It'll never do down as a classic, but Manchester City and Arsenal's 0-0 draw was a fascinating one from a tactical perspective. Both Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta made massive changes to their side as the game progressed, but with the draw far better for Arsenal, it's the student rather than the teacher who can claim to have come out on top.
Adam Clery examines how, with just one slightly better decision in the final third, the 3 points would have gone back to North London.
Adam Clery examines how, with just one slightly better decision in the final third, the 3 points would have gone back to North London.
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00:00Alright, so I'm going to try and make this sound as exciting as possible.
00:05This was the Arsenal 11 as they theoretically lined up at the start and the story of the
00:09game is move, counter move.
00:12Man City are doing something, Arsenal come up with a clever way to nullify it, then Man
00:16City try and do something else and Arsenal come up with another clever way to nullify
00:20that and so on and so forth for 90 minutes.
00:23And job one was in the way that Arsenal set up and I think Arteta got this absolutely
00:27bang on.
00:28Out of possession, yes, Arsenal play with this 4-3-3 shape, but out of possession they
00:32play with a 4-4-2.
00:34And it varies depending on the personnel, but usually Martin Odegaard will go and join
00:38Kai Havertz up front in A2, Rice and Jorginho sit as a double pivot and the two wide attackers,
00:44they are a little bit more conservative, they try and block off the channels.
00:47Now Arsenal were always going to set up this way against Man City, there's nothing special
00:50about this, but what they changed was how aggressive they are with it.
00:54Now you may, Arsenal fans, remember last season where you were really aggressive in the press
00:58at the Etihad and City pulled you left, they pulled you right and then they pulled your
01:02pants down.
01:03But their approach today was far more effective because instead of Havertz and Odegaard pressing
01:07the two centre-backs here, instead they just went and sat on the two pivots.
01:11Now this presented quite the head-scratcher to Manchester City because normally with either
01:15a centre-back stepping forward or one of the full-backs coming across, they would attempt
01:19to outnumber teams 4-3 in this middle area, but they're already starting at a disadvantage.
01:26had a box to stop their box.
01:29What it meant was even if they did end up doing that, let's say Kovacic pushed a little
01:32bit forward and Nakanji came into one of the pivots, they've not created any advantage
01:36at all there.
01:37It's still just 4v4 and now they've left one of Arsenal's attackers totally free.
01:42But move, counter move, Pep then said basically, alright, okay, let's forget the box, let's
01:47not try and get anybody too far out of position and instead had his two wide players, say
01:51hello to Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva, come incredibly, incredibly narrow.
01:55And we can see this very neatly represented in City's average positions in this because
01:59it's normally the job of the two wide players, you know this, to stay as wide as possible,
02:03to stretch the opposition defence across the line and leave these little gaps in the half
02:08space for the more creative players, but didn't do that.
02:10They came inside and that made a 5v4.
02:14But Arsenal, whether they predicted this happening or they were just very good at dealing with
02:17it on the fly, were absolutely fine with it and went incredibly narrow themselves to just
02:23congest the entire centre of the pitch.
02:25The defence massively compacted, which just completely locked down Erling Haaland and
02:29ensured that if City did get the overload here with one of these extra players, there
02:33was always somebody who could aggressively jump out of that back line and even things
02:37up.
02:38And by and large, for that first half, this worked really well for Arsenal.
02:41Like Nathan Ake should probably score from that corner, I think it is, but they don't
02:44create anything really in open play.
02:46Erling Haaland has four touches of the ball in the entire opening 45.
02:51And I mean, obviously the payoff to this is that they can't get anything going the other
02:55way.
02:56They don't really make any chances of their own, but they are playing City at the Etihad
02:59and restricting them that much is a huge tactical win.
03:03But of course, move, counter move.
03:05Towards the end of the first half, Nathan Ake picks up an injury and is replaced by
03:10Rico Lewis.
03:11Now you would assume, given that everyone else in the back line is a central defender,
03:15you just stick one of them in the middle, then Lewis out at the full back positions.
03:19And then if you want to invert them, you can.
03:21But Pep does not do that.
03:23Instead, he sticks Rico Lewis straight into the midfield with Kovacic and Rodri.
03:29Now you might think, oh, that's quite clever, isn't it?
