Mikel Arteta and Sean Dyche will adopt polar opposite approaches to the Premier League run-in as they bid to achieve their respective aims with Arsenal and Burnley.
The Gunners are chasing a spot in the top four which would qualify them for the Champions League, a competition they have not featured in since the 2016/17 season. Arteta's side are firmly in the driving seat with a three-point buffer and a game in hand over fifth-placed Tottenham.
At the other end of the table, Burnley are vying to avoid the drop but successive defeats by Leicester, Chelsea and Brentford have hampered their hopes of survival. The Clarets are 19th in the table, four points adrift of safety, although they do have a number of games in hand on many of the teams above them.
Dyche is a seasoned veteran of the relegation scrap having kept Burnley in the top flight since 2016, earning two Premier League Manager of the Month awards on the way. Arteta, meanwhile, is used to competing for European qualification and issued a bold rallying cry to his players last season by declaring: "Every game for us is a final."
The Spaniard has echoed those comments this campaign by insisting his players "know what every game means for us" ahead of February's home victory over Wolves. However, Dyche cannot get onboard with the 'cup final' approach as he believes it places too much pressure on each game, especially when there are so many fixtures remaining in the season.
"I wasn't aware that Mikel Arteta gave them [Arsenal] the 'cup final' mentality," Dyche said earlier in March. "My view is probably a bit more level because if you say 'we've got 11 cup finals'... do you know how difficult it is to win one?
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"We'll mainly concentrate on playing the games and going hard in each one of them, that would be my personal opinion. I'm definitely not questioning Mikel but my opinion of my team is to keep going hard, keep working hard, keep doing the right things, and add in the detail. That's what I'll be focussing on."
Dyche has never led Burnley to a cup final - the highlight of his managerial career is steering them to Europa League qualification in the 2017/18 season - but during his playing days he reached the FA Cup semi-finals with Chesterfield. Arteta may be more inclined to use the "'cup final' mentality" because he has won the only final he has reached as a manager, defeating Chelsea to win the FA Cup in 2020.
