Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.
This was the weekend when Manchester City’s trophy-winning pedigree persisted, Tottenham Hotspur’s season sank to its latest low and Sunderland completed the double over rivals Newcastle United.
Nico O’Reilly cemented his status as one of England’s best young talents with that match-winning display at Wembley, Chelsea slumped to another defeat, and goalkeeper errors once more proved costly.
We will ask what Pep Guardiola’s latest Carabao Cup win means for the title race, whether Tottenham have left it too late to generate some positive momentum and if Jordan Pickford has earned the right to be discussed as a player-of-the-season candidate.
Where does this leave the Man City-Arsenal rivalry?
A sumptuous chest control, three insouciant keepy-uppies and one infuriated foul.
It was a moment, with Manchester City two goals in front and Rayan Cherki showboating, that briefly symbolised the old guard reasserting their dominance.
In the Premier League, Arsenal have the upper hand in the title race, where they lead Guardiola’s side by nine points. But at Wembley on Sunday, it was City who enjoyed that familiar winning feeling, and Arsenal, perhaps symbolised by Ben White clattering Cherki after his swaggering, angry also-rans.
Arsenal’s dreams of the quadruple felt over before City’s France midfielder decided to add a splash of fun to proceedings with his ball juggling. It was already 2-0, the score that this final would remain. Yet in that moment, City imperious, Arsenal frantically chasing, it was both nostalgia and respite for those from Manchester.
City may yet hunt down Mikel Arteta’s men in the league. Or perhaps they will not. It is in the incremental struggle of the league season that Arsenal have set out their obdurate stall. They do not look like choking this time around.
But on Sunday, on this one-off occasion, maybe City needed it that little bit more. Arsenal still have a Champions League quarter-final to look forward to next month, a winnable tie with Sporting CP. Guardiola’s side will not be there after their chastening round-of-16 defeat by Real Madrid.
Did Guardiola need this trophy more than his compatriot? He certainly celebrated like he might. Signs of his empire’s slow decline persist, with doubt also lingering about whether the 55-year-old will still be there next season.
But at Wembley ‘the Master’ master-minded a bloody nose for the apprentice. Guardiola reminded everyone that the Carabao Cup is his thing, with a record-breaking fifth win. He also reminded everyone that he has guided O’Reilly’s career to this stage, where he is now dominating cup finals and writing his name into the history books.
For Arteta, there could be regret to go with his runners-up medal. Was he right to (as Guardiola also did) rest his first-choice goalkeeper for this showpiece? James Trafford left Wembley a winner with a confident display. Kepa Arrizabalaga made a crucial mistake as Arsenal lost another League Cup final.
Whether any of this matters in May when another more significant trophy is handed out, almost certainly, to one of these two coaches, remains to be seen.
City have lagged behind Arsenal… but claimed the season’s first trophy (Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)
Arsenal have plenty of resilience. Arteta has proven he can regroup and use frustration as fuel.
But maybe Guardiola can use this little reminder of his team’s dominance, too. Perhaps, without the distraction of European football in the run-in, he can use it as his own potion. The magician’s latest trick: to make their season of uncertainty slowly vanish before our eyes, and gain a crucial, psychological advantage for their next meeting in April.
Have Spurs left it too late to turn around the toxicity?
Tottenham’s X account posted a video clip of fans gathering to greet the team coach before Sunday’s crunch game with Nottingham Forest, with the caption: “The best fans in the world.”
Other posts rammed home the message of unity next to more footage of supporters with blue and white flares. “Let’s Do This, Together,” the club’s message read.
Let’s do this, together 🤍 pic.twitter.com/n11iSkCQuc
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) March 22, 2026
The increasingly frantic Spurs support certainly tried to do their bit. They showed up, they created the noise and they got behind their team in the first half at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Igor Tudor’s side were arguably hard done by to trail 1-0 at the break, but the distinct sound of boos from some parts of the ground nevertheless accompanied the players back to the home dressing room.
It spoke of deep frustration, and perhaps now panic, too. But it also showed how difficult it can be for fans to keep believing and backing their team when implosions have become so painfully predictable.
Tottenham specialise in them these days, and another duly arrived with two more goals shipped in a calamitous second half as the hosts sank to just a solitary point off the drop zone. The clammy claw of relegation has a hold on Spurs and it won’t stop pulling.
