A Carabao Cup won, Arsenal knocked out by Southampton, City in the FA Cup semis: The Guardiola farewell season nobody expected

While Arsenal were losing to Southampton at St Mary's on Saturday afternoon, a Championship side ranked seventh in the second tier knocking the Premier League leaders out of the FA Cup, Erling Haaland was completing his 12th hat-trick as a Manchester City player in a 4-0 demolition of Liverpool at the Etihad.

The Norwegian converted a penalty, headed in a Semenyo cross and swept home off the underside of the bar inside 18 second-half minutes, becoming the first player to score a hat-trick against Liverpool in the FA Cup since 1972. As confirmed by the BBC Sports, City are in the FA Cup semi-finals for a record eighth consecutive season.

Arsenal, nine points clear at the top of the league and widely assumed to be on course for a treble, are not.

This is the season that was supposed to finally bury Manchester City. After winning nothing in 2024-25 for the first time in a decade, losing key players in De Bruyne, Ederson and Gundogan, having to deal with the ongoing 115-charge legal case with no resolution in sight, and suffering stretches of form that had pundits writing their epitaphs, the conversation at the Etihad all season has been about endings. Guardiola's possible departure.

Nobody scripted a chapter in which City are still fighting on two fronts in April, with a cup already in the cabinet and Wembley booked for next month.

The Carabao Cup win over Arsenal in March set the tone for what this final stretch is becoming. City beat Arsenal 2-0 at Wembley in what Guardiola himself described as a display of pressing intensity and tactical discipline that reminded everyone watching why this squad, even in its reconstructed form, is not to be taken lightly.

Haaland and Semenyo, who has been one of the more underappreciated signings of the January window, combined with a fluency that made Arsenal's attempts at control look futile. The score flattered nobody, as City were better in every department.

Guardiola was without Gvardiol, Stones and Dias in defence, a defensive injury list that would have destabilised most clubs at this stage of a season, and yet City were imperious. James Trafford saved Salah's penalty. Marc Guehi, signed from Crystal Palace in January and settling into the system with the composure of someone who's been here much longer, was commanding alongside Khusanov.

Rayan Cherki and Semenyo, both players who arrived this season and had to adapt to Guardiola's demands on the run, provided the kind of technical quality in wide areas that made Liverpool's defensive structure look completely unprepared.

“Not good enough,” Haaland told reporters afterward, referring to City's season overall. He was wrong. But the fact that a player who's just scored his first hat-trick of the season in an FA Cup quarter-final is that self-critical tells you something about the standards this group still holds itself to.

The Guardiola situation hangs over everything, as it has all year. He has said he'll decide in May whether to stay or go, that he's “genuinely not decided,” that he wants to see how he feels once the season ends.

If this is his last season, it's producing the kind of narrative that Guardiola could only have scripted in his most optimistic moments back in August. Nine points off the league leaders with Arsenal having a game in hand means the title is almost certainly gone. But the 115 charges remain unresolved, with some observers noting that the Chelsea precedent of a suspended ban and a fine rather than points deductions could yet affect the final standings in ways nobody can currently predict.

In the FA Cup, City are into the semis. In the Champions League, they went out to Real Madrid in the last 16, losing 3-0 on aggregate, which is the one genuinely sore point of an otherwise resilient campaign.

You could even make a real case for Guardiola as Manager of the Season. The Spaniard took a squad that had lost its spine, its captain, its goalkeeper and its best midfielder in the same summer, rebuilt it with players who needed time and trust to find their level, endured a run of results that had sections of the media calling for his removal before Christmas, and has arrived in April with a trophy and a Wembley semi-final still to come.

Arsenal's season, for all its brilliance, has been built on continuity, depth and a squad that Arteta has had about five years to construct exactly as he wants it. Guardiola has been doing his best work in the hardest conditions he's faced since his first season at the Etihad in 2016-17, when City also had a trophy-less year before the record-breaking 2017-18 campaign that followed.

The semi-final draw placed City against Southampton at Wembley, the same Championship side that knocked Arsenal out the same afternoon. It's the kind of draw that on paper looks kind, though Southampton just beat the Premier League leaders and are clearly not a side who've turned up simply to make the numbers. Chelsea face Leeds, who beat West Ham in extra time and penalties to reach their first FA Cup semi-final in 39 years.

City haven't won the FA Cup since 2023, losing the last two finals to Crystal Palace and Manchester United. Guardiola may or may not be leaving in the summer. But right now, with a Carabao Cup already won, a Wembley semi against a team playing the football of their lives, and a title race that isn't mathematically over, the club he's built is still standing, still competing, and still making everyone else's season look more complicated than it should be.