Man City beats Newcastle 3-1 to advance to English League Cup final

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — It's Manchester City vs. Arsenal in the English League Cup final.

The current top two in the Premier League will go head-to-head at Wembley Stadium next month after City beat Newcastle 3-1 on Wednesday to complete a 5-1 win on aggregate in the semifinals.

Both City and Arsenal are still in contention for a clean sweep of trophies this season. The League Cup is the chance to lift the first piece of major silverware this term and to potentially inflict a psychological blow in the race for the title.

“We’re here to win trophies and we give our best every day to reach these finals and win the silverware,” City forward Omar Marmoush - who scored two goals on the night - told Sky Sports.

Arsenal currently leads the standings by six points ahead of second-place City. Both teams are through to the round of 16 in the Champions League and and fourth round of the FA Cup.

The League Cup final is on March 22.

“It’s a pleasure to play against Arsenal, the best team right now in Europe, maybe the world,” City manager Pep Guardiola said. “As much (as) we (can) play against them, it will make us a better, better team.”

Two first-half goals from Marmoush at the Etihad effectively finished off Newcastle in a semifinal where City led 2-0 from the first leg. Tijjani Reijnders added another before the break.

Newcastle scored a consolation through substitute Anthony Elanga and prevented what looked like being a rout after the first 45 minutes.

Arsenal booked its place in the final with a 1-0 win against Chelsea on Tuesday to seal a 4-2 aggregate victory.

The final will continue the recent rivalry between the clubs, which has seen City beat Arsenal to the title in 2023 and '24. On both occasions Arsenal had led the way before being overhauled.

Mikel Arteta’s team is ahead again this season and aiming to win the title for the first time since 2004.

The League Cup would be Arteta’s first major trophy since his debut season as Arsenal manager when he won the FA Cup in 2020.

He was formerly Guardiola’s assistant at City and victory in the final would see him finally beat his former boss to a major trophy.

Guardiola, meanwhile, will get the chance to win a 16th major trophy since taking over at City in 2016 and his fifth League Cup.

City is looking to win it for the ninth time and move within one of Liverpool’s record haul of 10 in the competition.

Arsenal has won the trophy twice - most recently in 1993.

This year’s final will be a repeat of 2018, when Arteta was part of Guardiola’s coaching team as City triumphed.

Marmoush bundled in City’s opener in the seventh minute when Dan Burn’s tackle rebounded off the Egypt international and into the net.

His second came from another defensive error in the 29th when Kieran Trippier's attempted clearance looped up for Marmoush to head in from close range.

Reijnders drove home the third from inside the box three minutes later.

Elanga's goal came in the 62nd and Newcastle had chances to score more.

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

-mu9-, left, and Manchester City's Abdukodir Khusanov fight for the ball during the English League Cup semifinal soccer match soccer match between Manchester City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Manchester City's Omar Marmoush celebrates after scoring during the English League Cup semifinal soccer match soccer match between Manchester City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola celebrates their second goal during the English League Cup semifinal soccer match soccer match between Manchester City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (Martin Rickett/PA via AP)

Manchester City's Omar Marmoush celebrates after scoring during the English League Cup semifinal soccer match soccer match between Manchester City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Manchester City's Omar Marmoush celebrates after scoring during the English League Cup semifinal soccer match soccer match between Manchester City and Newcastle in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk vowed this week to upend another industry just as he did with cars and rockets — and once again he's taking on long odds.

The world's richest man said he wants to put as many as a million satellites into orbit to form vast, solar-powered data centers in space — a move to allow expanded use of artificial intelligence and chatbots without triggering blackouts and sending utility bills soaring.

To finance that effort, Musk combined SpaceX with his AI business on Monday and plans a big initial public offering of the combined company.

“Space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote on SpaceX’s website Monday, adding about his solar ambitions, “It’s always sunny in space!”

But scientists and industry experts say even Musk — who outsmarted Detroit to turn Tesla into the world’s most valuable automaker — faces formidable technical, financial and environmental obstacles.

Here’s a look:

Capturing the sun’s energy from space to run chatbots and other AI tools would ease pressure on power grids and cut demand for sprawling computing warehouses that are consuming farms and forests and vast amounts of water to cool.

But space presents its own set of problems.

Data centers generate enormous heat. Space seems to offer a solution because it is cold. But it is also a vacuum, trapping heat inside objects in the same way that a Thermos keeps coffee hot using double walls with no air between them.

“An uncooled computer chip in space would overheat and melt much faster than one on Earth,” said Josep Jornet, a computer and electrical engineering professor at Northeastern University.

One fix is to build giant radiator panels that glow in infrared light to push the heat “out into the dark void,” says Jornet, noting that the technology has worked on a small scale, including on the International Space Station. But for Musk's data centers, he says, it would require an array of “massive, fragile structures that have never been built before.”

Musk is undaunted.

“You can mark my words,” Musk said in a preview of a Cheeky Pint podcast episode airing Thursday. “In 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space. And then it will get ridiculously better to be in space.”

Then there is space junk.

A single malfunctioning satellite breaking down or losing orbit could trigger a cascade of collisions, potentially disrupting emergency communications, weather forecasting and other services.

Musk noted in a recent regulatory filing that he has had only one “low-velocity debris generating event" in seven years running Starlink, his satellite communications network. Starlink has operated about 10,000 satellites — but that's a fraction of the million or so he now plans to put in space.

“We could reach a tipping point where the chance of collision is going to be too great," said University at Buffalo's John Crassidis, a former NASA engineer. “And these objects are going fast -- 17,500 miles per hour. There could be very violent collisions."

Even without collisions, satellites fail, chips degrade, parts break.

Special GPU graphics chips used by AI companies, for instance, can become damaged and need to be replaced.

“On Earth, what you would do is send someone down to the data center," said Baiju Bhatt, CEO of Aetherflux, a space-based solar energy company. "You replace the server, you replace the GPU, you’d do some surgery on that thing and you’d slide it back in.”

But no such repair crew exists in orbit, and those GPUs in space could get damaged due to their exposure to high-energy particles from the sun.

Bhatt says one workaround is to overprovision the satellite with extra chips to replace the ones that fail. But that’s an expensive proposition given they are likely to cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and current Starlink satellites only have a lifespan of about five years.

Musk is not alone trying to solve these problems.

A company in Redmond, Washington, called Starcloud, launched a satellite in November carrying a single Nvidia-made AI computer chip to test out how it would fare in space. Google is exploring orbital data centers in a venture it calls Project Suncatcher. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced plans in January for a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites to start launching late next year, though its focus has been more on communications than AI.

Still, Musk has an edge: He's got rockets.

Starcloud had to use one of his Falcon rockets to put its chip in space last year. Aetherflux plans to send a set of chips it calls a Galactic Brain to space on a SpaceX rocket later this year. And Google may also need to turn to Musk to get its first two planned prototype satellites off the ground by early next year.

Pierre Lionnet, a research director at the trade association Eurospace, says Musk routinely charges rivals far more than he charges himself —- as much as $20,000 per kilo of payload versus $2,000 internally.

He said Musk’s announcements this week signal that he plans to use that advantage to win this new space race.

“When he says we are going to put these data centers in space, it’s a way of telling the others we will keep these low launch costs for myself,” said Lionnet. “It’s a kind of powerplay.”

Elon Musk and Shivon Zillis arrive at The Mar-a-Lago Club, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla., to attend the wedding of White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Erin Elmore, the director of Art in Embassies at the U.S. Department of State. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FILE - A SpaceX logo is displayed on a building, May 26, 2020, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)