Among the clubs challenging perennial champions Manchester City, neither Liverpool, Chelsea nor Spurs feature in the top four. A season disrupted by the unwanted pregnancy of a winter World Cup has thrown Arsenal and Manchester United, hitherto top six padding, plus newly minted Newcastle into City’s orbit. Arsenal’s giddy rise in particular prompted Pep Guardiola into a show of anxiety about the “almost perfect” sequence required to overhaul them in the second half of the season.
Guardiola is, amongst other things, a master flatterer, his soaring commentary on the scale of Arsenal’s rapid ascent intended somehow to lower the guard of former disciple Mikel Arteta. He needn’t bother. The jarring confrontation with Newcastle at the Emirates on Tuesday was shakedown enough for Arteta, who saw his team cancelled out by a team in full military dress, drilled by a coach with a fine appreciation of battlefield strategy.
To prosper against good teams determined to stop them, Arsenal need a deeper pool of talent. Arteta saw his most influential player, skipper Martin Odegaard, subdued by Newcastle’s guerrilla tactics, marshalled superbly by the combative Bruno Guimaraes at the base of midfield and Sven Botman at centre back. Though Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli stretched Newcastle to the point of fracture, the breach never came. Hence Arsenal’s keen pursuit of attacking ballast in the shape of Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk and Joao Felix on loan from Atletico Madrid.
Arsenal’s draw with Newcastle offset City’s failure to eviscerate Everton on New Year’s Eve, a result which prompted more Quixotic commentary from Guardiola. The better than expected response on the immediate return to action was quickly revised down to disappointment over the condition of some, including Kalvin Philips, deemed to be carrying too much timber.
City continue to overwhelm opponents, Everton scoring with their only shot on target, one of just two strikes mustered from 26 percent possession. Mind you, it was a decent effort from Demarai Gray. A win against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge would surprise none and reduce the deficit to Arsenal to five points, a trifling amount with 21 games still to play, including two against the league leaders.
It was at Stamford Bridge against a better Chelsea team than they face on Thursday that City laid out their credentials en route to their record breaking championship victory of 2018, Kevin De Bruyne tipping the scales in an intense contest. City repeated the dose twice in the Premier League at either end of 2021, again taking the title in both seasons. And now, reconfigured around a far from false nine, City have added a more menacing dimension.
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Amusingly Guardiola talks up the challengers as if they are the ones having to deal with Erling Haaland. The Norse axe has already fallen 21 times in 15 Premier League appearances. Were Haaland leading the Arsenal line Guardiola’s concerns might have substance. Even without Haaland City would be the pick in the eyes of most observers. De Bruyne appears to be taking out his World Cup frustrations on every team he meets. Bernardo Silva wants out but you would never know it.
Phil Foden, Ilkay Gundogan, Joao Cancelo, Kyle Walker, Julian Alvarez and Phillips, could not get a start against Everton. Aymeric Laporte and Ruben Diaz were not even in the squad. City could field two teams good enough to finish in the top four, a power equation that Chelsea, already ten points adrift of the Champions League places, must solve to ease the sleep disruption of Graham Potter.
Across Manchester, another Guardiola devotee, Erik ten Hag is restoring the idea of what it is to be Manchester United. The most impressive aspect of the 3-0 dispatch of Bournemouth on Tuesday, United’s fourth consecutive Premier League victory, was how little it impressed Ten Hag. His brutalist English gives fullest expression to his attitude and approach. Like the best teachers he makes clear his aims and objectives, lays out a route map to achieving them and proceeds without fear or favour.
He is, of course, working with a squad shorn of Cristiano Ronaldo and enhanced by Casemiro, Lisandro Martinez and the revived Marcus Rashford. Restoring Rashford to something like his best might just be Ten Hag’s greatest achievement and a reason to invest in his authority.
United’s rise has been made possible in part by the collective turmoil at Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs. The sacking of Thomas Tuchel has exacerbated the post Roman Abramovich disturbance at Chelsea, where Potter has been left to make sense of a transfer policy that wrongly addressed defence instead of attack. Jurgen Klopp is also dealing with a shifting ownership dynamic at Liverpool and recruitment that saturated attack whilst ignoring midfield.
At least Chelsea and Liverpool spent money. Spurs are doing, well, a Spurs, with chairman Daniel Levy seemingly once more engaged in the suffocation of world-class coaching talent, Antonio Conte screaming in vain for creative reinforcements whilst being blamed for the inevitable collapse.
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