Why Arsenal Beating Man City Had Nothing To Do With Luck
Arsenal 1-0 Manchester City is a result that could already have huge implications for the Premier League title race. But after years of successive defeat at the hands of Pep Guardiola, how did Mikel Arteta finally turn the tables on his former mentor??
Transcript
00:00 *intro*
00:04 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and again, yep, not in the right place,
00:08 just don't worry about it. Arsenal beat Man City, and that never happens!
00:13 Now when I do these videos, I do like to try and encapsulate the mood of the game,
00:16 sort of the vibe of the whole thing, and how everybody sort of feels about it,
00:19 but I've just moved to North London, coincidentally, and I was in a bar
00:23 with a load of Arsenal fans watching this game, and here is an acubate reflection.
00:27 *crowd cheering*
00:30 So how, how did they do that then?
00:33 *ding*
00:35 Okay, so before we start, this is obviously a room, and this is the elephant in it.
00:40 It was a bad game of football, neither side created too many chances,
00:43 and were I a Man City fan, I would watch that ball deflect off Nathan Ake's face
00:49 and think, "Bloody hell, those lucky, lucky bastards."
00:53 And to that, I would say, Arsenal were indeed lucky to get that deflected goal.
00:57 In the same way, Man City were lucky to have 11 men on the pitch.
01:01 But moreover, my pedigree chums, we are going to show today
01:04 how it is possible in this life to make your own luck.
01:08 Well, fundamentally, alright, it's just basic maths.
01:12 Neither team can afford to get beat in these games.
01:15 Case in point, this is the league table last season.
01:18 Manchester City took six points from Arsenal,
01:21 and if you take those six points off them, Arsenal win the league.
01:24 And in fact, more tellingly, if both of those games were draws last season,
01:28 if Arsenal could have just ground out two nil-nils against City,
01:32 you take those four extra points away from Man City,
01:35 you give those two extra points to Arsenal,
01:37 and lo and behold, yet again, Arsenal win the league.
01:40 For all fans of other clubs, we'll talk about bottling this and bottling that,
01:44 Arsenal are not currently the reigning Premier League champions
01:48 because they couldn't beat Man City.
01:50 And thus, going into this season, both managers look at their opposite number
01:54 and they think if we just finish above them,
01:56 if we just get the right results against them,
01:59 we will probably win the league.
02:01 So then on the one hand, you've got Manchester City,
02:03 who are without Kevin De Bruyne and Rodri,
02:05 arguably their two most important players
02:07 when it comes to both controlling and winning games.
02:09 And on the other hand, you've got Arsenal,
02:11 who are without Bukayo Saka, and just always get beat off Man City.
02:16 And that gives you two teams who would have taken your hand off
02:19 for a nil-nil at kickoff.
02:21 But I'll show you what the real problem was, right?
02:22 I'll just wave the old magic wand and add Man City to this.
02:25 So all the graphics before kickoff had Manchester City like this
02:28 in kind of a 4-2-3-1.
02:29 They put Rico Lewis in the middle to stop Kovacic getting overrun.
02:32 Bernardo Silva was playing just off Erling Haaland,
02:35 then you had Foden and Alvarez in the wide positions.
02:38 Except it wasn't like this at all.
02:39 Bernardo Silva was actually here,
02:42 pretty much playing as like a tempo setting,
02:45 controllable, classically pep at Barcelona number six.
02:49 Like look at Opta's pass map here.
02:51 Silva is the deepest of these three midfielders.
02:53 He was touching the ball more than any other player in that Man City team.
02:56 He was effectively just the central hub
02:58 that they were trying to control the game with.
03:00 So that's problem number one.
03:01 Problem number two was that there were some changes in Arsenal's front line.
03:04 Instead of having Saka on one side, Martinelli on the other,
03:07 who are designed to stretch the play to create a bit of space,
03:10 you had Jesus, who would receive the ball out there,
03:13 but of course wants to play in the middle.
03:15 And you had Trossard, who would again receive the ball out wide,
03:17 but wants to come inside this area.
03:19 And that naturally means that Man City's defence,
03:21 they have to kind of tuck in a little bit,
03:23 because you can't just be letting three players
03:25 sort of have the run of the centre of the pitch.
03:26 So they're quite narrow.
03:27 And of course, Arsenal, they had Jorginho in the middle, didn't they?
03:30 So he's going to move across to allow Zinchenko to shuffle over.
