Sunday's monumental match between Manchester City and Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium is not the end of the Premier League season by any means, nor does the title represent the lone chance for the Gunners or City to lift a trophy this season.
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Yet the stakes are almost impossibly high for Mikel Arteta, Pep Guardiola, and their teams, especially in the case of the former, as the first- and second-place sides will meet for their second PL match.
The title ramifications are well-known. City enter the game six points behind Arsenal with a match-in-hand, so a home win could mean the top of the table by midweek. A draw or Arsenal win means the driver's seat for their long-sought title.
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The result is massive for the title race, but it could also echo much longer than the dropping of the curtain on the 2025-26 Premier League season.
What would an Arsenal win (or draw, really) say for the Gunners?
Sunday will almost certainly bring a vibe earthquake to North London — win, lose, or draw.
The Gunners have been chasing a 14th top-flight title since the conclusions of their Invincibles season in 2003-04. So many great Arsenal players did not lift the Premier League Trophy in that time, even excluding this current crop of brilliant talents like Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, and Declan Rice.
Robin van Persie and Mathieu Flamini joined the next season and wouldn't have imagined leaving North London without a PL title, yet they'd go on to be joined by Jack Wilshere, Olivier Giroud, Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny, Santi Cazorla, Alexis Sanchez, Per Mertesacker, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and — yes — Mikel Arteta.
While an Arsenal loss or a draw won't end their title hopes, a win would essentially plant a crown on their heads. Arteta would get his flowers as a boss capable not just beating his mentor to the title but ending a drought. He would go from a 'nearly man' with constant credibility questions to one of the world's elite bosses and a near-endless hold on the gig — and a shot at almost any other he might desire.
It will swing perception of Arsenal's hopes for a Champions League crown. Their odds are currently behind Bayern Munich, about the same as PSG, and far superior to Atletico Madrid. Those odds likely the challenges in front of PSG and Bayern Munich in facing each other as much as Arsenal's power. Getting one over on Man City would change that.
An Arsenal title would make Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice champions. It would make Viktor Gyokeres the transfer that helped push them over the top. It would cement William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes as one of the all-time PL center back duos. It would fundamentally alter every player.
What would a Manchester City win do to both sides?
We didn't write about what a City loss would do to City and that's because it's the least consequential part of this. City have won everything under Pep Guardiola, beat Liverpool to one trophy this season, and are the favorites to win the FA Cup. Finishing second this title would sting and it would be a less-than-ideal changing of the guard if Guardiola were to skip town, but legacies would not be tarnished unless it goes 7-0 to the visitors or something.
A win, however, would further boost City's legacy. It would be another huge comeback to overtake the crown and it would come in what's been perhaps the deepest collection of Premier League clubs to compete in a single season.
Now let's get to the key point — what it means to Arsenal.
It would put incredible stress on Arteta and his men down the stretch, make them an expected second-place side and give them no leeway when it comes to the PL fixtures while also trying to win their first Champions League. Arsenal could well pull itself up by its bootstraps and clobber the rest of their PL competition to win the league by goal differential, but that doesn't feel based in reality.
Furthermore, a loss would make the Champions League feel an almost impossible ask. There's an argument to be made that the Gunners would have a better chance to see City stumble and win the PL than it would to beat Atletico Madrid over two legs and either Bayern Munich or PSG in the final.
A trophy-less season would put Arsenal's leadership in an near-impossible place with Mikel Arteta, who has transformed the Gunners and set the club on its way in the post-Arsene Wenger era. Arteta and all of the Arsenal players will have played a role in turning hopes of a quadruple into another summer kicking rocks. That could never leave them unless they ran the table in a future season.
