tazmania So no one is going to claim us bottling anything at any point next year after we win a trophy this year?
Not really. The way the league is implicitly coded and the way the dogmatic narratives come to light, City is still read as the masculine to Arsenal's feminine.
Guardiola came from Barcelona and Bayern to England as a champion manager and player, spent all the money to implement the same football and won every trophy. He's been fucking England since he arrived.
Arteta came up under Guardiola's tutelage having been a relatively unsuccessful player, and has won exactly one trophy which it's often claimed Aubameyang won for him. His Arsenal doesn't play a single ideal football, but he regularly discusses an ideal diversity of tactics. In other words Artetaball is a kind of control that initially manifests through divergence. It should be noted this is also what "total football" was when Cruyff first weaponised it: you can't have defenders who can play! These things go along helically.
For the average football pundit, Pep has been fucking the league for years. The pundits have been receiving a perverse vicarious enjoyment from that: each City fixture is a dogging appointment.
Arteta and Arsenal meanwhile have been publicly vulnerable and weird, and have failed repeatedly and been dubbed "bridesmaids" because of it. One might ask what substance it is we are supposed to be "bottling".
Anyway, the moment the fucker gets fucked is always a surprise to the fuck-ists. If we do win the league, we'll have pegged Pep and half the press riding his nuts as well. Just observe the way the language changes next season if all the pundits have to get used to riding the Arsenal strap-on instead.
