5 min readApr 21, 2026 06:46 PM IST Pep Guardiola uttered the reassuring words every Arsenal fan wanted to hear from Mikel Arterta. “Who is top of the league?” the Manchester City manager asked the press brigade after his team shaved off three points from Arsenal’s lead. “We are not!” he emphasised. “In goal difference, who is better?” ‘They are.” The victory over leaders, he stressed, “gives us just hope.” Time permitting, he could have added: Who has the meanest defence? Who has scored the most goals? Who are the most prolific converters of the dead ball? When the myopic angst dissipates, the City defeat would feel perhaps lighter. The sense of fatalism, the hyperventilating fans would realise, is a mere history-driven panic attack. It’s not hope that flutters, but belief that swirls. It’s the game they lost, but one that could stir them to greater feats. It could unburden them in the sense that their last formidable game is over. It was a game in which they found clarity and relief. The defeat to …