03:31Because because Arsenal aren't pressing the centre back, you might as well have another
03:34person there.
03:35So you don't need both of these players to come off the wing.
03:38So now one of them can potentially get into the space that Arsenal leaving by being quite
03:42narrow.
03:43But that's not what they were trying to do.
03:45What Kovacic did was effectively a reverse John Stones.
03:50Rather than moving into the midfield from the defence, he started to move into the defence
03:55from the midfield.
03:56And what on earth?
03:58Why would you do that?
03:59Well, Arsenal now have two conflicting instructions, don't they?
04:05Because instruction number one is don't press the centre backs.
04:08But instruction number two is sit on Kovacic.
04:12And you can't do both.
04:13And it was actually right here where Guardiola very briefly did start to win that tactical
04:16battle because Arsenal could not allow Kovacic to have that much time on the ball.
04:21He was so much better with it than the other centre backs would have been.
04:24So they did occasionally get drawn out of their shape to press him and denying that
04:28time.
04:29And then all of a sudden that meant that he could just knock the ball into sort of these
04:32wider areas where they had an overload.
04:34And it was this breaking of the shape here, combined with the narrowness that Arsenal
04:38had at the back that led to Man City's best opportunities for most of the game.
04:42And they usually involved Guardiola, it was occasionally Icanzi on the other side, but
04:46it was usually Guardiola getting all the way down the left-hand side unchallenged.
04:51And you could just like see how all these little problems are leading to that happening.
04:55Like either Kovacic is getting the sort of time on the ball required to find him or they
04:59are pressing up onto him because they can't let him have that time.
05:02And someone in the middle of the pitch is having the time to then find him.
05:05But move and counter move.
05:07And this might be the best one of the entire game because Arteta could see that Guardiola
05:12was getting down the left-hand side.
05:13He could see all the time and all the space he had and his ability to float the ball into
05:17the box. And he said.
05:20So f***ing what? Guardiola is not some great crosser of the ball.
05:24Silva and Foden who could be arriving into the box are not massive aerial threats, and
05:28they always had Erling Haaland two on one.
05:31So Arteta was quite happy for Guardiola to just swing that ball in unmarked from the
05:36left-hand side. And you can see here he had six goes at it.
05:39He missed with five of them.
05:41And the one that did find Erling Haaland's head, he was double marked and it was no threat
05:46whatsoever. Like that's that's a very brave system to employ.
05:49Just let them have it.
05:50But it worked. But, and I'm getting so sick of saying this, move and counter move.
05:56Arsenal are really narrow.
05:57City's only source of joy is down both the flanks.
06:00So Pep goes full chaos mode and brings on both Grealish and Doku at the same time.
06:07It kind of goes to this like 3-3-3-1, I think.
06:12Like it was quite hard to work out where Bernardo Silva was supposed to be in all of this.
06:16But it kind of, they did just have three players here and there were three who were receiving
06:20the ball. And obviously they were there.
06:22And I think this is what they were doing.
06:23Something like this.
06:24So now when the ball did find either of these players, let's take Ben White, for example,
06:28he had to go out and stop Grealish having the time and space because he really could
06:32do something with it.
06:33And that by extension allowed Kevin De Bruyne to get into the half spaces the first time
06:38they'd open up, which would force one of the Arsenal centre-backs to cover across, leaving
06:42Haaland for the first time in the game, finally one-on-one with a defender.
06:46But come on now, everybody, say it with me.
06:49Move, counter move.
06:51Jack Grealish, obviously fantastic on the ball, but Ben White had a pretty good handle
06:55on him. He didn't look like he was going to fly past him at any point.
06:57The really exciting bit was Doku versus Kyrgios.
07:01Like in regards of creating space on a football pitch, a flying winger versus a centre-back
07:08in a wide area is like curry to a piss head.
07:12Hence why it lasted exactly four minutes.
07:16More or less the second Jeremy Doku got on that football pitch, Arteta immediately had
07:21Tomiyasu warm up, got him straight on the pitch, put him out on that side and shut down
07:26Doku in any real serious way.
07:28And I actually don't think anything typifies precisely why Arsenal were able to get a point
07:33in this match quite like that, because this is all tinkering and chess and nerd stuff.
