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League Cup PL Title Race LIVE 6m ago Mikel Arteta puts his hands over his face during Arsenal's Champions League second leg against Bayer Leverkusen last month Justin Setterfield/Getty Images The Athletic has live coverage of Manchester City vs Arsenal in the Premier League. So, Arsenal fans. Shall we start with the bad news? Following a disappointing defeat against Bournemouth last weekend, Manchester City have the opportunity to close the gap to three points at the top of the Premier League table on Sunday, with a game in hand. Advertisement Pep Guardiola’s side are in ominous shape, scoring nine and conceding none across their last three domestic games. And it is precisely this time of year — the run-in — that City tend to click into their most ruthless gear, having lost just one of their last 40 Premier League matches in the months of April and May. What’s more, City rarely throw away points in table-topping games. They have beaten Arsenal comfortably — 3-1 and 4-1 — in their two meetings when both sides have occupied the top two spots in the Premier League, while they were last defeated in a first-vs-second clash eight years ago, already holding a 16-point lead over Manchester United at the time. So it will not be straightforward for Arsenal to repel the City charge. The more positive outlook is that Mikel Arteta’s men don’t need to win Sunday’s title showdown to wrest momentum back in their favour. Three points would flip the narrative entirely, but even a draw in Manchester will keep the gap to six points, leaving Arsenal with just five games to navigate with their points buffer intact. It is a result that feels attainable given Arsenal’s defensive solidity throughout the season. As we can see from the graphic below, despite their recent hiccup against Bournemouth, they remain outliers in terms of the low quality of opposition chances their defence allows on goal. That said, there are still glaring issues to fix in possession, most notably Arsenal’s failures in the build-up, which were on display against City in the 2-0 Carabao Cup final defeat. Arteta’s side also struggled to create from open play against Bournemouth, facing similar issues against a 4-2-4 pressing shape that nullified his team’s ability to pass out from the back. With City unlikely to uproot their winning formula, the onus is on Arteta to find a solution. Advertisement At the heart of Arsenal’s issues at Wembley last month was an inability to progress the ball through midfield. City looked to block passes into Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi with a line of four, as illustrated below, handing the initiative to Arsenal’s centre-backs and goalkeeper to move the ball forward. Further back, Rodri and Bernardo Silva were on their toes should the ball find its way through, while full-backs Nico O’Reilly and Matheus Nunes were aggressive to jump up and apply pressure if the ball went wide. Arsenal were too tentative on the ball, leading to prolonged passages of their back four holding possession. With City’s most dangerous four players up the pitch, they were naturally worried about losing the ball near their own goal. That tension was not helped after City made a few statements of intent early on. Here, for example, we can see them push on in their 4-2-4 to chase a backwards pass. In frame two, both Arsenal midfielders are marked out of the game, while Antoine Semenyo blocks the pass out wide. Gabriel is positive with his pass, however, fizzing the ball into Leandro Trossard, who drops deep, but Nunes is alert and barges the winger off the ball, leaving Arsenal exposed. Despite that early scare, Arsenal lacked imagination and failed to adapt their shape. Such caution in possession allowed City to push on, collapsing in on the ball whenever they lost it and establishing territorial control that put too much strain on Arsenal. Restoring David Raya to the starting XI might help Arsenal find an escape route. Stand-in goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga was often slow to release the ball and hesitant to clip a pass over the line of four and out to full-backs in space. In the sequence below, he held onto possession for 18 seconds. Raya is much more incisive with his distribution, visualised with the help of Skill Corner below. From his most common line-breaking passes in the build-up phase, we can see that he is prepared to go long to bypass the press, while he can also go left, right, or push the ball through the centre when he keeps things short. He is also more comfortable stepping into the defensive line, freeing up another player to move forward and receive further up the pitch. Advertisement Here against City back in September, he has pushed Saliba out wide, allowing full-back Riccardo Calafiori to push on. With an accurate long pass, he skips six City players and hits the chest of Leandro Trossard, who has the chance to bring the ball down and find one of his onrushing team-mates moving into the space behind City’s two-man midfield. Going long is no guarantee of success — City centre-backs Abdukodir Khusanov and Nathan Ake repeatedly won their duels whenever the ball went long towards the front two in the Carabao Cup final — but Raya’s more precise distribution to the wingers or Viktor Gyokeres, if he is on the pitch, could unlock precious space in midfield for Arsenal. It is unfair to expect Raya to change things alone, so Arsenal will need a more varied approach — and they could take some clues from Chelsea, who exposed one of the key flaws of Guardiola’s new approach. While the front four offer City defensive coverage across the width of the pitch, those players ultimately need to keep their eyes on the ball in front of them and shuffle to shut the passing lanes. It means movement behind them can be difficult to track. Below, for example, as Chelsea build up from their goalkeeper, we can see Rayan Cherki looking back to ensure that Moises Caicedo is in his ‘cover shadow’ (the area behind a pressing player that becomes blocked). Semenyo is similarly concerned about Marc Cucurella’s position out wide. Though Cherki has the passing angle covered in frame two, the speed at which Chelsea move the ball sideways and then look to break the line catches him slightly out of position, allowing Jorrel Hato to thread the ball through. Moving the ball from side-to-side can manipulate the position of the front four. Coupled with movement from midfield and a quick forward pass, teams can access their midfielders and take the front four out of the game. In a similar example, it is the movement from centre-forward Joao Pedro that causes City problems. We see once again in frame two that Cherki has blocked the pass into midfield, but Semenyo senses the run behind him and steps inside, leaving the ball out to Cucurella available. Advertisement Hato wraps a pass out to the Spanish full-back, and Chelsea quickly attack down the flanks, ultimately leading to a disallowed goal for the hosts after a tight offside call. Liverpool also illustrated the value of swapping positions in midfield, as City initially struggled to track movement behind their four-man wall. Early on, we see one of Liverpool’s midfielders, Curtis Jones, drop between the centre-backs to help with build-up. Meanwhile, Florian Wirtz and Mohamed Salah tuck in and target the spaces to the side of Rodri and Bernardo further back. Again, after a few sideways passes to move the City four around, Jones picks out an incisive pass into Wirtz, who has space to turn and release Hugo Ekitike out wide, leading to a shot on target. It is a passage that shows the value of dropping a more expansive passer into the first phase of build-up. Later in the first half, Ryan Gravenberch slots into the defensive line. This time, it is a burst of movement from Wirtz that opens up the pass, creating separation from Rodri and receiving the pass from Virgil van Dijk. With one fewer midfielder behind him, Cherki has no fixed player to follow, making it more difficult for him to get his positioning right. A better first-time pass around the corner from Wirtz would have set Jones away into space. It should be underlined that Liverpool and Chelsea were beaten comprehensively by City anyway. With the attacking talent on display throughout Guardiola’s side, breaking through the 4-2-4 with more inventive movement and quick passing sequences is not a guarantee of success. But as both sides showed, positive forward play after the build-up can lead to significant chances. And it will at least mean that Arsenal are less passive — and therefore less vulnerable to unbroken spells of City pressure — than they were under the Wembley Arch last month. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Thom Harris is a football data writer at The Athletic, with particular interest in data analysis and visualisation. Born and bred on the blue side of Manchester, he is also passionate about the Spanish game, having spent time working for Villarreal C. F in the past. Follow Thom on Twitter @Thom Harris_