Sunday 8 May 2016 15:58, UK
Manchester City and Arsenal go head-to-head on Super Sunday looking to secure Champions League football next season. Graeme Souness previews the match and says it's time for both teams to show the resilience they have been desperately lacking...
Sunday's clash between Manchester City and Arsenal is a monster game for both clubs.
It is vital for both sides to put a marker down and show that they can deal with disappointment because they have not dealt with it very well so far this season.
Look at Leicester City. If you win the Premier League it means you have managed the difficult moments of the season better than anyone else.
If you win the Premier League then you've shown character and resilience when everyone was doubting you - which was certainly the case because nobody fancied Leicester at all this season.
Every time Claudio Ranieri's side have been beaten they have come back strong, but for the other teams a defeat seems to prompt a hangover. The players at Arsenal and Manchester City, as with all of the so-called big teams, have not performed.
They have not shown any resilience to bounce back when things have got tough. Players have gone missing and that is one of the reasons why Leicester have won the league.
Man City went out of the Champions League this week and need to bounce back from that set-back. There's still a chance they might not finish in the top four - although I cannot see that happening - but their season is a mystery to me because they have the strongest group of players in our league.
They may have won the League Cup and reached the semi-final of the Champions League, but this has not been a good season.
However, there are mitigating circumstances. Once Pep Guardiola was forced by Bayern Munich to state whether or not he was going to leave, then Man City were pretty much forced to say he was joining them.
I can't think of a better way they could have handled it, but it clearly undermined Manuel Pellegrini. Circumstances dictated that Guardiola was announced and in the eyes of some players in the dressing room, the legs were cut from under their manager.
Pellegrini deserves great credit because he has handled the situation with dignity, but he is a lame-duck manager. He's done nothing wrong and it's harsh on him to lose his job because he's done a very, very good job - but this season circumstances and injuries to big players like Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva, Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany have contrived against him.
However, they are a Champions League team with a big squad and they should have been able to rise above those problems.
Man City may have won the League Cup and reached the semi-final of the Champions League, but this has not been a good season.
Unfortunately, some of the players on the fringes are average and we saw that in the 4-2 defeat to Southampton last weekend when they were not at it in any shape or form.
You've always got 20 per cent of a dressing room that won't be happy with their manager because they want to play more often. There are players who will have been moaning all year about not being in the team, but when they got their chance they failed to take it.
Guardiola will have received DVD's of every game Manchester City have played this season and will be assessing the players on what he has seen, as well as the recommendations of sporting director Txiki Begiristain.
Manchester City is an exciting place to be next season and the players will want to impress in the final two matches - but the players who played against Southampton certainly did not do so.
Some of them might be playing for their futures at the club this weekend.
Sunday is also a big game for Arsenal, who look like they are going to finish behind Tottenham for the first time since 1994/95.
The pressure is on Arsene Wenger, but in my mind it should be on the players who owe their manager a big performance.
Of course, as a manager you carry the can, but in the modern game the manager always gets the flak first and the players second. This year, both are equally culpable.
Arsenal, as with players at other big clubs, have had long periods where they haven't performed and they blew it big time in the title race.
So what will we see on Sunday afternoon? Will we see two teams feeling sorry for themselves or two teams going out there with a point to prove?
For the sake of both of the managers, you would like to think it will be the latter,
