Arsenal and Manchester City both need to come up with a Plan B if they want to win the Premier League. Arsenal’s defeat at Goodison Park on Tuesday was their first in the league since the opening weekend against Liverpool, but it saw a familiar flaw resurface.
They started off playing fabulous football and looked like they were going to win at a canter as Everton started nervously, but then Ronald Koeman’s team upped their aggression and Arsenal couldn’t live with that more physical approach. The crowd got behind Everton, who steamrollered Arsenal in the end. All those silky, elegant footballers counted for nothing.
That’s our league and that’s how Arsenal have been for a long time. Unless they can get over that and go to places such as Goodison and dig out results, they are going to be also-rans again — for all the lovely football they play. When Fergie had his good teams at Manchester United that’s how they approached every Arsenal game. It was a case of: “Be really aggressive and we know we can beat them.”
They still need players who can put on a different hat in contrasting circumstances. At Liverpool, we could outplay the top European teams but also dig out the domestic results when required to. You’ve got to be able to meet the challenge that comes along. That’s what separates the good teams from the great teams, they go and win the big competitions because they can adjust.
If Pep Guardiola was watching, it should have been jumping out the television at him how to beat Arsenal — this afternoon we will see if he was paying attention. Although City started the season with 10 straight wins in all competitions, several were against the Premier League’s lesser lights and in Champions League qualifiers. They have won just six of 16 games since.
Advertisement
At Liverpool, we were never allowed to think we had a divine right to win. They would say: “Work as hard at stopping them as they do at stopping you and we win because we have better players.” Tactically, until the game settled down, we were told to turn their back four and put a seed of doubt in defenders’ minds, so they were reluctant to push right up. The same applied in midfield and then, when the game settles down, you can play your football.
City try to play the most difficult type of football, looking to score the perfect goal, with 30 passes from the goalkeeper through the back four and midfield to the striker. The simplest way is to go to the opposite extreme and get a goalkeeper who can kick it to the opposition box, get a big centre-forward, lump it every time and push in behind.
As always, the team who do a bit of both will win our league. I can’t remember a pretty team winning the First Division or the Premier League. The Arsenal teams who won the league had Tony Adams, Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira. Blackburn did it with direct football, Leeds went long at times, the Manchester United teams all had a bit of teeth about them, as did the City and Chelsea ones of recent years.
Guardiola is asking City to play a style of football, making lots of passes in your own half and in and around your own box, where one sloppy pass generally leads to an effort on your goal. That’s a large part of why they’ve only kept two clean sheets in 18 games. To encourage people onto you in the first minutes or seconds of games is the wrong way to go about winning the English Premier League.
“I can’t remember a pretty team winning the First Division or the Premier League
He has to change. If he doesn’t, he’s telling every other team how to play against his. There has to be some doubt in the opposition about how you are going to play. People will say he did it at Barcelona, but that was with far better players, which brings us to his next problem. He’s asking players to do stuff they are not comfortable with, particularly the defenders.
Advertisement
The No 1 job for a manager is to get the best out of the group of players he has. Over time you can buy players who will play the way you want to, but when you walk into a club, it’s getting the best out of that group. Antonio Conte at Chelsea has done that a lot better than Guardiola has. He worked out that there’s players who had won trophies in a back four but would do better playing in a different way. He’s grasped the nettle far quicker.
You normally don’t get a big job unless there’s a lot wrong with the club. Guardiola’s walked into a squad that, in most people’s eyes, was the strongest in the Premier League. There was not a lot wrong with City when he took the job. It’s about him proving people wrong, with the Guardiola way, but what is the Guardiola way when he’s making so many changes?
The most important part of your team that has to work as a unit is your back three , four or five. They have to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and have an understanding. Guardiola changes it every week and they can’t keep a clean sheet. You think he would work on something and say: “This is what I believe in.” Instead it’s like an experiment. City’s supporters don’t want an experiment.