Arsenal: Pep Guardiola-Mikel Arteta detail shows Unai Emery work

In a revealing part of the All or Nothing: Manchester City documentary, Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta devise a plan to carve open Arsenal. It worked. Their detail shows the work that Unai Emery has to do.

Arsenal hosted Manchester City last weekend in a disappointingly predictable 2-0 defeat. It was a match that perfectly illustrated the difference between these two teams, the instruction that one is given in comparison to the hapless, clueless mess of the opposition, the quality in possession, the spatial recognition and exploitation, the fluidity and dynamism of the movement. These are two teams at very different levels.

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As an illustration of this, a part of a brilliant documentary named All or Nothing: Manchester City showed how Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola prepared for a match against Arsenal. Guardiola asked Arteta to find a way to exploit his former team’s defence, a unit that he knows extremely well.

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Arteta relayed a plan that involved exploiting space in the wide area and then cutting the ball back to the edge of the penalty area to find a midfielder who had made a curved run to exploit the deep positions of the centre-halves. It was a play that was extremely reminiscent of Bernardo Silva’s second goal, connecting on a Benjamin Mendy cut-back and it perfectly demonstrated the brilliant coaching of Guardiola and Arteta.

The clear and concise instruction that is imparted for the City players is completely alien to what Arsenal were doing under Arsene Wenger. It is why Unai Emery is now in charge, to bring the detail and instruction that Guardiola has made so clear and influential at City. But this game, sadly, also showed just how much work Emery has to do.

The positional play in midfield was perhaps the starkest illustration. The manner in which City were able to play through the pitch and avoid the high press of Arsenal, when it was employed at certain times. The spatial awareness and positional rotation of Fernandinho, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva far outweighed the options that Granit Xhaka, Matteo Guendouzi and Aaron Ramsey were able to provide their backline.

It was plain to see how easy it was for City to play out from the back because of the positional instruction that Guardiola has provided his players. In contrast to that, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi were extremely limited in their options on the ball. The space that City’s shape was able to engineer was completely different to that of Arsenal’s.

Emery has spoken of the tactics that he is wanting to implement. He has had only one game thus far. It would be unfair to adjudge his work at this early stage. But as a landscape-setting match, there was a clear indication of just how much ground Emery has to make up.

Guardiola is the best coach in the world. Arteta is one of the highest regarded assistants who allegedly is renowned for his tactical knowledge and work on the training pitch. That is the level that Emery must aim for, but he and his team has a long, long way to go indeed.