It is a word Mikel Arteta has now used in public, but only to emphasise what he has been saying to his Arsenal players behind the training ground fences.
“Perfection.”
To beat this Manchester City, Arteta has asserted to his squad, Arsenal have to be perfect in everything they do. That’s no exaggeration for motivation. He means it about every step, every run, every pass. It might be asking a lot given Arsenal’s last three games, but this is what they have been building towards for months.
Pep Guardiola’s ultra-focused players have been playing to these demands for much longer. That’s despite the Catalan on Tuesday insisting “perfection doesn’t exist in football”. That’s saying something given he has presided over a 100-point season, a 98-point season and a domestic treble, all before currently going for the grandest 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 a fair expectation, that will be 91 points. Arsenal would require 92.
As daunting as that is for a club who haven’t come within even 10 points of that in over a decade, and have clearly been feeling some of the expectation, there is that unmistakable air around Arsenal’s Colney base. This is what it’s all about. This is what has been denied Arsenal for too long, that gripping tension that is actually one of the great attractions of the game.
More seasoned figures have been talking about how it compares to 2003, 2002, 1998 and - of course - 1989. Most can just recall “the nerves”.
In 1998, Ian Wright recently said, there was that concentrated silence on the trip to Old Trafford for the Marc Overmars victory.
This City are past that point, especially as they go for a third title in a row, but there are still so many there who remember 2011-12. A little like Arsenal now, it was a young team who hadn’t won a title together, and were so anxiously attempting to end a long club wait.
That isn’t the only call-back. Arteta talked about his Arsenal goal that beat City in that run-in, which made them the last Premier League leaders at this stage of the season to fail to win three consecutive games.
Until now.
City got out of that by recalling Carlos Tevez and immediately roaring into a six-game winning run that involved defeating Manchester United 1-0 at home. It was probably the last time the title showdown was so decisive since it definitively swung the initiative City’s way. Also, perhaps, until now.
Premier League showdowns when the title has been in the balance
Season |
Result |
Games left |
Did winner of game win title? |
|---|---|---|---|
1992-93 |
Manchester United 1-1 Aston Villa |
9 |
- |
1993-94 |
Blackburn 2-0 Manchester United |
7 |
No |
1995-96 |
Newcastle 0-1 Manchester United |
9 |
Yes |
1997-98 |
Manchester United 0-1 Arsenal |
7 |
Yes |
1998-99 |
Manchester United 1-1 Arsenal |
12 |
- |
2001-02 |
Manchester United 0-1 Arsenal |
1 |
Yes |
2002-03 |
Arsenal 2-2 Manchester United |
4 |
- |
2005-06 |
Chelsea 3-0 Manchester United |
2 |
Yes |
2007-08 |
Chelsea 2-1 Manchester United |
2 |
No |
2008-09 |
Manchester United 1-4 Liverpool |
10 |
No |
2010-11 |
Manchester United 1-2 Chelsea |
5 |
Yes |
2011-12 |
Manchester City 1-0 Manchester United |
2 |
Yes |
2013-14 |
Liverpool 3-2 Manchester City |
4 |
No |
2018-19 |
Manchester City 2-1 Liverpool |
17 |
Yes |
2021-22 |
Manchester City 2-2 Liverpool |
7 |
- |
The 2013-14 season did see Liverpool beat City 3-2 in a raucous game that came even later, with just four matches to go, but Brendan Rodgers’s equally inexperienced side still had some hugely testing games. It’s why both Arteta and Guardiola are right to point to the fixtures to come after this in this campaign.
“It is really important, not decisive because there are too many tough games for both sides,” Guardiola said.
That is why such showdowns have rarely been so exacting unless, as in 2002 and 2006, it literally confirms the title. The game has nevertheless gone under gradual and drastic evolution from that period. As Premier League income has gone up, financial gaps have increased, and points thresholds have too. Champion sides are capable of going on longer runs. This was the reason the competition essentially missed a “Premier League Super Bowl” - something those in commerce want more of - for half a decade from 2014.
It's also the reason this is seen as the equivalent of a decider, at least from Arsenal’s point of view. If they fail to win, and decisively hand City the advantage, the likelihood of the champions slipping is low.
It isn’t over if Arsenal draw, of course, but it is asking an awful lot.
That is what a game that has been so built up really comes down to. This is why so much of the focus has been on Arsenal and Arteta’s perfection.
They have to go from the worst run any Premier League leader has had at this stage of the competition since 1992-93, to what would probably be the outstanding result in the club’s modern history, and probably the most difficult challenge in football right now. They have to beat City away. They have to take down a machine.
