Arsenal: Liverpool, not Manchester City, the team to copy

Arsenal and Mikel Arteta are attempting to build a Premier League-challenging team. In their efforts to do so, they should learn lessons from Liverpool’s success, not Manchester City’s.

The task for Mikel Arteta as the new head of a wretch-inducing Arsenal team is a great one. Inheriting a team that has finished outside the top four for three successive years, is now struggling to keep pace with the top six, and looks set to lose many of its veteran players due to the absence of Champions League, Arteta has a rebuilding job on his hands and then some.

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The ultimate aim is quite clear: to win the Premier League. That sounds like a ridiculous goal to set given the current state of the club, but as the Kroenkes and the club have repeatedly stated, they want to win the biggest trophies in the world, and that all starts with the league title.

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Arteta will follow in the footsteps of his former boss Pep Guardiola. The style of play on the pitch will be similar to that of Manchester City, he will manage in a comparable manner to the former Barcelona great, and he will look to ‘copy’ much of what he saw, experienced and partook in at the Etihad.

But while that is perfectly acceptable, normal and likely productive, given the insane success Man. City, have enjoyed under Guardiola, given the current state of the team and club, it might be more prudent for Arteta to consider the other dominant team in English football at present, Liverpool.

While Guardiola’s style on the pitch is something that Arteta will and should look to emulate in north London, the way he will build a team that is capable of performing at such a high level must be more reminiscent of the Merseysiders’ trajectory.

Jurgen Klopp has built a brilliant Liverpool team through superb recruitment and intelligent coaching. They sold arguably their best player in Philippe Coutinho for big money, reinvested that in a whole host of players, and then improved those players under the guidance of Klopp. They were even not too haughty to dip into the lower reaches of the Premier League.

Georginio Wijnaldum came from Newcastle United, Sadio Mane and Virgil van Dijk were signed from Southampton, Jordan Henderson came from Sunderland, while Andy Robertson signed in the summer that Hull City were relegated. All bar van Dijk were bought on the cheap, none costing north of £40 million, and they have all been improved significantly by Klopp and the coaching staff.

Guardiola, while a brilliant coach and tactician, has enjoyed bottomless pockets to throw money at his team. He spent £150 million on full-backs, has swung and missed on several high-end centre-backs, and is able to splash cash that no other team in the world can. Arteta cannot build the team in the same manner as Guardiola as because he will never have the same resources. But he can copy Klopp.

Obviously, you will never entirely copy the processes of another club. You must take elements from many successful ventures and build your own identity. But if Arteta is looking at a project to emulate at Arsenal, he might be better served looking at Liverpool and not Manchester City, despite his own experiences.