FROM the moment he left the Manchester City coaching team to become Arsenal manager in December 2019, Mikel Arteta has made a conscious effort to become Pep Guardiola’s mini-me.
The demanding Spaniards share an intense passion for technical football and fluid tactics which make their teams almost impossible to defend against.
Arteta learned just about everything he knows about coaching from Guardiola and now the protege is pushing his mentor harder than any other manager in the Premier League.
As the former partners in style prepare to meet again at the Emirates on Sunday, we look at the five things which Arteta has stolen straight from the Guardiola playbook.
SWEEPER-KEEPER
EDERSON is so comfortable with the ball at his feet that he is virtually able to play as an extra defender for City.
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Brazilian Ederson has no qualms about leaving his penalty area to pass out from the back and can cut opponents to shreds with the deadly accuracy of his long-range balls.
One of Arteta’s first acts as Arsenal boss was to replace Bernd Leno with Aaron Ramsdale to allow his team to keep possession in their own area instead of booting the ball clear.
It was a task which Ramsdale was more than happy to accept but there were times during his first season at the Emirates when he played his team into trouble when pressed by opponents.
Last season he took noticeably fewer risks and would kick long when under pressure but that wasn’t what purist Arteta wanted and now he has brought in David Raya as his number-one keeper because he is more comfortable to pass it out at all times.
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INVERTED FULL-BACKS
GUARDIOLA reinvented the wheel when he came up with the idea of pushing a defender into midfield whenever City had possession.
John Stones, Nathan Ake, Kyle Walker and Rico Lewis were all charged with stepping up to create overloads in the middle and leave opponents overwhelmed by the sheer number of City players pushing them back towards their own area.
Arteta quickly spotted what his old mate was up to and signed Oleksandr Zinchenko from City to do exactly the same job for Arsenal.
The Ukrainian left-back now spends as much time in central midfield as he does out wide and Jurrien Timber was signed to do the same job but suffered a long-term knee injury in his first Premier League game.
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Arteta was so determined to persist with this tactic that he even moved Thomas Partey to right-back when Zinchenko was unavailable to allow his team to play a 3-4-3 formation.
PRESSING FROM THE FRONT
GUARDIOLA'S mantra from his very first coaching job at Barcelona has been to recover possession the second the ball is lost.
All of his attacking players are told to get up close and personal to opposing defenders to harry them into mistakes and never allow them a second to dwell on the ball.
Arsenal are now trying to do exactly the same thing and no one works harder than captain Martin Odegaard in leading the press.
The Norwegian international is supposed to be a midfielder but is often higher up the pitch than any of his team-mates as he looks to close down the keeper and prevent opponents from playing out from the back.
STRIKER LIGHT
WHEN City were smashing everyone out of sight in the title race, they were doing it without a target man.
All of Guardiola’s attacking play was geared around agile and speedy forwards such as Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus, Riyadh Mahrez and Phil Foden buzzing around the area and causing chaos.
Arteta took note of that approach when he moved to the Emirates and quickly set about phasing out traditional strikers such as Alex Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
Ironically, when he went back to City to sign Jesus, Guardiola completely changed his attacking philosophy by signing gargantuan goal machine Erling Haaland to power opponents into submission.
So maybe it’s no surprise that Arsenal are now being linked with a move for Brentford target man Ivan Toney.
TOUCHLINE TUTORIALS
CITY and Arsenal might be the two most accomplished teams in the Premier League but that doesn’t mean their managers ever take their foot off the gas.
Guardiola is a constant presence on the touchline, manoeuvring his players into position and making sure the intensity never drops for a second.
He also uses his proximity to the pitch to apply pressure on the match officials and has already served a touchline ban this season after collecting three yellow cards for his overzealous protests.
Arteta is even more animated in his technical area and is a 90-minute ball of nervous energy without ever taking a breath.
Good luck to referee Michael Oliver and fourth official Tim Robinson on Sunday.
