HOW RARE IT is in English football for the master to be superseded by his apprentice.
There is a rich lineage of assistant managers stepping up with success, most obviously at Liverpool, but few, if any, have won at the expense of their old boss.
Think of the Premier League’s great managers from its earlier eras: none of Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, or Antonio Conte were ever bested by someone who learned at their knee.
Conte, to be fair, wasn’t around for long enough, and Wenger’s assistants Pat Rice and Steve Bould weren’t quite imbued with an entrepreneurial spirit. Mourinho is himself a stunningly successful translator-turned-assistant-boss, but his legacy at Chelsea was not threatened by his old lieutenant Andre Villas-Boas.
Ferguson’s assistants, meanwhile, seemed to sign a kind of Faustian pact in walking into Old Trafford: you will be successful here but doomed to failure everywhere else. Brian Kidd was relegated at Blackburn and trashed in Ferguson’s autobiography, while none of Steve McClaren, Carlos Queiroz and Mike Phelan achieved anything in note in English club football.
So it is in this paradigm that Mikel Arteta can become a trailblazer.
If Arsenal can beat Manchester City later today, Arteta will have placed Arsenal in a glorious position to end their 20-year wait for a Premier League title. And while the league is always tough to win, some are more difficult than others: few, if any, have been harder than this year’s ask to finish ahead of Klopp and Guardiola.
In 2016, Arteta could have succeeded Liam Brady in leading Arsenal’s academy, or he could have joined Mauricio Pochettino’s coaching staff at Spurs. Instead he picked option three, and joined Guardiola’s staff at Manchester City.
It was a wise choice: he might have been City boss by now had Guardiola burned out as he did at Barcelona and Bayern, but instead Unai Emery’s sacking opened up a door at Arsenal, the one club against whom he did not celebrate goals when sitting alongside Guardiola.
“I don’t know my impact on him but his influence on me was so important to become a better manager,” Guardiola said last year. “I knew it from when he was here, his ability.
“The biggest compliment for Arsenal as well, because in the bad moments they trusted him and kept him. To do this, they had to support him, that’s why you need time and investment. The results are there.”
Arteta’s transformation of Arsenal has been a slow process, and Guardiola is right to say the club’s backing of him should be acknowledged. Arsenal’s return to the Champions League under Arteta was somewhat belated, and he also took a while to be totally respected: this reporter can remember a couple of English journalists sniggering at the strangely mechanic passion of Arteta’s patter in online press conferences around their Europa League games with Dundalk in 2020.
The key to improvement under Arteta is no different to that under any other manager at any other club: he got the players who suited him and cleared out the players who didn’t. The first act of every great manager is not an act of creation but of destruction: Alex Ferguson cleaned house of those who he believed lack discipline at United, while Guardiola’s first meaningful decision at City was to drop Joe Hart.
It took a a couple of years to do it, but Arteta managed to oust Pepe, Aubameyang, Ozil, Mustafi, David Luiz, and Lacazette, which slowly allowed him play something much closer to his style. Which is to say: Manchester City’s style.
Having occasionally been forced to play a back three in his earlier days, Arteta alighted on a 4-3-3 when he signed a couple of players from City, notably Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus.
Their influence last season was enormous, but this year they have become pretty peripheral figures, in a similar way as to how City have evolved under Guardiola since Arteta left.
City sold Zinchenko and played a centre-back at left-back for more solidity, and now Jakub Kiwior is doing likewise for Arsenal, again at Zinchenko’s expense. Gabriel Jesus left as Haaland arrived at City, and now Arteta has benched Jesus for a more physical presence in the shape of Kai Havertz.
Where Klopp and Guardiola games have been classics as they are a clash of styles, those between Arteta and Guardiola are trending the other direction. Both sides are becoming so similar that the games, despite their obvious tension, are becoming drab. Arsenal’s 1-0 win at the Emirates earlier this season was surprisingly dull, with the two sides managing three shots on target between them.
Arteta’s style at Arsenal has drawn light towards the fundamental truth of Guardiola: he is a primarily defensive-minded manager. Unlike the likes of Mourinho, however, he believes the best form of defence is one in which you always have the ball. Both managers are extremely reactive to the opposition: hence why Arsenal – arguably the best pressing team in the league – sat off City for swathes of the meeting earlier in the season, presumably haunted by the brutally effective direct approach that City took in the decisive 4-1 win at the Etihad last season.
Arsenal should be bolder today. A draw is not a bad result in that it keeps them ahead of City, but they will probably need to be flawless to the season’s end if they are to finish above them. Last season taught them that the hope City will drop points in the run-in is a forlorn one.
In the Premier League, the apprentice never beats the master and almost nobody beats Guardiola. Arteta is on the threshold of something special.
On TV: Manchester City vs Arsenal, KO 4.30pm; Live on Sky Sports Main Event
