The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akim Oleri.

Manchester City claimed the first silverware of the season

thanks to a Nico O'Reilly brace.

For Arsenal, though, it was another opportunity missed.

So what impact will this have on the title race? In with us today, we've

got Art de Roche, who's a regular on our Arsenal podcast handbrake off. We've also got Adam

Crafton as well. So Sunday's triumph was Pep Guardiola's 40th trophy as a manager, his fifth

Carrabo Cup. Adam, was this a tactical master class from the maestro of himself? To a manager, his fifth Carabot Cup. Adam, was this a tactical masterclass from the

maestro of himself? To a certain extent, yeah, it did feel like he was reasserting himself a little

bit, and you could see as the game went on, you know, actually what it meant to him. It's always

quite nice, I think, when you see,

probably not the Arsenal fans, but when you see these coaches who have won things so many times be so engrossed and so just engaged in the outcome of, you know, this isn't the

Champions League final, it's not the Premier League, but it was clearly very important, I think,

for Pepe Guadioa at this moment where

I think many people had kind of written his city team off in terms of for this season,

if not necessarily in this game, and potentially even his kind of reign at Manchester City

to a certain extent had started to, you started to wonder if it was going to wimper out a little bit.

So it did feel a little bit like, you know, kind of one of the old masters just reasserting,

hey, I'm still here and I'm still a problem. And by the way, you're not, you know, looking at the

title race, you might not get this as easily as it felt when

Maxed Alman scored that goal a week ago. So I think there was a lot of layers to it, but it did

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