England's football giants will collide on Sunday as Manchester City looks to protect its home turf against Arsenal, who will attempt to avenge the 6-3 beating they suffered at Etihad Stadium last year. (Live Stream at 11:00 a.m on NBC Sports Extra & Sports Stream / Highlights & Stats on EPL Main Page)
Manchester City has been on a roll since the first week of November, boasting 14-game unbeaten streak in all league competitions. However, Manuel Pellegrini's guys are coming off a shellacking 1-1 draw against Everton last week, and another flat performance could prove costly against a very confident team like the Gunners.
After kicking off the year on a 0-2 loss to Southampton, Arsenal scored back-to-back wins against Hull City 2-0 and Stoke City 3-0 to get their English Premier League campaign back on track.
Although their record against top-tier teams aren't pretty over the past two to three years, Arsenal tactician Arsene Wagner claims his team's improvement this season has put them at par with these elite ball clubs.
"Let's see on Sunday, but I believe, yes, we are on a level [with City]," he said. "Winning big games makes you stronger and we should not question our potential to do it. We just have to turn up with the right level of performance.
Pelligrini, who arguably becomes the most successful Chilean manager in Premier League history, is very much aware of Arsenal's firepower and its Chilean goal-machine Alexis Sanchez.
In his first season with Arsenal, the 26-year old Sanchez already racked up an impressive 18-goal haul and is expected to add more goals in the coming weeks as he slowly acclimatized to the Gunners' system after just transferring from Barcelona last summer.
"It is not easy for a player in his first season here to score so many goals, (but) Alexis is repeating what he did in the last two seasons at Barcelona and scoring a lot of goals," Pelligrini said of his countryman.
Arsenal currently settles at the 6th spot in EPL standings with a 10-6-5 slate (36 pts), but a victory against the second-place Man City (14-5-2, 47 pts) will put them ahead of Tottenham Hotspur for fifth place in the table.
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