Arsenal vs Manchester City: Arsene Wenger enjoying the level playing field as Man City hit town

Arsenal manager wants his side to show they have the character to win an almost uniquely thrilling title race

Mesut Ozil and Calum Chambers in training (GETTY IMAGES)

Very little in football is unprecedented to Arsène Wenger, not even this Premier League season. If his Arsenal side beat Manchester City they will move four points clear of their opponents, and further away from all their other usual rivals. But even a win would leave them two points behind Leicester City, the most remarkable title challengers in the Premier League era.

But Wenger has more than 30 years of managerial experience, as well as a curious associative mind. His press conferences sometimes turn into history lectures and on Thursday, when asked if he had ever seen anything like Leicester’s season, his answer was “yes”.

“It happened once in my life, when my friend Jean-Claude Suaudeau was coaching Nantes,” Wenger remembered, looking back to 1994, when he was in charge of Monaco. “He called me at the beginning of the season and asked me to give him on loan one of my players who was not a 100 per cent regular. I said, ‘I cannot give him to you, because I need him.’ He said, ‘You’re unfair because I will go down, they have sold my players and I have nobody left!’”

So Suaudeau had to make do with what he had. “Because he had no choice he played all the young players.” Patrice Loko, Reynald Pedros, Christian Karembeu and Claude Makélélé went on a remarkable run. “For fuck’s sake, 32 games unbeaten,” Wenger joked. “In the end he won the championship. That was the first time I had seen it. Now we have a second.”

Wenger left Monaco early in the 1994-95 season but now he is in the unusual position of trying to chase down a title rival no one expected. If Arsenal beat City they will look like Leicester’s greatest rivals, but in a season this open, when the Premier League will probably be won with fewer than 80 points, there could yet be another surprise challenger.

“Of course, it inspires everybody,” said Wenger. “The teams behind by five or six points all think with a good run they can be there. It is very open, but that’s what is sensational. It is not only a league where you think it’s only Real Madrid or Barcelona. I find it very good and very healthy.”

The competitive health of the Premier League, and its relation to financial imbalance, is one of Wenger’s great topics. He has been a long-standing campaigner against what he calls “financial doping” and an advocate of financial fair play. This is why he is enthusiastic about the rise of Leicester.

He does not quite believe the era of big-money dominance is over: “You cannot say that on one season.” But he does think the new TV money for non-elite clubs increases the level of competition for all. “What is for sure is that maybe the Premier League has so much financial power that the lower teams who spent a bit less, they can still buy the best players in Valencia, in Lyon. That makes the league much more competitive.”

The new wealth of the teams outside the top six has rebalanced the Premier League, which is why this season is the most open title race in years.

Everton turned down Chelsea’s offer of £40m for John Stones, which would have been inconceivable a few years ago. “They speculate that next year, the money comes in,” Wenger said. “That is happening and it makes the teams stronger financially.

“That means Chelsea, or the other clubs, have to say, ‘It’s not £40m, it’s £80m’. Then, they start to think about it. And they can say as well ‘no’, because they speculate on the inflation that will happen. They think that the money comes in next year, it can double.”

But this slight financial re-balancing does not just apply to the smaller sides. It is also the story of Monday's match.

For years Arsenal, paying off their stadium debt, were financially dominated by Manchester City, awash with Sheikh Mansour’s money. Arsenal could not say ‘no’ when City came in for Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Touré in 2009, or Samir Nasri and Gaël Clichy in 2011. City tried to sign Robin van Persie, too, in 2012, only for him to choose Manchester United. Those days are over. Arsenal have two big-money world-class players of their own in Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil. City do not try to poach from them because they would be turned away.

Wenger is relieved to be out of that period when he felt his work was chipped away by new money. “That was difficult to take at the start but we had to survive financially and we had to live with,” he said. “Today we are in a much stronger position. I cannot say it will never happen again because you never know. But we are in a position today where we have not to give in.”

Since Arsenal last won the Premier League title, in 2004, City have won it twice. City have finished ahead of Arsenal for the last five consecutive seasons. But this year that may change. Arsenal are one point ahead of City and will pull four clear of them if they win. A victory would cap off a strong calendar year for Arsenal, which started on 18 January with a 2-0 win no one expected at the Etihad Stadium.

That was a new type of Arsenal performance, efficient, disciplined and resilient. Those are qualities they have developed this year and which could set them apart from City over the course of the title race. City have already collapsed twice this season, losing 4-1 to both Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. With no Vincent Kompany in the side, that could happen again if Arsenal get at them.

This title race is so open it will probably be won by whichever team puts together a good run in the second half of the season. City won the title at the death in 2012 and 2014 but Wenger hopes his side can finally start showing that they have the character to claim the laurels.

“We have to give our answer on the pitch week in, week out, and that question will slowly die,” he said. “What we did at Olympiakos [winning 3-0 to stay in the Champions League] is not a team of no character. You need to be special to achieve that. We won the FA Cup in the last two seasons and you need character to win the FA Cup. We are the only team who has beaten Leicester, basically, and in a convincing way.”

Arsenal have been accused of excessive stability, but this year that looks like a virtue. “All of us can be exceptional for one day in our life but character is to have a target, and maintain your focus on that target,” Wenger said. “That is what we have to show in the league.”