03:33 But that's not really a problem for Man City,
03:35 because Alvarez is actually playing this side
03:37 and he really does want to play in the middle.
03:38 So he's not going to be worried about width.
03:40 He's going to be coming across.
03:41 So that was kind of a natural good pairing there anyway.
03:44 Kind of means Arsenal's back line has to shuffle across.
03:46 So Ben White couldn't get up and down the pitch as much as he would have liked.
03:50 And of course, Phil Foden, he wants to play right in the middle.
03:53 And all of a sudden, would you look at that?
03:54 You can see the issue.
03:55 Everything's just in the middle.
03:58 It's a complete mess.
03:59 Honestly, can't remember the last time I saw a game
04:02 with as little natural width as this,
04:04 especially for two teams whose entire game plan normally
04:08 is to stretch the pitch in the final third as much as possible
04:12 to create space for their more attacking players.
04:14 So congestion, congestion is a major problem.
04:17 If we overlay Arsenal's pass map onto this,
04:19 you can see there's very, very little width in it whatsoever.
04:22 And if we overlay Manchester City's pass map onto this,
04:25 you can see there's very, very little width whatsoever.
04:29 So yes, it is hard to try and play through the entire opposition team
04:33 in the centre of the pitch,
04:34 but it's even harder to do that when they also decide,
04:37 we're just not going to press you.
04:39 If you're an Arsenal fan, you will no doubt remember
04:41 that you got absolutely skinned alive at the Emirates last season
04:44 because Arteta went into that game thinking,
04:46 this is our approach, this is our philosophy,
04:48 this is who we are, we will beat them by doing that.
04:51 And of course, they didn't.
04:52 Manchester City baited them into this kind of press,
04:54 got them into the corners and all sorts,
04:56 then played these long killer balls out of defence
04:59 for either Haaland or De Bruyne,
05:00 who then dropped off the forward line so they could receive it.
05:03 They got loads of space.
05:04 It absolutely demolished them doing this.
05:06 And as you can see from the very first whistle,
05:08 Arsenal were determined not to get done like this again.
05:11 They had a very robust, competitive mid-block.
05:14 If they thought they could win the ball in this area,
05:16 they were absolutely trying to do it,
05:17 but they were not going to get baited or dared
05:21 into pushing right the way up
05:22 and leaving all the kind of space
05:24 Manchester City would have wanted
05:25 to be able to play through them.
05:26 And thus, as the game went on
05:28 and the possibility of a nil-nil got realer and realer and realer,
05:31 they even stopped trying to counter-attack particularly effectively.
05:34 There was a moment near the end of the game,
05:36 I think it's Martin Oerdegaard, turned the ball over,
05:38 and that should be the trigger for Arsenal to flood up the pitch
05:41 and try and get a goal.
05:42 And yet, within just a couple of seconds of that,
05:44 they are completely outnumbered by Man City.
05:47 And Man City were exactly the same, by the way.
05:49 They had Silva in the middle there,
05:50 controlling everything, helping everything take over.
05:52 He registered two, two successful passes beyond the 70th minute.
05:58 So how then?
05:59 How in this absolute mire of anti-football
06:02 where two managers were both too concerned
06:05 with having their guard up to really throw a proper punch?
06:08 How did Arsenal make their own luck and deserve to get that goal?
06:13 Well, and I can't really believe I'm saying this,
06:15 but it was in the substitutions.
06:17 Both managers were quite conservative with their changes,
06:20 but Guardiola made ones designed to help shore up that nil-nil
06:24 and Arteta made ones that, while certainly not going for it,
06:28 were always going to give him a chance of winning it.
06:31 But here is the build-up to the goal.
06:33 Manchester City are virtually here in two banks of four,
06:37 defending the way your dad used to.
06:39 And if we just stop it really quickly here,
06:42 look at what Tomi Asu is doing with Foden.
06:44 He's just having a little glance.
06:47 Now, Tomi Asu is not Zinchenko,
06:49 either in the way he plays or his physical attributes,
06:51 but if you're worried the former's legs are going,
06:52 he's a bit tired, he can certainly come on and do a similar thing.
06:55 And he was.
06:56 He had inverted into the middle the same way Zinchenko had been,
06:59 and Foden this time, because he'd swapped with Alvarez,
07:02 was pretty much just shirt-tied to him.
