Old foes Pep Guardiola and Unai Emery met once again as an intriguing tactical battle saw the title holders run out 2-0 winners at the Emirates as each side kicked off their 2018/19 Premier League campaigns.

Lineups

Emery’s first competitive eleven in charge of Arsenal featured youngster Mattéo Guendouzi, who had signed from FC Lorient in the summer instead of the club’s other new signing Lucas Torreira, who was most likely not fit enough to participate. Maitland-Niles also featured at left-back due to the unavailability of Monreal and Kolašinac.

Guardiola had a mixed, but nonetheless very strong, bag of players to put out. The likes De Bruyne and Kompany were still getting back up to speed following the World Cup whereas others were further ahead in their pre-season progress.

Arsenal attempting to build from deep

From the start, Arsenal looked to build from inside their own box, however, the issue was that the players they had weren’t best-equipped to do so.

Čech always looked quite stiff with the ball at his feet, whilst Sokratis and Mustafi rarely offered much in the way of line-breaking passes. Guendouzi showed some good control with the ball and an ability to resist pressure but that was not the case with Xhaka. The Swiss seemed nervous whenever he received under any kind of pressure. This often meant his first touch was never out from under his feet properly and thus resulted in him trying to hold onto the ball rather than being able to get his head up and play the next forward pass.

Arsenal managed to maintain control of the ball for a good period of the game where we got to see Man City’s 4-4-2 defensive shape. Presumably this was with the intention to press almost entirely man-for-man against Emery’s 4-2-3-1. Fernandinho and Gündoğan were the double pivot that pushed right up against Xhaka and Guendouzi whenever the pair were looking to receive inside from a wide position. And, as a way of trying to prevent passes into the dropping wide attackers (Özil and Mkhitaryan), the respective full-backs (Mendy and Walker) would press right up against them inside when the ball was with one of Arsenal’s deepest players.

The home side never managed to create any openings of note when playing out from deep and often resorted to hopeful long balls that were easily recovered by the visitors but that’s not to say they didn’t cause City’s defence any problems whatsoever. There were a few occasions when Özil found time and space with the ball on the right side due to Sterling not tracking back with Mendy, meaning the German had time to pick plenty of passes. Unfortunately for Arsenal, a lot of his final passes were wayward meaning they failed to capitalise on the good openings they had managed to create. At the same time, Mkhitaryan was also subject to some of the blame as he was easily shut out when receiving in relatively tight spaces. He found himself in the sort of positions Lacazette would’ve dealt much better with.

City’s 3-5-2 and their use of overlaps

As for City’s time with the ball, their shape wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. As could be seen in pre-season and in the Community Shield last week, Guardiola had been trialling a new 3-5-2 system with his players. Throughout the match, the set attacking movements off the ball caused Arsenal numerous problems that they often failed to cope with.

Kyle Walker was the extra man to drop in and create a back-three, as he did for England, however, the more interesting aspect of the structure was that it saw Benjamin Mendy move from left back into central midfield. When play moved from right to left, Mendy would make the move inside onto the blind-side of the nearby midfielder. This was an attempt to create the right positional balance structurally, as well as to narrow Arsenal’s midfield shape and to afford more time and space for Sterling, who essentially occupied the wing-back position for most of the match.

A point could also be made of the fact that Özil was likely to defend down this side, so the aim with the positional rotations that ensued might’ve been to partially target Özil’s lack of defensive intensity.

In a very similar fashion to the left side, Mahrez on the right had the same task as Sterling – to patrol the flank. Contrary to the use of winger’s in the 4-3-3 system, Guardiola used the two as inverted wingers.

In this system, Guardiola managed to create numerous situations where Sterling and Mahrez could receive in acres of space so that they could put to use their top one-vs-one abilities. What afforded the two wide players so much time and space was the movement of the surrounding attackers, most notably Bernardo Silva. Although Arsenal’s shape was rather narrow by choice, Silva – who played at the head of the diamond – could be seen drifting towards the right half-space, away from the blind-side of his marker (Xhaka), where he could then pin back Maitland-Niles, thus allowing Mahrez to receive un-pressured.

From that point, either winger would then drive with the ball inside, towards the defensive line, looking to push the Arsenal backline deeper into their own half. What followed in tandem with these ball runs were the aggressive overlaps from Mendy and Walker. The two full-backs moved towards the flanks as a way of both exploiting the space now left behind as well as aiming to restore the positional structure. The starting position and the momentum both players gathered having started their runs from so deep made them nearly impossible to cope with, especially once either Sterling or Mahrez had managed to isolate the opposing full-back. Resultantly, this gave the two defenders room to make cutbacks into the box.

Arsenal’s narrow 4-3-3 defensive shape

As I alluded to earlier, City did a good job of keeping Arsenal’s defensive shape very narrow, but Emery’s men also played a part in this themselves. Emery set out to have a flat front three of Mkhitaryan, Ramsey and Aubameyang that remained very narrow so to cover the blind-sided options in City’s centre of midfield.

The trio would sit off City’s back-three and only press against certain triggers. For instance, Aubameyang’s cue to press was when a pass came into Laporte, at which point the centre-back would be forced to play back to Stones where Ramsey would then step up and it would work like a chain reaction. The problem was that, in those situations, the chain reactions were never enough to prevent the wall passes into Fernandinho which easily broke down Arsenal’s press. The main problem being that the drop-in movements towards the ball from Gündoğan were so never stopped meaning he had an easy lay-off into the now unmarked Fernandinho who could then look to play forward and wide.

Arsenal’s high press did work on some occasions but it was on those occasions which highlighted the negatives of Mendy playing inside. When placed under severe pressure centrally, his close control and ability to get it house of feet, or lack thereof, meant he could be more easily dispossessed.

The major issues for Arsenal in their narrow defensive shape were that they never aggressively attacked the wide receivers enough to force an issue and disrupt the away side’s possession patterns. Often caught being too wary of how City might be able to exploit the channels, had the full-backs stepped out, it caused more damage sticking to their own approach as City easily established greater control of the ball inside the final third.

2nd half

Aside from some personnel changes and drops in the intensity of the match, it was much of the same in the second half but at a more jaded pace. City had clearly aimed to slow things down and it almost worked against them as it riled up the crowd and encouraged the home side to push for an equaliser. That bubble burst soon enough but not before substitute Lacazette, who had looked sharp since coming on, was involved in a dangerous three-vs-two attack following a high turnover. Mistakenly, he opted to go for goal himself and his shot was skewed wide. City then found themselves on the end of two big chances, the second being Bernardo Silva’s crucial goal to seal the away win.

It never felt like either side reached first gear – Arsenal were unable to; City simply didn’t need to. The openings were there for the Gunners but the final ball was not. In the end, a thoroughly deserved victory for Guardiola’s men sees them keep up the pace with the other big sides whilst Emery’s Arsenal will look to bounce back at Stamford Bridge next Saturday.

Thanks for reading, find me here.