{"id":540229,"date":"2026-03-23T09:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T09:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/540229\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T09:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T09:55:11","slug":"pep-guardiola-man-citys-carabao-cup-victory-could-refocus-arsenal-in-title-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/540229\/","title":{"rendered":"Pep Guardiola: Man City’s Carabao Cup victory could refocus Arsenal in title race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pep Guardiola said he does not expect Manchester City<\/a>‘s Carabao Cup<\/a> victory over Arsenal<\/a> to have any impact on the title race and believes it could refocus Mikel Arteta’s side ahead of its visit to the Etihad Stadium.<\/p>\n

City won 2-0<\/a> at Wembley on Sunday thanks to two second-half headers from Nico O’Reilly<\/a> to earn Guardiola his fifth Carabao Cup success in 10 years.<\/p>\n

The two teams meet again in the Premier League<\/a> on April 19.<\/p>\n

But sitting nine points behind with eight games to go, Guardiola said it’s a long shot to think Arsenal will suffer a dip because of their cup final disappointment.<\/p>\n

Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta will lock horns once again in the title race.\u00a0Photo by Glyn KIRK \/ AFP via Getty Images.<\/p>\n

“I would like to be nine points in front to fight for the Premier League,” Guardiola said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it will have an impact, different competition and they will be more concerned when they come to the Etihad.<\/p>\n

“The Premier League is in their hands,” he said. “We have a game in hand and Arsenal at home, and we are going to try to win our games, and we will see what happens.”<\/p>\n

Guardiola celebrated both goals at Wembley wildly, including sprinting down the touchline when O’Reilly headed in his second of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

– Man City beat passive Arsenal in Carabao Cup; Premier League title race not over?<\/a>
– Manchester City win Carabao Cup as Nico O’Reilly double silences Arsenal<\/a>
– Arsenal’s Eberechi Eze out for England friendlies with calf injury<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s the 19th trophy of his spell at the Etihad, and the 55-year-old — whose future beyond the summer is up in the air — said he is determined to relish the success.<\/p>\n

“Always winning a title is difficult, so it’s a joy and the satisfaction alongside,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They suffocated us in the first 15 minutes like they normally do, but after that we started to win a little bit of the second balls.<\/p>\n

“We made an incredible victory,” he added. “The Carabao Cup is not the Champions League or the Premier League, everyone knows that, but winning against that team makes the title special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pep Guardiola said he does not expect Manchester City‘s Carabao Cup victory over Arsenal to have any impact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-540229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}