Guardiola and Arteta opt for muscle
Pep Guardiola becomes ever more the traditional English football man. As his Manchester City stay extends to 10 seasons, he relies ever more on the principle that big players can win big matches. Hence his late-career conversion to employing a wrecking ball striker in the peerless Erling Haaland. As for his former assistant Mikel Arteta, Arsenal looked stuck in the weeds of over-thinking. Benching Eberechi Eze, who tortured City in last season’s FA Cup final, till half-time was just too clever by half. Arteta’s recent talk of using rugby strategy, of thinking of substitutes as finishers, in the style of South Africa’s “bomb squad” is all very well. Even if the substitute Gabriel Martinelli scored the equaliser from an Eze long ball, a talented, capable squad playing one-dimensional fare is far less explicable. This is not the City who previously dominated the Premier League. They showed their own limitations, particularly once Haaland, brilliant as attacker and defender, was removed. John Brewin
