Mikel Arteta Is Making the Best of It
It’s fair to say Arsenal got a little lucky against Liverpool on Wednesday. Most teams don’t survive Liverpool taking 24 shots, nor can they count on terrible mistakes from two of the league’s most consistent players in Allison and Virgil van Dijk, but what stood out more than those mistakes was Arsenal’s ability to execute their plan.
Manchester City saw exactly what Arsenal did to Liverpool and had to assume they’d see something similar Saturday night. Arsenal played the same game and City couldn’t find a way through. It’s not luck anymore. Mikel Arteta knows exactly what he’s doing.
This is not the tight, mechanical possession he’d prefer. Given his pedigree and comments he’s made on his vision Arteta would much rather be playing like City or Liverpool than playing like Wolves, but unlike both Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery, Arteta is working within the squad’s limitations. Arsenal’s record against the usual top-six clubs over the last five years has been terrible. Their record against Manchester City alone in the seven games since the 2017 FA Cup semifinal looks more like what you’d expect to see from a team facing relegation. Seven loses. City scored three goals in six of those seven.
Arsene Wenger wanted his players to go out and express themselves. This worked out great when the player expressing himself was Dennis Bergkamp and a bit less so when it was Henrikh Mkhitaryan. In the later years of Wenger’s reign unbalanced squads were carried over the line by individual brilliance. Mesut Ozil could always get the ball to Alexis Sanchez, and Alexis could do anything he wanted. This plan usually crashed into the rocks against teams that could either A.) Plan for this, or B.) Murder Arsenal on the counter. Wenger always wanted to go toe-to-toe with Liverpool and Chelsea no matter how much weaker his team was and that inevitably ended in a few 5–1s and 6–0s.
Unai Emery was a bit like the Affordable Care Act of managers. On the face of it a good idea but buried under so many layers of confusion and complexity that no one knew what they were meant to be doing. There were always stories of Emery’s DVDs and video sessions but it always seemed like players were being asked to do too much. Nicholas Pepe’s slow start to his Arsenal career can be blamed on never knowing exactly what was expected of him. Dani Ceballos also struggled when being asked to perform every conceivable task you might ask from a midfielder.
Against the big teams, especially away from home, Emery played scared. The plan was to keep it simple and hold onto the ball, but you can’t park the bus and keep possession at the same time. You have to pick one, and Mikel Arteta, who cannot be accused of not understanding “The Arsenal Way”, decided to sit deep, soak up pressure, and hope Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was clinical enough to score on the counter. It worked perfectly.
It’s not sophisticated but it shows a manager who knows how to get the most out of his players. Putting the Tottenham loss to one side, he’s been getting excellent performances out of Shkodran Mustafi and David Luiz, the latter of which single-handedly threw away the previous game against Manchester City which led to some people, perhaps even the one writing this, demanding that he never play for Arsenal again.
Despite the fact that Luiz doesn’t make mistakes so much as he melts down completely, his influence on the younger players seems to be immense. After the final whistle you could see Luiz having what seemed to be a serious, emotional talk with Ainsley Maitland-Niles. It wasn’t the laughing and joking and joy you expect to see after winning a semifinal. It was reported in The Athletic the other day that Maitland-Niles wants out of Arsenal in hopes of playing first team football, ideally in his preferred position of central midfield. Arteta played him as an inverted wingback on the left side of a midfield four against City, hardly Maitland-Niles dream job after years being asked to play right back, but he did a sensational job neutralizing the threat of Riyad Mahrez. Arteta, predictably much like Pep Guardiola, sees the player and not the position. He knows what Maitland-Niles is capable of and wants him to stay in North London.
Money is needed. So is European football. The door to qualify for Europa League through the Premier League is quickly closing and winning the FA Cup looks like it’ll be the only way in. Chelsea will be tough opposition, but Arsenal have beaten two teams much better than Chelsea in the last five days. Winning will be essential for both spending money to bring better players in and keeping players like Aubameyang who won’t be too enthusiastic about signing another contract at a midtable club without the promise of European competition. Arteta has proved that he’s as advertised. He is the sort of manager you can build your future around, but it’s down to ownership to make his vision reality.
