Newman Noggs
Well-Known Member
I'm biased as I'm a Gooner so I'm going to try to be objective but take what I say with a large dose of salt.
Doing an 'eye test' on Arsenal vs City would currently lead to the conclusion that Arsenal are in general finding it relatively comfortable in their matches (with some exceptions) whereas City seem to be in more jeopardy at times. On top of that Arsenal have been winning with a depleted squad, many of whom are on the cusp of returning. Finally, objectively if a team of the season was put together now, more Arsenal players would be in it than City players.
This doesn't mean anything for what happens moving forward but as a Gooner what gives me confidence compared to previous years is Squad depth and quality of our 1st teamers compared to what we are up against. I always felt in previous seasons vs City that your 1st XI was better than ours. I don't feel that's the case today (again this is just a personal opinion, I've frequently been wrong before and frequently will in future). I suppose the one nagging doubt I have is the one player in the City side who I think would be an absolute no brainer to get into a combined City/Arsenal side is Haaland and he is so good that it's like having another 4 City players get into that side. What I mean is the differences between some City/Arsenal players might be 5-10% but Haaland is like 70% better than his Arsenal counterpart and that differential might be enough to win the league on its own.
I haven't seen enough of Arsenal to make a comparison between teams/squads but, as an opinion, I don't see anything outlandish in that.