We pick out the crucial aspects of Sunday’s showpiece event at Wembley between Arsenal and Manchester City that could decide the game.
The EFL Cup final is upon us, and with it, the first chance of the 2025-26 season to win some silverware.
This game – and the competition as a whole – is always a sidenote to the rest of the season and the bigger, more important trophies on offer in the coming months. However, although that remains the case this time around, there is added importance to this game. This EFL Cup final feels significant.
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, winners of this competition on four occasions, face Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, who have won little but are hungry to start doing so. They want this to be the first of many more trophies in the coming years.
So, will this be the day the floodgates open for Arsenal, or will City reassert their dominance at the top of the English game (at least until Arsenal win the Premier League, as is looking increasingly certain)?
We’ve picked out five key elements of Sunday’s game that could decide where the EFL Cup final is won and lost.
Opta’s EFL Cup final preview and prediction
Will City’s Muscle Memory Be Enough?
If there’s one thing we’ve all seen plenty of in the last decade, it’s Manchester City players lifting shiny trophies over their heads.
Since Guardiola was appointed in 2016, City have won six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, a Champions League, a UEFA Super Cup and a FIFA Club World Cup.
Arsenal have not been as synonymous with trophy lifting under Arteta, with just one FA Cup win (2019-20) since his arrival in 2019 (no, we’re not counting Community Shields for either team). However, Arsenal are aiming to change all that, still with a possibility of claiming as many as four trophies this season.
The first of their targets is the League Cup, which they haven’t won since 1993, a remarkable 33 years ago. This is only their fourth League Cup final since then, but they have lost each of the previous three: to Chelsea in 2006-07, Birmingham City in 2010-11, and Man City in 2017-18.
They will come up against the team who have comfortably been the most dominant in this competition in recent years. City won six out of eight editions of the League Cup between 2013-14 and 2020-21.
Does that have any bearing on the two current teams? There does seem to be a strange aura with certain clubs in certain competitions, regardless of who is wearing the shirt. Just look at Real Madrid and their relentless winning in the Champions League, which City know about all too well after the last two weeks.
The Premier League table will tell you Arsenal have been the better team this season, but cup finals can do strange things to people. Case in point: City and their shock FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace last year.
Despite that setback, Guardiola has significantly more experience of guiding his team successfully through finals than Arteta, which could be key here.
DS
Has Haaland Rediscovered His Goalscoring Touch Just in Time?
After an excellent start to 2025-26, Erling Haaland looked more than a little lost for a good few weeks.
There was a time when it looked like he might break his own Premier League goalscoring record, having scored 19 goals in the competition by Christmas. City’s reliance on him appeared to be a strength rather than a weakness, simply because he scored so reliably.
But, fairly predictably, as his goals dried up, City’s season stuttered. Since Christmas, the Norwegian has scored only one non-penalty Premier League goal – the third in a 3-0 win over Fulham in February.
City are now as good as out of the title race, very much actually out of the Champions League, and the two domestic cup competitions are their only remaining realistic chances of silverware this season.
Concerningly, though, it wasn’t just Haaland’s goals that stopped flowing. He had struggled badly for chances, looking leggy and off the pace for weeks, even months, on end. He had at least five shots in 11 of his first 28 appearances of the season in all competitions, but then failed to do so even once in his 14 games up to and including the 1-1 draw at West Ham last weekend that all but ended City’s title hopes.
Then, in midweek, he had seven shots in just 56 minutes on the pitch in the defeat to Real Madrid. He racked up 1.14 expected goals all on his own – his highest non-penalty xG in a game since November – and five shots on target, which was more than he has had in any game in any competition all season. And – most crucially – he scored a goal.
This was a fairly unique occasion in that City had to go for it. They were three goals down from the first leg and had to go all-out attack. That may have contributed to him having quite so many chances.
They won’t do that on Sunday, when a single-goal victory would be enough. Stopping Arsenal scoring will be a bigger concern this time around.
But even if it is only one game, his performance will give City some hope that he might be about to hit some form, and could add to his run of scoring in each of his last three games against Arsenal. However, he’s never scored in six appearances at Wembley for City. Can he build on his midweek goal and end that run on Sunday?
AT
How Big a Role Will Depth of Quality Play?
Given their riches and vast spending over the best part of two decades, it’s a curious situation when City’s squad depth is being doubted, but that is precisely the world in which we find ourselves.
