Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola head into the Carabao Cup final with very different recent histories and reasons to crave victory.
Arsenal have not won silverware since beating Chelsea in the 2020 FA Cup final — a triumph that came nine months after Arteta left Guardiola’s Manchester City coaching staff to take charge at the Emirates. Since then Guardiola has added a lengthy list of trophies to City’s cabinet, including the Champions League, four Premier League titles, the FA Cup, the EFL Cup, plus the UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. By contrast, Arsenal have repeatedly fallen short: defeat to Villarreal in the 2021 Europa League semi-final, EFL Cup semi-final exits to Liverpool in 2022 and Newcastle in 2025, and elimination from last season’s Champions League semi-final by eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain.
Reaching this final therefore interrupts a pattern of near-misses for Arsenal, but Arteta also has a more direct problem in his head-to-head record against Guardiola. He has won just four of their last 16 encounters (one of those being the 2023 Community Shield) and lost nine, a stat that underlines how much a high-profile win over City would mean for him and his sq
