Since Mikel Arteta took charge at Arsenal,
the comparisons with Pep Guardiola have been as constant as they have been inevitable.
There are similarities between the two men. They are both sharp thinkers — and
sharp dressers. They share an intensity; a magnetic charisma that makes them natural leaders.
They are both products of the Barcelona system, and their teams share certain key tactical points:
they both attack in five channels, and frequently defend in five channels too.
Arteta has recently made use of a back three, and Guardiola deployed a similar
system in his early days at Manchester City — and has returned to it several
times since, most recently for the Champions League tie against Lyon.
But there is a clue as to how the two men differ in the role Arteta assumed while working at City.
With Guardiola looking after the big picture,
Arteta was charged principally with working with individual players:
improving Raheem Sterling’s movement, Fabian Delph’s positioning, or Leroy Sane’s end product.
And so it was: Guardiola the ideologue; Arteta the problem-solver.
Guardiola’s brilliance speaks for itself, but his rapid ascension through the coaching ranks means
he never served as an assistant. He has always had to consider the next game, the grand plan,
the vision. Arteta has had the freedom and opportunity to focus on the micro details.
“People always ask me about training under Pep,” Sane once marvelled,
“but the things I’ve learnt from Mikel Arteta!”.
Asked about his then-assistant in September 2019, Guardiola told the Telegraph that Arteta “has an
incredible work ethic, and he has a special talent to analyse what happens, and to find
the solutions". And find solutions is precisely what he has done in his short time at Arsenal.
It should be no great surprise that there are differences between Arteta and Guardiola,
given the contrast in their playing careers.
Although Arteta followed Guardiola through Barcelona’s La Masia, he never broke into
the first team and – instead – would make his name in, at first, Scotland, and then England.
It left him with a deep appreciation for British football
and a first-hand understanding of its physicality.
Perhaps that has played into his choice of defensive midfielder? In the summer of 2018,
when Manchester City were seeking a new holding midfield player, their primary targets were
Jorginho and Frenkie de Jong. The aim was to acquire someone even more adept on the ball
than Fernandinho, to further emphasise City’s strength in possession. Over the course of the
next 12 months, those top targets joined Chelsea and Barcelona respectively. Ultimately, City and
Guardiola went for Rodri — a player who is better at resisting the press than instigating it.
Guardiola’s focus was resolutely on what his team would be capable of in possession.
Thomas Partey, meanwhile, is a more natural defender. In Rodri’s final season at Atletico,
he was averaging 56.7 passes per game with a pass completion rate of 91.1 percent.
In 2019-20’s Atletico side, Partey averaged 46.8 passes per game with a success rate of
83.4 percent. Although Arteta maintained an interest in Jorginho, Partey was first-choice
to play at the base of Arsenal's midfield as much because of what he does off the ball as on it.
There is a stylistic difference between these two players that illustrates Arteta
and Guardiola’s diverging attitudes to the physical nature of the Premier League.
For his part, Arteta has been clear in the past about his preferred way to play.
In his final season as a player, Arsenal’s club’s official website
asked him how a Mikel Arteta team might one day line up.
“My philosophy will be clear,” Arteta said. “I want the football to be expressive,
entertaining. I cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition.”
It’s difficult to argue that’s a vision we’ve yet seen realised at the Emirates Stadium.
Understandably so: Arteta inherited a team in 10th position. Most of Arteta’s landmark victories have
come in a relatively deep block, playing on the counter-attack. At the back end of last season,
Arteta’s Arsenal beat Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea in quick succession,
all while never having more than 40 percent possession.
Guardiola has never taken charge of a team languishing in mid-table. The problems Arteta
has faced — and the pragmatism required to work through them — would be new to him.
As Arteta put it in September, ahead of the match against Liverpool at Anfield:
“Sometimes it’s what you want to do as a coach, and sometimes it’s what you
are allowed to do with the levels of players and performance that top teams can do against you.”
Arteta has nevertheless sought to instil some fundamentals.
In fact, one difference between the way the two teams play is that Arteta’s Arsenal
seem even more wedded to playing out from the back than Guardiola’s City.
It’s early days in the 2020-21 Premier League season, but Arsenal currently have 32 percent
of their possession inside their own defensive third. City have just 17 percent — and the
numbers bear out over the previous campaign too. (Numbers accurate as of 14-10-20)
There are multiple reasons for this. The first is that Arteta
is still in the process of implementing playing out from the back — by enforcing it,
he is attempting to make it second nature for his players. He is creating habits.
Guardiola’s City are not always as consistent in applying this short-passing strategy.
In their title-winning campaigns of 2017-18 and 2018-19, City occasionally took advantage of the
fact players cannot be offside at goal-kicks by deliberately positioning their front three behind
the opposition defence. With Ederson’s superb long passing, and astonishing 80 yard range,
he was frequently able to find them. The tactic served various purposes, enabling City to stretch
the play, bypass the opposition press and sometimes even creating scoring chances.
The divergence in strategy is also explained by the fact that the two teams are at different
points in their development. City’s evolution provides evidence that if you become good enough
at playing out from the back, teams will stop pressing you, granting you more possession higher
up the pitch. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the time Arteta is spending developing
Arsenal’s ability to play out from goal-kicks may ultimately help grant them more territory.
From that point, further differences may even emerge.
But already - with the work he’s doing at Arsenal - Arteta is swiftly establishing his own identity.