business end of the season.”

 

 

Time will tell whether City are able to haul in Liverpool and hold off Arsenal in the Premier League title race, but the other teams in it can be under no illusion that the Blues will not blink in their pursuit. They have come from behind to beat both in a previous campaign and most of the City squad have experience of one if not both successful chases.

 

Last season also showed how the FA Cup could help City. A fourth-round win over Arsenal at the Etihad gave the team the confidence that they could topple the side that was streaking away in the title race, and they duly reeled them in.

 

At the weekend, scoring the first goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in six attempts was relief enough and to do it in front of an extended allocation of 9,000 Blues added to the joy. That will be a significant barrier unlocked knowing that they have to go back to Spurs in the league – arguably their second biggest trip left after Anfield – and those three points could be crucial in the title race.

 

Not for the first time under Guardiola, an achievement in one competition has opened up an opportunity for them in another. That game at Spurs later in the season will look less daunting with that monkey off their backs of never having scored there or won there; they will be both more relaxed and sharper for it.

 

 

Before then, all City can do is win their game and look to apply even more pressure. Beating Burnley at home on Wednesday night will test Liverpool, who host Chelsea on the same evening.

 

And with Erling Haaland hoping to return, Guardiola and his players can attack with even more confidence.