Manchester City vs Arsenal or Guardiola vs his shadow Mikel Arteta or Rodri vs Declan Rice

Editor’s Note: This is our weekly football column from Sandip G, which is being published on Saturday evening rather than its usual Monday morning slot because of the Manchester City vs Arsenal game, to be played on Sunday.

The Manchester City-Arsenal encounter is an event; as well as an event within an event. In the broader scheme of the league, the meeting is a potential title decider, and if that be the case, a symbolic moment. That game when the power transfers from the hands of Manchester City to Arsenal, or that match City reimposes itself, or that contest Liverpool sneaks past their rivals to the title march. There is a thrilling intrigue that the league has not sustained for more than a decade.

But even in isolation, delineated from the overbearing title shadow, there are adequate narratives to make their Sunday duel an unmissable celebration of football. There is a manager in a relentless pursuit to unravel the layers and complexities of the game, a football scientist obsessed with the infinite possibilities of structure and formations. If Johan Cruyff was the Pythagorus of football, Pep Guardiola, his disciple, is Jacques Derrida, the controversial French philosopher whose theory of deconstruction gave us new insights into the meaning of language and aesthetic values.

To the complex world of passing and possession, he has interwoven a directness that has seemed antithetical in theory. He operates with a conventional number nine, Erling Haaland, has an electric-heeled winger Doku; long balls, goals from outside the box and the showy dribbles are no longer blasphemy. He is at once a revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, searching for new barriers and redefinitions, permanently moving on. All the football