Still in the race for a historic quadruple, the Gunners challenge the Citizens this Sunday to try to win a first trophy.
Manchester City and Arsenal are eyeing the first trophy of the season on Sunday (5:30 p.m.) in the League Cup, a tantalizing clash right down to the bench, between master Pep Guardiola, 55, and Mikel Arteta, 43, his emancipated ex-disciple. The Premier League leader, Arsenal, arrives at Wembley with a favorable wind and a status of quasi-favorite against a Mancunian runner-up who looks like a wounded beast, with a declining aura and still bruised by his elimination on Tuesday in the Champions League.
But Guardiola, the architect of all his successes since 2016, knows better than anyone to what extent a final can escape all rationality. He won a bunch, including four in a row in the League Cup, between 2018 and 2021. The first, he won with a young, assistant named… Mikel Arteta, recently retired from the field and became an essential link in his staff at the time of the final, won 3-0 against Arsenal and Arsène Wenger. Since then, the student has moved away from the master, leaving the north of England to become a manager in turn, in north London, in December 2019.
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From now on, they see each other very little and “it’s inevitable”Arteta said on Friday. “But my feelings haven’t changed one iota”he assured, “how I feel about him, the time we spent together, what he did for me and the inspiration he has been since I was little, that will never change”. However, inspiration does not mean imitation. The Arsenal coach shaped his team with his ideas, by recruiting players who corresponded to his project, in short by imposing his touch, even if it meant distancing himself from the philosophy «guardiolesque» in which he was immersed, like many of his contemporaries.
For a very long time, Arsenal was criticized for being a team of kids, incapable of maintaining a result, who were bullied by others.
Thierry Henry
The cannon club relies on its defensive robustness, the quality and diversity of its set pieces, and a cunning use of «dark arts» (time saving or other techniques to slow down the game, for example) which annoys a large part of England. “For a very long time, Arsenal was criticized for being a team of kids, incapable of achieving a result, who were bullied by others”defended Thierry Henry, legend of the club, on Sky Sports. “Can they win lousy? This is exactly what the team does, and they master it perfectly”. For the former Gunners scorer, Arteta was able to change his mind by realizing that playing well was not enough to win.
The Basque keeps Guardiola as his compass, of course, but he looked to José Mourinho (Chelsea era) and especially to Diego Simeone, the current coach of Atlético, to make his way among the powerful of the Premier League. Like Simeone facing the Real-Barça duo, Arteta was in front “two clearly superior teams: City, the best in the world with the ball, and Liverpool, the best in the world at recovering it. The question then was: where could Arsenal actually position themselves, challenge the main contenders and ultimately win?noted Jamie Carragher, former England international from Liverpool.
On the way to the quadruplet?
“Arteta felt that trying to beat Manchester City by simply replicating their magnificent possession-based play was doomed to failure. He found a darker and more determined way to confront his former master.he adds in a column on The Telegraph. “He hasn’t yet managed to win the biggest trophies, but he’s getting close”. His Gunners are in fact still in the running for a historic quadruple, also counting the FA Cup (quarter-finals against Southampton) and the Champions League (quarters against Sporting). For now, he only has one major trophy: the FA Cup, won in 2020 seven months after his arrival against Chelsea at a Wembley emptied by the pandemic. Winning a second one, against Guardiola moreover, would be a very symbolic victory.
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