Old Guard, New Era

Manchester City's Pep Guardiola has won his first trophy in England, following a 3-0 whipping of Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final Sunday. Goals from old guards, Sergio Aguero, Vincent Kompany and David Silva all scored to give the Spaniard his first taste of success in England.

The Gunners gave some sparks early on in the game but it turned out that was the only gunpowder in their Arsenal as they were uninspiring, unspirited and played woefully the rest of the game. Record signing Pierre Emerick Aubameyang was left isolated upfront and should have given Arsenal the lead but for slow reaction to Mesut Ozil's cross, allowing Kyle Walker to intercept and an easy catch for Claudia Bravo.

City deservedly took the lead through Sergio Aguero. A long pass from Claudia Bravo behind the Arsenal defence allowed Aguero lob the ball over the on rushing David Ospina.

Aguero appeared to be offside when the ball came but it was all poor defending from Shkodran Mustafi who instead of staying strong and doing what he is paid to do, decided to stand and wait for a never-coming referee's whistle after Aguero appeared to have nudged him on the back but replays show that the nudge was too soft to be penalised and Mustafi a culprit for the goal. The German has been in horrible form this season with several mistakes coming from him and sometimes leading to goals. Verily prominent was the one that led to Swansea's goal in the loss to Swansea after he made a bad back pass to Cech when he could have cleared the lines to avert danger. The goal was Aguero's consecutive fifth goal against Arsenal, his 30th in 34 games and his 199th City goal.

Vincent Kompany diverted an Ilkay Gundogan shot to double City's advantage and David Silva reacted sharply, too hot for slumbering Calum Chambers to deal with as he fired home a powerful shot from a Danilo pass to wrap the game up for City by the 65th minute and hand their Coach, one of at least, two trophies to come this season.

Wenger in an interview afterwards reacted by saying "everything was against them" but truth be told, they were far from good on the night and they have stopped playing good football in a very long time, this season and it feels like Wenger should finally take a bow when it's still possible to repair the damage. One major problem I've noticed with the Arsenal team since the last successful era is that, the team lacks "spirit and believe". They do not have a fighting spirit, no matter how little and they're always too soft and very weak. They need a manger who can give them that, definitely not Arsene Wenger. It is also worthy of note that, this is Wenger's third loss in this final and Pep continues his own fine record of being a master of Finals

Since the arrival of Aubameyang from Dortmund one vivid observation I have made is that "Wenger has changed Arsenal's game to fit Aubameyang's style" which if you ask me is very wrong. Since the Gabonese arrived, Arsenal have switched from their normal play-into-the opposition's- goal to playing the ball over their opponents defence just for Aubameyang to run. Who does that? If he wants Auba to run he could still achieve that with the normal Arsenal game, especially when it comes to playing on the counter. Moreover, Auba I believe can adapt to the tiki taka style. And with the way they've been playing it has always isolated Auba and made him feel less of what we all know him to be. Not until something changes, like the game plan or Wenger leaves, Arsenal would continue to be a mediocre team and just make up the numbers while being just pretenders rather than contenders. I just hope Auba doesn't regret switching Dortmund for North London afterwards.

The two teams face off again in the League on Thursday and I don't expect anything other than a victory, if not a white wash from City. The Carabao Cup was the only opportunity Arsenal had to make themselves happy for this season and they blew it. Beating City in the League on Thursday would amount to waste of energy and focus as it does literally nothing to help their situation. City are run away winners and the top four is a goose chase for Arsenal.