IIt is the nature of the modern Premier League, in which 90 points has come to feel like a minimum for winning the title, that analysis of how the competition was won focuses on where it was lost. Manchester City’s excellence has become so inexorable that the assumption is that they will surpass 90 points. The question is less what they did than whether other teams could have done anything to better that total.

In that context, the mind goes back to the final day of March last season, and Arsenal’s trip to Manchester City. Liverpool had beaten Brighton earlier in the day, giving them a three-point lead over Arsenal and four over City, with a game in hand. Arsenal were content to frustrate City, drawing 0-0.

Although City shadowed the xG, Arsenal had two of the three shots on target in the game. They had maintained their lead and knew that if they won all nine remaining games, the only team that could finish above them was Liverpool.

Immediately afterwards, Mikel Arteta praised his team’s resilience, pointing out that City had scored in every home game in three years and stressing that sometimes it was necessary to “put your ego and your ideology aside and do what you have to do”. Arsenal had lost on their eight previous visits to the Etihad, including a 4-1 defeat at a similar stage the season before. 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. Crucially, however, they lost at home to Aston Villa and so, by winning nine out of nine, City claimed the title for the fourth successive season.

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

It was a game they were in control of. Could they have been a bit more brutal in the final 20 minutes? Would it have been worth gambling to try and put a line between themselves and the champions? Would they perhaps even have had a better chance of winning their last nine games if they hadn’t had the pressure of knowing they had to?

There is of course no definitive answer. If Arsenal had opened up, it would have given City a chance, lifted them above Arsenal and made everyone condemn Arteta for his arrogance. It is not a question of right or wrong, but in hindsight, and given that City had not won any of the eight games against teams that would finish in the top six at the time of the Arsenal game, perhaps it would have been a missed opportunity?

That’s not to say Arteta should have attacked from the start, it’s not to criticise an approach that saw Arsenal concede five fewer goals than City, 12 fewer than Liverpool and 22 fewer than any other team last season. It’s to suggest that, in one period of one game, there was an opportunity to attack opponents who had seemed to have plateaued.

Arteta certainly isn’t expected to go all out at City on Sunday. It’s more about being able to feel the emotion of a match and capitalize on psychological shifts, a difficult and imprecise skill that can be lost amid the minutiae of data-informed planning.

City in March was the only away game in the league that Arsenal have not won this year. They have never trailed in an away league game since losing to Fulham on New Year’s Eve, that bizarre game in which they took the lead, looked comfortable and then lost their way, as they had done at Liverpool and West Ham the season before. This occasional habit raises serious doubts about their psychological capacity to win the league – and was perhaps reflected in the way Declan Rice’s red card unsettled them at home to Brighton.

Yet in 11 away league games since that Fulham aberration, Arsenal have scored 31 goals and conceded just three. For someone often portrayed as something of a Guardiola-lite, Arteta has a distinctly José Mourinho streak.

And that may be logical: with so many parties practicing security guard football, competitive advantage is found on the margins, in refusing to interfere and going to great lengths to avoid the press, in defending – something Jurgen Klopp predicted five years ago after a goalless draw between Liverpool and Bayern Munich. Even Pep Guardiola, with his all-centre-back defence and direct play to Erling Haaland, is no classic security guard more.

Arsenal’s 28% possession at the Etihad was a notable 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 may have been a reaction to the absences of Rice and Martin Ødegaard, as well as the opposition, but the job was well done, the feeling of control far greater than in the 2-0 win at Aston Villa three weeks earlier. Against a defending Atalanta on Thursday, they had 46% possession but, as at Villa, needed a stunning double save from David Raya to maintain their clean sheet.

City have been a curious mix this season. They have conceded the opening goal in both 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 held City to a clean sheet in both of their league games last season, but that will be harder without Ødegaard. And given Haaland’s form, even half a chance could be enough to secure a win.

Despite the potential points deduction, this game already feels like a big one. Avoid defeat and Arsenal can look back on having played three of their toughest away games. Lose, however, and a five-point lead for City could look decisive.