Premier League title wobbles
Season |
Club |
Results |
Game to go after run |
Title? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2022-23 |
Arsenal |
Draw, draw, draw |
6 |
? |
2011-12 |
Manchester City |
Draw, draw, loss |
6 |
Yes |
1997-98 |
Manchester United |
Loss, draw, loss |
7 |
No |
1995-96 |
Newcastle United |
Loss, draw, loss |
10 |
No |
1992-93 |
Manchester United |
Loss, draw, draw |
7 |
Yes |
Such a perspective is shaped by Guardiola’s side scoring an average of almost four goals in each of their last eight games, with Erling Haaland hitting 14 of their 31. Arsenal have meanwhile missed two of their regular backline, which has meant the levy has broken there, too. Aaron Ramsdale’s defence have conceded seven goals in three games, three to an attack as limited as Southampton’s. They have badly missed Willian Saliba, who may well have confirmed himself as their most important player. Arsenal have after all adapted without almost everyone else, including Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko. Without Saliba, they have had Michail Antonio targeting and terrorising Rob Holding. What will Haaland do?
The direction of travel only seems to be going one way. It isn’t that hard to see City actually going and destroying Arsenal, in one of those wins that becomes representative of their wider power and greater achievements.
The other side - and what makes sport so great, regardless of any wider issues - is that such demanding circumstances can bring something deeper and greater out of those involved. This is how Alex Manninger became a title hero in 1997-98, how a figure as sure of himself as Roberto Mancini could row back and recall Tevez in 2011-12.
Guardiola has no need for such measures now. While he does have some significant decisions, like who will replace Nathan Ake at left-back, the structure is in place. The “box defence” that is reminiscent of his Barcelona 1992 team has afforded City a new level that they now just need to maintain.
Arteta meanwhile has to get Arsenal back to a previous level and probably go well beyond that. It is why so much of the focus has been on his team, to go with the fact it is a young side taking on a greater force; an apprentice coach needing to go and defeat his former master.
These are powerful narrative themes, which is all the more ironic given the knife-edge the Premier League itself is on.
As captivating as this title race has been, to go with 2018-19 and 2021-22, an increasing view within the game’s higher circles is that it “needs an Arsenal win”.
“It needs a new champion,” one source said, “it needs something different.”
An Arsenal victory would potentially make it three champions in four years, furthering the great sales pitch that this is the most competitive league in the world.
A City win would go someway to sealing a fifth league in six years, bringing the Premier League closer to Ligue 1 levels. That it would be a historic third title in a row and the first part of a potential treble would only strengthen the argument about a growing problem. Some around Liverpool have quipped that it is good for more of the game to realise just how difficult it is to compete with City.
City’s response to that came after their last treble.
“I will not accept this club to be used as a diversionary tactic on poor investment decisions from other clubs,” chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak said in 2019.
“People make decisions, they’ve got to live by them. We’ve managed ourselves well and we will be judged by facts and facts alone.”
The fact of this game is that Arteta has to work on a similar knife-edge. A few competing themes and views have influenced his preparation, too.
Most conspicuously, the Champions League quarter-final showcased how Bayern Munich got at City with pace on the wings. Arsenal have plenty of that, especially in Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka. They might almost be the perfectly constructed side for that approach.
The greater question for Arteta is how he sets that up. Does he try it by taking the game to City and seeking for Arsenal to control every aspect of the game, as in that February defeat, or does he go deep and draw Guardiola’s side out to try and hit them on the counter. The latter would better suit Holding’s game, although there is the possibility that Arteta brings Ben White inside.
One suggestion raised has been that Arsenal go hyper intense early on to force an early goal and then sit back to draw City out for more space behind. The issue there is the blind luck of football maybe not bringing that early goal.
And these are all just the broader approaches of the tactics. There are then the more intricate details, that these two managers as much as anybody else are so intensively concerned with. Guardiola has willingly spent hours before huge games talking about the difference of single metres in individual players’ positioning.
The temptation at this point is to talk about the finest of margins, and that may well prove the case. Among the stakes with this game, however, is that it could create the widest of margins: City winning well, and winning the league by a considerable gap.
That is the way it’s trending right now. That is what Arsenal have to divert. It’s why it’s so big, as was put to Arteta on the eve of the game.
“You have to live the day,” the Arsenal manager said. “After City, if we win, the biggest one for sure will be the next one will be that.”
To return to that word Arteta has been using, it might see perfection alright. This showdown could serve as the perfect set-up for the run-in, or the perfect exhibition of the eventual champions.