07:04 Phil Foden, probably in the back of his mind,
07:06 has this idea that Tomi Asu, because he's not Zinchenko
07:09 and he's not that good in this position,
07:11 might just leave him a bit of space.
07:13 So he's going to follow him, he's going to mark him,
07:15 but he's going to see if he can create a bit of distance.
07:17 And when Tomi Asu looks here, he has created a bit of distance.
07:22 Tomi Asu is, despite the fact he's nowhere near the goal,
07:24 goal-side to Foden.
07:26 And if we also just look,
07:28 Declan Rice is now pointing into the space ahead of Tomi Asu
07:33 while Thomas Partey's on the ball.
07:34 And this is why, by the way,
07:36 you know obviously the finish is hugely fortunate with its deflection,
07:39 Arsenal really did deserve that,
07:41 because they're not just knocking it about to see if anything happens.
07:44 This is something that's calculated and very precise,
07:47 and you can see Arteta has instructed them to do.
07:50 For one of the first times in the game,
07:51 Arsenal have actually attempted to stretch Manchester City's backball
07:54 and create a bit of space.
07:55 You can't even really see Martinelli in this shot
07:57 because he's hugging the touchline.
07:59 Tomi Asu breaks into the space this has left,
08:01 and that causes a moment of panic in Manchester City's backline.
08:05 Walker is over to the right,
08:07 he tries to rush over to cover the space.
08:08 Diaz is over to the left,
08:10 he rushes over to try and cut the space.
08:12 And Foden, of course, because that's his man,
08:14 is trying to follow him in.
08:15 This draws everybody to the ball
08:17 and leaves Kai Havertz completely open.
08:19 Now it's pretty obvious here the plan with this play
08:21 is to draw the play to Tomi Asu,
08:23 who then knocks it down for Havertz to get the chance.
08:26 But the header's just not quite at the right angle for him.
08:29 But Havertz does brilliantly to instead bring it under control.
08:33 Now again, because of that moment of panic in Manchester City's backline,
08:35 this has now left Martinelli completely free.
08:37 Like when the ball comes in,
08:39 this is now the distance between Walker, who would be marking him, and him.
08:43 Havertz does brilliantly to control it.
08:44 He rolls it off to Martinelli,
08:46 who just lets it go and it finds the back of the net.
08:49 Now we will never know,
08:50 we will never ever know if that was just going to
08:53 whistle into the bottom corner regardless.
08:54 But it doesn't matter because it just kaplunks Nathan Ape
08:58 across the front of the face and that's all it takes.
09:01 And Man City were just never ever ever going to get back into that game.
09:04 Erling Haaland didn't get a single chance.
09:06 They only created four chances overall,
09:08 the lowest they've ever had under Pep Guardiola.
09:11 The game was not in any sort of shape for them to try and force an equaliser.
09:16 And that's what I mean by you make your own luck in this game.
09:18 Mikel Arteta went into this game determined not to give them chances,
09:23 determined not to let them score the number of goals
09:25 that Man City always seem to score against Arsenal.
09:28 If you can keep them out,
09:29 then you just you never know,
09:32 you might get something at the other end.
09:35 Especially if you're a little bit braver than your opponent in the changes you make.
09:40 And you do, you have to give Mikel Arteta all the credit in the world for this.
09:43 There were four players involved in that winning goal.
09:46 Partey, Tomi Asu, Havertz and Martinelli.
09:48 They were all four substitutes that he brought on
09:51 and all four of them were clearly doing a specific thing that they'd worked on.
09:55 That they've been instructed to do.
09:57 That is dream game management.
09:59 Like yes, we could talk about the fact that Reya looked a little bit ropey.
10:02 I thought he was much better in the second half.
10:03 Declan Rice had a really commanding performance.
10:05 He had one great moment where he won the ball back and nearly put Martinelli in.
10:09 But overall, this was a game that was won and lost on the touchline.
10:13 And when your opponent in that scenario is Pep Guardiola,
10:16 you really do have to hand it to any manager who comes out on top.
10:20 So there you go, Arsenal fans.
10:22 Don't let anybody tell you that you did not deserve to win that game.
10:26 Don't let them call it jammy or a fluke or spawny or anything like that.
10:30 Mikl Arteta had a game plan and what he would have wanted to happen in this game did happen.
10:35 That's all from me though because it's absolutely boiling in here.
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11:09 That's my Arsenal Mike with the league this year.
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11:13 Bye!
11:14 Bye!