Arteta must enjoy City win or risk title rivals extending their lead | Arsenal

IAnalysis of how the league was won tends to focus on the points dropped. Manchester City’s excellence has become so relentless that it is assumed they will surpass 90 points. The question is not so much what they did but whether other teams could have done something to improve that tally.

In this context, one recalls the last day of March last season, and Arsenal’s trip to Manchester City. Liverpool had beaten Brighton earlier in the day, giving them a three-point lead over Arsenal and four over City, having played a game more. Arsenal had simply frustrated City, drawing 0-0.

Although City made an exception in the xG, Arsenal had two of the three shots on target in the game. They held on to their advantage and knew that if they won their remaining nine games, the only team that could finish above them would be Liverpool.

Mikel Arteta praised his team’s resilience in the aftermath, pointing out that City had scored in every home game for the past three years and stressing the need to sometimes “put your ego and ideology aside and do what you have to do”. Arsenal had lost on their previous eight visits to the Etihad, including a 4-1 defeat at a similar stage the previous season. In the immediate context, it seemed like a good result.

In the end, Liverpool won just four of the remaining nine games, while Arsenal won eight. But most importantly, they lost at home to Aston Villa, which allowed City, by winning nine of their nine games, to win the title for the fourth consecutive season.

So while in the immediate term Arsenal lost the title at home to Villa – or in the unexpected Christmas defeats to West Ham and Fulham – there is also the lingering feeling that they missed an opportunity at City.

This was a game they had under control. Could they have been a little bolder in the final 20 minutes? Would it have been worth trying to end their lead over the champions? Would they even have had a better chance of winning their last nine games if they hadn’t had the pressure of knowing they had to?

There is of course no definitive answer. If Arsenal had opened the scoring, it could have given City a chance, lifted them above Arsenal and led everyone to condemn Arteta for his arrogance. It is not a question of right or wrong, but with hindsight, and given that at the time of the Arsenal game City had not won any of the eight games against teams who would finish in the top six, could it have been a missed opportunity?

That is not to say that Arteta should have attacked from the start, nor is he to criticise an approach that saw Arsenal concede five fewer goals than City, 12 fewer than Liverpool and 22 fewer than any other team last season. It is to say that, in a period of a game, there was an opportunity to attack opponents who appeared to have gone flat.

This is not to suggest that Arteta should be excited about playing City on Sunday. The issue is being able to sense the emotion of a match and capitalise on psychological shifts, a difficult and imprecise skill that perhaps gets lost in the minutiae of data-driven planning.

In March, City was the only away league game that Arsenal have not won this year. They have not even trailed in an away league game since their defeat at Fulham on New Year’s Eve, that bizarre game where they had taken the lead, looked comfortable and then lost the lead, as they had done to Liverpool and West Ham the previous season. This occasional habit casts serious doubts over their psychological capacity to win the league – and was perhaps reflected in the way Declan Rice’s red card so unsettled them at home to Brighton.

Yet in 11 league away games since that Fulham aberration, Arsenal have scored 31 goals and conceded just three. For someone who is often described as a sort of Guardiola-lite, Arteta has a very Mourinho-like quality.

And perhaps that makes sense: with so many parties practicing guardiolist In football, competitive advantage lies in the margins, in the refusal to commit and play deep to escape pressure, in defending – something Jürgen Klopp predicted five years ago after a 0-0 draw between Liverpool and Bayern Munich. Even Pep Guardiola, with his defence composed only of central defenders and direct play to Erling Haaland, is not a classic guardiolist more.

The Gunners’ possession percentage at the Etihad is surprisingly low (28%), but they also had less of the ball in the second half of last season against Brighton, Tottenham and Manchester United. Last week, against Spurs, they had just 37%. That was perhaps a response to the absence of Rice and Martin Ødegaard as much as the opposition, but the job was well done, the sense of control much greater than in the 2-0 win at Aston Villa three weeks earlier. Against Atalanta on Thursday, the Gunners had 46% of the ball, but, as at Villa, they needed a stunning double save from David Raya to keep a clean sheet.

This season, City have been a curious mix. They have conceded the first goal in both their home league games, struggled at times against Brentford and West Ham, and were mediocre against Inter, but Haaland, even by his own stratospheric standards, has been in exceptional form.

Arsenal shut out City in both league games last season but that will be harder to achieve without Ødegaard and, in the form Haaland is in, creating even a half-chance could be enough to undo them.

Despite the potential points deduction, this game already looks like a crucial one. By avoiding defeat, Arsenal can take heart from the fact that they have already played three of their toughest away games. On the other hand, a five-point lead for City could already look decisive if they lose.