Arsenal requires ‘perfection’ to beat Man City – Premier League needs it too

YoIt’s a word Mikel Arteta has now used in public, but only to emphasize what he’s been saying to his Arsenal players behind the fences of the training ground.

“Perfection.”

To beat this Manchester City, Arteta has assured his squad, Arsenal have to be perfect in everything they do. That’s not overkill for motivation. He means it about every step, every run, every pass. It may be asking a lot given Arsenal’s last three games, but this is what they’ve been building for months.

Pep Guardiola’s ultra-focused players have been toying with these demands for much longer. That is despite the Catalan insisting on Tuesday that “perfection does not exist in football.” That’s saying something given that he’s presided over a 100-point season, a 98-point season and a domestic treble, all before currently going for the biggest treble of all.

These are now the levels, after 15 years of the Abu Dhabi project. If City win seven of their remaining eight games, which seems like a good expectation, it will be 91 points. Arsenal would need 92.

As daunting as that is for a club that hasn’t come close to 10 points of that in over a decade, and has clearly been sensing some of the anticipation, there’s that unmistakable air around Arsenal’s Colney base. This is what it’s all about. This is what Arsenal has been denied for far too long, that gripping tension that is actually one of the great draws of the game.

More seasoned figures have been talking about how it compares to 2003, 2002, 1998 and, of course, 1989. Most can only remember “the nerves.”

In 1998, Ian Wright recently said, there was that silence concentrated on the trip to Old Trafford for Marc Overmars’ victory.

This City is past that point, especially as they are going for a third successive title, but there are still many who remember 2011-12. A bit like Arsenal now, they were a young side who hadn’t won a title together and were eagerly trying to end a long wait at the club.

That’s not the only callback. Arteta spoke about his Arsenal goal that beat City in that encounter, which made them the last leaders of the Premier League at this stage of the season without winning three consecutive games.

Until now.

City snapped out of that by recalling Carlos Tevez and immediately began a six-game winning streak that involved defeating Manchester United 1-0 at home. It was probably the last time the title showdown was so decisive, as it definitely turned the initiative in City’s favour. Also, perhaps, until now.

Premier League clashes when the title has been on the line

The 2013-14 season saw Liverpool beat City 3-2 in a raucous game that came even later, with just four games to go, but Brendan Rodgers’ equally inexperienced side still had some great testing games. That is why both Arteta and Guardiola are right in pointing out the matches that will come after this one this season.

“It’s really important, not decisive because there are too many difficult games for both sides,” Guardiola said.

That’s why such matchups have rarely been this demanding unless, as in 2002 and 2006, they literally confirmed the title. However, the game has undergone a gradual and drastic evolution since that period. As Premier League revenue increased, the financial gaps increased and so did the point thresholds. Champion sides are capable of longer runs. This was the reason why the competition essentially missed out on a “Premier League Super Bowl”, something traders want more of, for half a decade starting in 2014.

It’s also why this is seen as the equivalent of a decider, at least from Arsenal’s point of view. If they fail to win and give City the lead decisively, the likelihood of the champions slipping away is low.

It’s not over if Arsenal draw, of course, but that’s too much to ask.

That’s what a game that’s been so developed really comes down to. That’s why so much of the attention has been focused on the perfection of Arsenal and Arteta.

They have to go from the worst run a Premier League leader has had at this stage of the competition since 1992-93, to what is probably the outstanding result in the club’s modern history and probably the toughest challenge in football. at the moment. They have to beat City. They have to take down a machine.

Premier League title falters

Such a prospect is made up of Guardiola’s side scoring an average of almost four goals in each of their last eight games, with Erling Haaland scoring 14 of his 31. Meanwhile, Arsenal have lost two from their regular back line, making it which means the rate has been broken there. , also. Aaron Ramsdale’s defense have conceded seven goals in three games, three against an attack as limited as Southampton’s. They have missed Willian Saliba a lot, who could well have been confirmed as their most important player. After all, Arsenal have adapted without almost everyone else, including Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko. Without Saliba, they have had Michail Antonio target and terrorize Rob Holding. What will Haaland do?

The direction of travel only seems to go in one direction. It’s not that hard to see City go and destroy Arsenal, in one of those victories that becomes representative of their broader power and greatest achievements.

The other side, and what makes the sport so great, regardless of any larger issues, is that such exigent circumstances can bring out something deeper and bigger from those involved. This was how Alex Manninger became a title hero in 1997-98, how a self-confident figure like Roberto Mancini was able to row and remember Tevez in 2011-12.

Guardiola does not need those measures now. While he has some big decisions, such as who will replace Nathan Ake at left-back, the structure is in place. The “box defence” that he remembers from his Barcelona 1992 team has given City a new level that they now just need to maintain.

In the meantime, Arteta has to bring Arsenal back to a previous level and probably go much further. That is why much of the attention has been focused on his team, to go along with the fact that it is a young team that is gaining strength; an apprentice trainer who needs to go and defeat his former master.

These are powerful narrative themes, which is all the more ironic given the razor’s edge on which the Premier League finds itself.

As captivating as this title run has been, to go with 2018-19 and 2021-22, a growing opinion within the game’s highest circles is that it “needs an Arsenal win”.

“He needs a new champion,” a source said, “he needs something different.”

An Arsenal win would potentially make them three champions in four years, furthering the big sales pitch that this is the most competitive league in the world.

A City win would go some way towards sealing a fifth league title in six years, bringing the Premier League closer to Ligue 1 levels. That it would be an historic third successive title and the first part of a potential treble would only strengthen the argument about a growing problem. Some in Liverpool have joked that it is good that more players realize how difficult it is to compete with City.

City’s answer to that came after their latest treble.

“I will not accept this club being used as a diversionary tactic in the bad investment decisions of other clubs,” President Khaldoon al Mubarak said in 2019.

“People make decisions, they have to live by them. We have handled ourselves well and we will be judged on facts and facts alone.”

The fact of this game is that Arteta has to work on a similar edge. Some competing issues and viewpoints have also influenced its preparation.

Most conspicuously, the Champions League quarter-finals showed how Bayern Munich came to City at a fast pace. Arsenal have a lot of that, especially in Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka. They could almost be the perfectly built side for that approach.

The biggest question for Arteta is how he establishes that. Does he try to take the game to City and look for Arsenal to control all aspects of the game, as in that defeat in February, or goes deeper and takes out Guardiola’s men to try to hit them on the counter? The latter would be a better fit for Holding’s game, though there’s a chance Arteta could bring Ben White inside.

One suggestion raised has been for Arsenal to go hyper-intensive early on to force an early goal and then sit back to take City out to give themselves more space behind. The problem is that the blind luck of football may not have brought that goal early.

And these are just the broadest approaches to tactics. Then there are the more intricate details, which these two managers, as much as anyone else, are so intensely concerned with. Guardiola has willingly spent hours before big games talking about the individual meter difference in the positioning of individual players.

The temptation at this point is to talk about the thinnest margins, and that may well be the case. What is at stake with this game, however, is that it could create the widest margins – City would win well and win the league by a sizeable margin.

That is the trend right now. That is what Arsenal has to divert. That is why it is so big, as Arteta was put on the eve of the game.

“You have to live for the day,” said the Arsenal manager. “After City, if we win, the biggest one for sure will be the next one.”

To go back to that word that Arteta has been using, I could see perfection all right. This matchup could serve as the perfect setting for the showdown or the perfect display of the eventual champions.