Arsenal face tactical dilemma as City press reshapes title race

At half-time in the Carabao Cup final, Arsenal’s hopes of a quadruple remained strong. They were unbeaten in 14 matches, with 11 wins in that run. They were drawing 0-0 against Manchester City and it was reasonable to think that, if the second half continued as the first had, they would eventually find a winner, quite possibly from a corner.

They had drawn a Championship side in the sixth round of the FA Cup and a Portuguese side in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. They held a nine-point lead in the Premier League. The season was shaping up to be the greatest in Arsenal’s history.

That was four weeks ago. There remains a possibility of a Premier League and Champions League double, which would still be a remarkable achievement, but the mood is now very different. This season could yet become the most disappointing in Arsenal’s history, if only because they came so close to winning everything.

Something changed at half-time at Wembley. Pep Guardiola stopped his City side pressing so high. Arsenal’s defenders suddenly had time on the ball, but only each other to pass to. Jérémy Doku, Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Antoine Semenyo formed a sky-blue line across the pitch, blocking easy passes into midfield. Bernardo Silva and Matheus Nunes sat a little deeper, ready to pressure any ball played to the full-backs. Rodri controlled the game from the centre. Arsenal could not play through it. City kept regaining possession and, with Nico O’Reilly encouraged to surge forward and move infield from left-back to create an extra attacker, Arsenal began to wobble.

The expectation had been that, with David Raya back in goal instead of Kepa Arrizabalaga, Arsenal would play out more easily. His long-passing ability was supposed to help bypass the press by finding an advancing full-back or wide player. But when Bournemouth adopted a similar pressing approach last Saturday, again with Raya in goal, the result was much the same. Arsenal became bogged down and were forced back to their goalkeeper so often that Raya attempted 59 passes. Only Declan Rice, with 60, had more for Arsenal.

Other sides might simply go long to evade the press, as Guardiola once did at Bayern Munich when he deployed Javi Martínez at centre-forward in a German Cup game against Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund. But that requires a target man who can win flick-ons for runners beyond him or hold the ball up.

Viktor Gyökeres is not effective enough in that side of the game, either in using his body to shield the ball or in controlling passes played towards him at awkward paces or heights. Playing long to him often amounts to giving possession away.

That may explain why Gyökeres was taken off after 56 minutes against Sporting on Wednesday, allowing Kai Havertz time to reacquaint himself with the centre-forward role. For the first 23 of those minutes, he played with Eberechi Eze operating as a central creator. Eze came off the bench against Bournemouth after almost a month out and, depending on fitness, he could be the player to restore some spark to an Arsenal attack that has looked pedestrian arguably since the win over Tottenham at the end of February.

Arsenal used a 4-2-3-1 in the Carabao Cup final, with Gyökeres at centre-forward and Havertz in the Eze role. That is clearly a risk and Arteta would almost certainly prefer the greater security of Martin Ødegaard in a three-man midfield alongside Martín Zubimendi and Rice. But Ødegaard’s fitness is uncertain and, besides, if Arsenal encounter the same problems breaking the press as they did in the Carabao Cup final, adding another passer in midfield may have limited value.

Although this City side is still some way from the classic Guardiola model, it feels as though Arsenal may be better served by the old-fashioned approach to facing one of his teams: sitting deep, absorbing pressure and then breaking quickly. That would be the complete inverse of the league game between the sides at the Emirates in September, when City had only 33% of the ball, a record low under Guardiola by a considerable margin.

Keeping City out is the priority. In the current context and on recent form, a 0-0 draw would be a very good result for Arsenal, although in-game developments could alter that judgment. A clean sheet would mean Arsenal need only make one corner count, the phase of play in which they remain global leaders.

Since that game in September, City have become more focused on possession. Phil Foden and Tijjani Reijnders have dropped out of the side, while Semenyo and Cherki have become more prominent. Cherki in particular appears an unlikely Guardiola player. The City manager has acknowledged the tension between his instinct for control and the improvisational nature of the 22-year-old, while also appreciating that City’s second goal against Chelsea last week would not have happened if Cherki had chosen the safe pass.

One of the recent fascinations of Guardiola is how he has embraced tension. His experimentation with Jack Grealish has continued through Doku and now Cherki, with Guardiola seemingly willing to grant each new improviser more freedom. Grealish, despite his later loss of form, was a key figure in the treble season before appearing to become trapped in second-guessing.

It is now Arteta who appears the greater stickler for control, and that itself may make it harder for Arsenal to emerge from their current self-doubt. Instinct has been subordinated to the blueprint, which may make it harder for individuality, and the survival reflex that allows a player to seize a game, to assert itself.

Football is a game of almost infinite interlocking balances. Plan, or allow players to improvise? Arteta has elevated Arsenal through meticulous preparation and by following the data, but if the strategy is built on safe passes and the opposition closes every option, the central question remains: what do you do? Resolving that is the key to Sunday’s clash and, probably, the title.