It is the nature of the modern Premier League, where 90 points seems the bare minimum to win the title, that analysis of how the league was won tends to focus on where it was lost. Manchester City’s excellence has become so relentless that it is widely expected that they will surpass 90 points. The question is less what they did and more whether other teams could have done something to surpass that total.

In this context, one recalls the last day of March last season and Arsenal’s away game at Manchester City. Liverpool had previously beaten Brighton on the same day, putting them three points ahead of Arsenal and four ahead of City despite having played a game more. Arsenal were content to frustrate City and drew 0-0.

Although City were close on xG, Arsenal had two of their three shots on goal in the game. They had held on to their lead and knew that if they won all nine remaining games, Liverpool would be the only team that could finish ahead of them.

Immediately afterwards, Mikel Arteta praised his side’s resilience, pointing out that City had scored in every home game for the past three years, stressing that sometimes you have to “put your ego and ideology aside and do what you have to do”. Arsenal had lost their eight previous away games at the Etihad, including a 4-1 defeat at a similar stage the previous season. In the immediate context, it seemed a good result.

As it turned out, Liverpool won just four of their remaining nine games, while Arsenal won eight. However, the decisive factor was their home defeat to Aston Villa, meaning City won their fourth consecutive title with nine wins from nine games.

So while Arsenal may have lost the title at home to Villa in the immediate sense – or in the unexpected defeats at Christmas to West Ham and Fulham – there is also the nagging feeling that they missed an opportunity at City.

They had the game under control. Could they have been a little braver in the last 20 minutes? Would it have been worth the risk to part ways with the champions? Would they have won their last nine games sooner if they hadn’t been under the pressure to do so?

There is no clear answer to that, of course. Had Arsenal opened up, it would have given City a chance, lifted them above Arsenal and everyone would have condemned Arteta for his hubris. It’s not a question of right and wrong, but in hindsight, and given that at the time of the Arsenal game, City had not won any of their eight games against teams that would finish in the top six, was that perhaps a missed opportunity?

I’m not saying that Arteta should have been attacking from the start, nor am I criticising an approach that resulted in Arsenal conceding five fewer goals than City, 12 fewer than Liverpool and 22 fewer than any other team last season. I’m suggesting that for a third of a game there was an opportunity to attack an opponent who seemed to have lost his strength.

This is not to say that Arteta should go all out against City on Sunday. It is more about feeling the emotion of a game and using psychological fluctuations to his advantage, a difficult and imprecise skill that perhaps gets lost in the minutiae of data-driven planning.

City in March was the only away game Arsenal have not won this year. They have not trailed in an away game since their defeat at Fulham on New Year’s Eve, that bizarre game when they took the lead, looked confident and then lost their bearings, as they did at Liverpool and West Ham last season. This occasional habit casts serious doubt on their psychological ability to win the league – and was perhaps reflected in how unsettled they were by Declan Rice’s red card at home to Brighton.

But since that Fulham exception, Arsenal have scored 31 goals and conceded just three in 11 away league games. Although Arteta is often portrayed as a kind of Guardiola-lite, he has clear similarities to José Mourinho.

And that may make sense: With so many sites practicing Subscribe Football, competitive advantage lies in the fringes, in refusing to engage and walk long to avoid the press, in defence – something Jürgen Klopp predicted five years ago after a goalless draw between Liverpool and Bayern Munich. Even Pep Guardiola with his back four of only centre-backs and direct play to Erling Haaland is not a classic Subscribe more.

The 28% of possession Arsenal had at the Etihad was strikingly low, but they also had less possession in the second half of last season against Brighton, Tottenham and Manchester United. Against Spurs last week they had just 37%. That was perhaps as much a reaction to the absence of Rice and Martin Ødegaard as to the opposition, but they did their job well, the sense of control much greater than in the 2-0 win at Aston Villa three weeks earlier. Against Atalanta on Thursday, set to defend, they had 46% possession but, as at Villa, they needed an amazing double save from David Raya to prevent their goal.

City have been a strange mix this season. They have conceded the first goal in both of their home league games, struggled at times against Brentford and West Ham and were mediocre against Inter, but Haaland has been in exceptional form, even by his own stratospheric standards.

Arsenal kept a clean sheet in both of City’s league games last season, but that will be more difficult without Ødegaard and, in Haaland’s form, even a single half-chance could be enough to put them away.

Regardless of any potential point deductions, this game already has the character of a decisive match. If Arsenal avoid defeat, they can be confident that they are in the lead, having already played three of their toughest away games. If they lose, however, a five-point lead for City could already seem decisive.