There may yet be another change in the dugout as desperation spreads to the boardroom, but that too is a highly pressurised decision.
The fear for the club’s supporters may be that the collective switch to positivity and getting behind the players, regardless of the circumstances, may have come too late. They went for it on Sunday, and were still left reeling.
Spurs fans threw everything into the Forest game and got nothing (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Sure, they still have seven games and 21 points left to play for. Logically speaking, there is time to generate the intensity and zeal that will drag the club in the other direction, away from the brink.
Maybe in that regard, Spurs fans can build on what they did before the Forest defeat and dial it up even further. The boos, the derision and the early darts for the exits have not helped. Perhaps that brand of bloody-minded, we-hate-you-but-we-love-you-more devotion will still save the day.
But those pernicious habits of reactivity that feed into a toxic environment are not so simple to unpick and wash away.
That’s the daunting challenge for Tottenham’s fans now, even as their players show no consistent signs of changing their own tune.
Did ‘big’ clubs sleep on Jordan Pickford?
It’s likely the Professional Football Association Players’ Player of the Season award in August will go to someone who had their hands on the Premier League trophy three months prior.
In the past 10 years, the recipient has mainly played for the champions, or occasionally the runners-up, in the English top flight.
Pickford will have done neither this season, but does he at least deserve to be in the conversation?
The England goalkeeper reached the milestone of 100 clean sheets for Everton on Saturday. He produced two astonishing saves to deny Enzo Fernandez in their 3-0 thumping of Chelsea.
Long after the full-time whistle at Hill Dickinson Stadium, the jubilant home fans sang his name.
Jordan Pickford has saved Everton lots of points this season (Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
Pickford, a boyhood Sunderland fan, could also watch his other favorite team win the Tyne-Wear derby on Sunday.
He is cherished on Merseyside, but on a weekend that his Chelsea counterpart, Robert Sanchez, and Tottenham’s Guglielmo Vicario made costly errors yet again, it’s easy to wonder what difference he might have made for both of those clubs — and other Champions League chasing sides this term — had they tried to recruit him.
Pickford is not perfect. His command of the six-yard box can occasionally be questioned, and in an increasingly physical league dominated by set pieces, at 6ft 1in (185cm), he is perhaps a couple of inches shorter than ideal.
But for point-saving interventions — improbable reflex saves at pressure moments — there is arguably none better this season. And in a league where everyone seems capable of beating everyone else, with tight games and tense finishes, he has consistently stood out.
Coming up
- Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Wales all begin their final push for World Cup qualification on Thursday. They each have a single-leg semi-final play-off, and the winners of Italy vs Northern Ireland and Wales vs Bosnia and Herzegovina will face each other in a final next Tuesday. If the Republic of Ireland make it past the Czech Republic, they will face either Denmark or North Macedonia to decide their spot at this summer’s World Cup.
- As for the Italians, they are desperately trying to avoid missing out on a third World Cup in a row — having failed to reach the 2018 and 2022 editions. The tension could be unbearable in Bergamo as they take on Northern Ireland.
- The World Cup’s inter-confederation play-offs also get underway on Thursday, with all the matches taking place in Mexico. In the first path, New Caledonia take on Jamaica; with the winner then playing DR Congo in the final. And in the second section, Bolivia play Suriname for the right to take on Iraq in that final. The Iran war has caused Iraq all sorts of logistical headaches, but Graham Arnold’s team are all set to try and reach the World Cup for the first time since 1986.
- Elsewhere on Thursday, the United States takes centre stage as Brazil face France in a premium friendly at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. The ground is home to the NFL’s New England Patriots and New England Revolution of MLS, but it was at the centre of a local political row about whether World Cup football would be hosted there.
- The status of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations winners remains in doubt, but in Djibouti City on Thursday, the small nation in the Horn of Africa takes on South Sudan in the first round of qualification for the next tournament in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania next year. Djibouti have never qualified for AFCON before. Could this be their time?
- On Friday, Sao Tome and Principe, the second-smallest and second-least populous African sovereign state, also play their first qualifier at home against Ethiopia.
- Saturday sees two sides of very contrasting fortunes square off in League Two. Notts County are two points outside the top three and automatic promotion. They travel to Harrogate Town, who are second bottom of the table and one point from climbing out of the relegation zone. In November, the teams drew 1-1 when County rescued a point in stoppage time. It should be lively.