How do you beat Manchester City? It’s a question football has been trying and largely failing to answer for six years. The two best options seem to be to wait for some traumatic external event to disrupt the season and scramble everybody’s minds, or hope that Pep Guardiola becomes so obsessed by the possibility of being counterattacked that he does something eccentric with his formation (although that tends to work best in Europe). Or you could just wait for Rodri to be unavailable.
Rodri has not played in any of City’s past three defeats (and he didn’t start the 2-0 defeat at Southampton that saw them eliminated from last season’s Carabao Cup). In part, that’s because he is a supremely gifted player; any team would be weaker without him. But it’s also because of what Rodri represents: he offers significant protection against the counterattack because of his remarkable capacity to read the game and almost preternatural anticipation. That not only gives City security but also helps prevent Guardiola from fretting about transitions and having one of his bouts of overthinking.
Still, counterattacks remain the most effective way to upset City, as Loïs Openda demonstrated with his goal for RB Leipzig on Wednesday. Antonio Conte seemed furious about the suggestion that Tottenham had used counterattacks to beat City last season at home, but then Conte seemed furious about a lot of things.
Perhaps some technical quibble can be raised about precise terminology but Spurs won that game with 35% possession; they sat deep, absorbed pressure and attacked on the break. Brentford were the only team to beat City twice last season: they did so with 25% possession away and 32% at home. Last weekend Wolves beat City with 32% possession.
Going into the bunker, though, is not enough: there must also be an attacking threat, ideally initiated by somebody who can carry the ball in wide areas. Pedro Neto’s runs advanced the ball an astonishing 215 metres last Saturday, Dejan Kulusevski’s 130m when Spurs beat City last February and Rico Henry’s 112m in Brentford’s win at the Etihad.
Are Arsenal capable of playing like that? The last game they had less than 40% possession was their win at Brighton on New Year’s Eve last year. Bukayo Saka and Oleksandr Zinchenko are the two players most likely to offer them ball-carrying ability in wide areas. But against City in the Community Shield this season, Arsenal attempted to match City, so that in the end they had 45% possession, in a game they won on penalties after an added-time equaliser.
Sitting deep and allowing the opponent the ball is how teams have looked to take on Guardiola sides for at least a decade, since having only a third of possession stopped being seen as demeaning. However, the notion that Guardiola sides can be reduced to endless sterile passing at a safe distance from goal is outdated although that did
happen to an extent at Molineux where City looked unusually short of imagination, perhaps missing the creativity of Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva and the purposefulness of Rodri, while Jack Grealish was a second-half substitute.
City may not have the sense of ideological purity of Guardiola’s Barcelona – although they, of course, had Lionel Messi to add a dash of the unexpected – but instead they have a far wider array of options to break down opponents.
Grealish and Jérémy Doku, like Riyad Mahrez, are skilful and direct wide forwards whose dribbling ability makes it harder for teams to hold City at arm’s length. At the same time, Erling Haaland is a complete centre-forward, decent in the air and capable, when the mood is with him, of battering shots in from almost anywhere. But he is probably at his best chasing balls played in behind the opposing defensive line, which demands earlier passes and a more direct style of play.
That range of approaches means it’s probably harder for opponents to go into their shells. Newcastle’s approach in the Carabao Cup – and allowance, of course, has to be made for the fact that both teams fielded weakened lineups – is perhaps the best guide for Arsenal.
In the first half, Newcastle seemed oddly passive, as they had in losing in the league at the Etihad in August. Whether that was by design or not, they successfully restricted City, before hitting them hard with a ferocious press in the opening minutes of the second half. City looked rattled, Newcastle scored, and the champions never regained composure.
Arsenal certainly have the capacity to press City and it may be the best way to do that is in short, intense bursts before retreating and trying to restrict space behind their own defensive line for Haaland to exploit.
But much depends on who is available: almost from the moment it became apparent Rodri would miss out, Arsenal began to lose players as well. It appears Declan Rice’s back injury was temporary and he was able to start both subsequent games but Saka, who has taken a series of knocks this season, is a doubt following limping out of the defeat to Lens after feeling a tightness in his hamstring, while Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard, also players with the capacity to carry the ball in wide areas, are major doubts with thigh injuries.
Arsenal faced City three times last season and, other than the first half at the Emirates, when Saka repeatedly got the better of Silva, struggling in the unfamiliar role of left-back, they barely troubled them. The Community Shield, unreliable augury that it often is, suggested they had closed the gap. With City Rodri-less, this should be an opportunity for Arsenal.
Their own absentees will make it harder, and John Stones could be back for City, but if Arsenal cannot trouble the champions there is a very real possibility that, despite successive defeats for Guardiola’s side, this season becomes another procession.
