Pep Guardiola explained shelving his “horrible” first-half tactics allowed Manchester City to take command of their meeting with Arsenal and earn a 3-1 win that saw them leapfrog their opponents to the Premier League summit.
The score was all square at the interval after Bukayo Saka’s penalty cancelled out a deft opener from Kevin De Bruyne but Arsenal had held the upper hand for long periods, Bernardo Silva finding life particularly hard as a makeshift left-back. Silva moved to the right wing after the hour but Guardiola had already made some of the tweaks required to assume control.
“My tactics,” Guardiola said when asked what had frustrated him before the break. “Because I tried something new and it was horrible. [In the] second half we were more like we are.
“We struggled a lot to control it, that is why we suffered and they were much better, but in the second half we were there.”
Guardiola said a more aggressive approach set the second-half platform for Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland to score decisive goals, observing that Rúben Dias had given Martin Ødegaard less space and that Haaland’s power had been utilised more effectively. He waxed lyrical about his Norwegian striker’s display. “It was brilliant, one of the best,” he said. “We should play more that way with him. We have to be more direct, not with a long ball but with a pass.”
City have hunted Arsenal down and lead the table on goal difference, although Mikel Arteta’s team have a game in hand. Guardiola did not play down the result’s importance. “They have one game less so I consider they are top of the league,” he said. “But we could have come here a few weeks ago eight or nine points behind, and losing here it would have been almost over. Now, because of the fact they dropped points, we came here for the chance to be close. We won the game and we are there.”
A frustrated Arteta lamented that the defeat was self-inflicted, errors by Takehiro Tomiyasu and Gabriel Magalhães setting City’s first two goals in train while Eddie Nketiah missed two big headed chances. “That’s the frustration,” he said. “It’s exceptionally difficult to play at the level [City] require you to play to have a chance to win. I thought in many moments we did and we had them, but if you give three goals away the way we did and don’t put away the big chances that we had, the margin for error is almost zero.”
Arteta admitted his team, who were punished several times playing out from the back, did not adapt to City’s changes. “When mistakes happened that’s part of the risk we take,” he said. “There is a reward when understanding what we have to do. We didn’t understand well, especially in the second half when they changed their formation.”
City ultimately displayed more nous but Arteta pointed to the aberration by Tomiyasu, whose underhit backpass allowed De Bruyne to score the opener, as an example of the margins Arsenal had not negotiated.
“I don’t know if it’s experience or bad luck,” he said. “I’ve never seen Tomiyasu make that pass back in seven years and he did it today. It’s part of it and they have the quality to punish you.”
Arsenal have only won two of their last six in the league and travel to face Aston Villa, managed by Arteta’s predecessor Unai Emery, on Saturday. Arteta insisted, though, that their performance had bolstered his faith that they can beat City to the title. “I have more belief because I see a team going head to head with them,” he said. “You have to go to the next one and in three days we have another game. I have more belief in my players.”