07:39On the actual pitch, it comes down to individual battles like, OK, you're going to double up
07:44on Erling Haaland, but if he just does really well and beats those two defenders, he might
07:48still score.
07:49And over there, that's a great idea.
07:52Get a proper full back on to stop the proper winger, but it only works if he does his job.
07:57And Tomiyasu absolutely did that job brilliantly, just like every other player in this Arsenal
08:03side.
08:04But my dear friends, I must now enter into the second part of this video because I have
08:08seen people slating Arsenal for this sort of negative anti-football approach that they
08:13definitely just turned up to try and get a nil-nil, right?
08:17Well, no, they definitely turned up to try and win this game.
08:22They had a plan to score the goal that would do that, and it very, very nearly worked.
08:28Now, Arsenal only had something like 27% possession in this game, which is a season low by some
08:34distance for them.
08:35And that's because their main priority every time they had the ball was just don't give
08:40it away somewhere stupid.
08:42And the best illustration of this by a mile is in David Reier's distribution, that the
08:46guy plays short, he gets involved with the defense.
08:49He sometimes even works as a third center back.
08:52But here today, he was going long pretty much every single time.
08:57And that's because for large parts of this game, Arsenal didn't really want the ball.
09:01They didn't want to try and play through Man City.
09:03They wanted City to try and play through them so they might take it off them.
09:07But their plan, pretty clearly, I think, was to do this for long enough in the game that
09:11you effectively like open up the areas required to then go and steal it.
09:17Think about the way Arsenal set up in this game, from how their back four was structured
09:21to how they were pressing encouraged narrowness, right?
09:23It was funneling everything into the center of the pitch.
09:26While it was making them really hard to play through, it was also inviting Man City with
09:29a temptation to commit players out wide because that's where the space was.
09:34And if you're going to hurt them, you need to use the space.
09:36And then in the 85th minute, you very nearly saw precisely why they were doing this.
09:43They finally find Martin Oerdegaard in between the lines in a central space, able to play
09:48the ball forward and both of the correct runs from the substitutes, bear in mind, the fresh
09:53players they brought on, Trossard and Martinelli, are perfectly timed into the space that City
10:00have left in the wide areas.
10:03The ball from Oerdegaard is perfect.
10:06And I think genuinely Leandro Trossard could and should knock this first time into the
10:11path of Martinelli and all of a sudden Arsenal have created the best chance in the entire
10:17game and something they probably should win it from.
10:20But instead, his touch just isn't quite perfect and he allows the defender to cover over him
10:25by the time he does get it under control, City have got players back.
10:29But I just saw in this moment, this entire plan, the structure, the discipline, the changes,
10:35everything almost coming together perfectly, but it didn't.
10:41But do you want to know what the ultimate bit of stylistic adaptation was on Arsenal's
10:45behalf here?
10:46Oh, you do?
10:47Good, right, I'll tell you.
10:48Normally, Arsenal concede around nine fouls per game in the Premier League, actually puts
10:52them second lowest in the division for that particular stat.
10:55But today in this game, they conceded 20 fouls and that is because you can do all the nerd
11:02stuff in the world.
11:03You can pour over all the geeky data.
11:05You can have such ingrained footballing philosophy.
11:08Sometimes nothing just beats the approach of just kick them, lads.
11:13If you're not sure what to do, just kick them.
11:16And you know what?
11:17Fair play.
11:18And that was that, wasn't it?
11:21I do think a point for Arsenal away at the Etihad, taking four points from City when
11:26they gave them six last season is absolutely enormous and could probably be the thing that
11:30does ultimately win them the title, but it's in Liverpool's hands now, isn't it?
11:34And none of them play each other again, so this is going to be fun.
11:38Anyway, though, if you're sitting there at home wondering how on earth I pulled that
11:41much content out of such a dull game, then I don't know either, to be completely honest.
11:46But why not subscribe to the channel so you can see what I can do when there's goals?
11:51You get me across all the social media at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, Twitter slash X and
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12:00The last few days to grab a copy of the Trent Alexander Arnold issue of 442, the new one
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12:08Honestly, I am, even though I work here.
12:10But until next time, that was it, I think.
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12:22Yeah, happy, hope you're having a nice bank holiday.
12:26I'm not.
12:27Bye.