Mikel Arteta has Arsenal playing like champions, Pep Guardiola’s system at Manchester City is fraying and Julen Lopetegui offered Wolves hope in defeat to Manchester United. Here’s five lessons we learned from the past Premier League weekend:
1) Arsenal & Man City contrast puts Arteta’s side in charge
As a seven-point gap opens at the top of the Premier League table analysis of the performances of Arsenal and Manchester City reveals that Mikel Arteta’s side really are the favourites to lift the trophy. It might feel too early to call it and plenty can still go wrong, but it is time for Arsenal supporters to believe – not just because of their team’s quality but the structural weaknesses engulfing City.
Arsenal have a fluidity, variety, and swirling creativity that seems to open up every team in their path. Brighton are accommodating opponents thanks to Roberto de Zerbi’s all-out attacking system, which inevitably means there is room for any team willing to dribble vertically through the lines, and yet this was still a potential banana-skin game that Arsenal easily overcame.
As for Man City, Erling Haaland is becoming a problem. His lack of movement makes it easier for opponents to begin counter-attacks from deep, but more importantly having a static striker means Man City’s creative players are forced to roam closer to him, in turn rupturing the path from back to front. Pep Guardiola’s side have slowed down, become stuttered against a deep-lying defence like Everton’s.
Over the next few weeks Arsenal and Man City play a combined seven matches against the ‘Big Six’ plus Newcastle, before their head-to-head on February 15. It is a definitive period of the season. On current form, Arsenal will pull further clear by then.
2) Emery wing-back plan allows Kamara and Luiz to shine
The headline from Aston Villa’s 2-0 victory was just how awful Tottenham Hotspur performed, and indeed this was yet another example of Antonio Conte’s conservatism looking ill-suited to a ‘Big Six’ side. Spurs always look lifeless without Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur breaking the lines and it is arguably time we ask serious questions about whether Conte can work at Tottenham.
But Villa deserve praise for their performance. Unai Emery is a brilliant tactician when it comes to devising detailed plans to negate the opposition and his key trick here was to deploy John McGinn and Emiliano Buendia in unusual positions as wide midfielders, as both players dropped into a back six when Spurs entered the final third. It completely nullified the Spurs wing-backs, and with so little creativity in the centre of the pitch that was enough to blunt Conte’s side.
McGinn’s positioning was particularly strange, the Scotland international playing high on the right wing when Villa had the ball, presumably in order to pin Ivan Perisic. It gave Boubacar Kamara and Douglas Luiz extra time on the ball, and the latter was pivotal in both Villa goals. Already Emery has found a midfield partnership with the composure and technical ability to elevate Villa to a whole new level.
3) Clumsy Everton shape spared by Guardiola reacting too late
Everton didn’t really deserve a point from this game. Frank Lampard’s 5-3-2 made sense in theory, with Alex Iwobi expected to break out of that midfield three to give Everton a three-pronged counter-attack, but the visitors didn’t appear to have an organised plan for how to ensure this stopped them from being overwhelmed centrally. Man City should have been able to capitalise on the weirdness of a 5-2-3 more often than they did.
For a long time it looked as though Erling Haaland’s 24th minute strike would be the winner, and it had come by exploiting Everton’s shape. Idrissa Gueye and Amadou Onana were left to cover the entire width of the pitch as Lampard’s back five refused to step out to help, and as both were drawn to Kevin de Bruyne ridiculous amounts of space opened up:
A brilliant Demarai Gray strike gave Everton a fortunate point, because had Man City pushed on after the opener they could easily have put the game to bed. Instead, they allowed it to drift.
4) Lopetegui ideas take hold before poor tactical switch
Marcus Rashford’s winner at Molineaux was entirely of Wolves’ own making. Julen Lopetegui had switched to a back three just three minutes earlier, and as soon as he made the call it looked like a mistake; Wolves had done a very good job at pushing Man Utd back and confronting them as equals, only for such a defensive switch to alarm the players and see them sit right back. Falling over themselves in their own penalty area, Wolves quickly collapsed.
But overall Wolves supporters should be pleased with the progress being made. For long stretches of this game they looked like a Lopetegui side, with possession being recycled at every opportunity as the Wolves players followed the mantra of keeping the ball at all costs, even if that meant going backwards and starting the move from scratch.
They also counter-pressed aggressively in the United third, while the full-backs Hugo Bueno and Nelson Semedo bombed forward at every opportunity, with Bueno helping to create several half-chances by winning his battle with Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
5) Jones’s formation change a worrying sign
Nathan Jones has just had six weeks to train his players in a particular style, and yet it only took one defeat – Boxing Day’s 3-1 loss to Brighton – for him to abandon the 4-2-3-1 for a 3-4-2-1 formation, only to reinstate it at half-time of Saturday’s defeat to Fulham. Throwing out his plans that quickly, and deploying a rapid-fire trial-and-error approach, is an alarming thing to see in a new manager.
The change to a back three was presumably a response to Southampton’s dreadful defensive record, yet taking a player out of central midfield only made Saints more blunt and directionless. They lack quality at both ends of the pitch and, on a five-game losing run, increasingly look destined for relegation.
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