That’s because Arsenal have built a squad capable of withstanding just about any crisis of injuries or form. Whatever problem they face, Arteta has a solution at his disposal. That is a big part of the reason they are still in with a chance of winning all four major competitions this season.
The depth of quality in their squad means they spread their goals around the team impressively. While City rely heavily on Haaland for goals, Arsenal can score from more or less anywhere. Haaland has scored 29.1% of City’s goals in all competitions, while for Arsenal, Viktor Gyökeres has scored the highest proportion (15.1%). Arsenal have 12 players who have scored at least four goals this season, compared to seven for City.
On a related note, substitutes have scored more goals (11) and provided more assists (10) for Arsenal than any other team in Premier League games this season. City rank bottom of the Premier League for goal contributions by substitutes (two).
most goals and assists by subs - Premier League 2025-26
fewest goals and assists by subs - Premier League 2025-26
None of this is to say that City lack depth or quality. Clearly, they have one of the best squads in world football. They wouldn’t be second in the Premier League and in the final of the EFL Cup if that wasn’t the case.
But they also haven’t made the most of their resources this season. They have suffered plenty of injury problems, while many of their attacking players, such as Haaland and Phil Foden, have gone through extreme peaks and troughs of form.
They could do with some of their other players stepping up on Sunday, or Arsenal’s depth may prove decisive.
AT
Eze the Gambreaker?
It’s been an encouraging few weeks for Eberechi Eze, who’s gone from barely having a bit-part role in Arsenal’s priority competitions to being a regular starter.
His renaissance was fittingly capped on Tuesday by a stunning long-range strike against Bayer Leverkusen, putting Arsenal ahead on the night and on aggregate as they sealed progress to the Champions League quarter-finals.
That goal and his performance stoked numerous questions in the post-match press conference of Arteta, who spoke glowingly of Eze, and particularly his improvement off the ball.
It’s hardly rocket science to suggest that could be relevant against a Guardiola team, but the perception Eze has developed without the ball since joining Arsenal ought to only make him even more valuable to Arteta because we know what he’s capable of in possession.
Crucially, it’s what he can do on the ball that marks him out as potentially decisive this weekend – in fact, he’s already shown as much against City this season.
Eze came off the bench in their September Premier League meeting with City 1-0 up at the Emirates Stadium, and he played a vital role for the Gunners. He showed for the ball, helped Arsenal progress play with his ability both on the half turn and under pressure, and his technical talents meant he was a broad attacking threat.
He forced Gianluigi Donnarumma into one important stop, and it was Eze’s gorgeous ball over the top that found Gabriel Martinelli for his stoppage-time equaliser.
City spent 22% of that game in a low block after Haaland’s early opener, a considerable increase from their season average of 14%, but Eze eventually unlocked them.
Arsenal v Man City phases
It would surprise no one if Sunday’s final is similarly tight and cagey, and it’s games such as these where mavericks like Eze can come to the fore with his dual threat of creative ingenuity and long-range shooting ability.
RB
Do Arsenal Have a Hold Over City?
While City might be a big part of the reason Arsenal have not won anything in the last few seasons, that isn’t the direct consequence of results in matches between the teams. In fact, Arsenal have had the better of those games.
Arteta’s side are unbeaten in their last six meetings with City in all competitions, winning two and drawing four. To prove just how much of a momentum shift that is, Arsenal had lost 15 of their previous 16 against them (W1).
Arsenal did require late equalisers in two of those games, including in the 1-1 draw at the Emirates in September. But at the Emirates last season, City only rescued a point in the 98th minute, despite playing more than half the game against 10 men following Leandro Trossard’s sending off.
And crucially, Arsenal did actually win two of them: a 1-0 win in October 2023 and a 5-1 trouncing in February last year (though the stats suggest City might feel slightly aggrieved to have lost so resoundingly). Arsenal’s recent record against City could provide a huge psychological boost.
Arsenal 5-1 man city stats Premier League february 2025
It isn’t just against City that they have done well; Arteta has built a team that reliably gets good results against the best teams. In a ‘big-six’ mini league since the start of 2022-23 (Premier League games only), Arsenal have at least 17 more points than any other team (City 59).
Their failure to win trophies in recent years has largely been because they have slipped up against mid-table teams. That fact is completely irrelevant here, though, where they need just one big performance against one big team to secure their first trophy in six years.
AT
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