The last game Arsenal played, at the Emirates on December 15 2019, before Mikel Arteta joined them as manager was against Manchester City and it was strange because the Spaniard was on the City bench that day. Arteta was assistant to Pep Guardiola on the Sunday and the manager of Arsenal five days later.
Arsenal lost that game 3-0. In fact they trailed by three inside 40 minutes and as he met the media on his introduction as Arsenal manager on December 20, Arteta talked about much of what was wrong.
‘I saw what was going on and I felt sad,’ said Arteta of his view from the opposite dugout.
'It wasn't only the performance, it was the atmosphere and energy that I perceived. That worried me a little bit.
'I understand that the fans are used to success and fighting for things and at the moment it's difficult for them to swallow the situation.
Keeping hold of Mikel Arteta can help Arsenal in their quest to overtake Manchester City
Arteta was concerned by the Emirates atmosphere as Arsenal lost to Man City in late 2019
‘So let me help.'
Almost five years on, Arteta has done his bit. Arsenal are a football club reborn and reinvented, on the pitch and off. And on the day it was revealed that the Spaniard has signed a new contract designed to keep him in north London for another three years, it feels appropriate to say that Arsenal now have City in their sights in both the short and the long term.
Arteta and his young, clever and athletic team have been on City’s shoulder for a while now. Two seasons ago, Guardiola and his standard-bearing side beat Arsenal to the Premier League title by five points. Last year it was just two with Arsenal taking a win and a draw from the games between the rivals.
So Arsenal are there already. Two points is nothing. A freak goal, a poor decision, a badly-timed injury. Any of those things can do that.
What is so important about Arteta’s decision to hang around is that Arsenal are now perfectly positioned to take advantage over a longer period of the upheaval and change that may be about to visit City 200 miles to the north.
On Monday the hearing into City’s 115 Premier League counts of alleged financial wrong-doing will begin in London and nobody knows how and where that will end. If it goes against them, relegation has been talked about as a punishment. For now, that’s speculative.
Of real and more tangible relevance is that Guardiola’s own future remains uncertain regardless. The great Catalan has a contract that expires next June. So far the messages regarding the chances of him extending it have been mixed.
For sure, Guardiola could leave the Etihad after what would be his ninth season. And if he does there is a very real possibility – understood and accepted by those inside the home of the current champions – that football director Txiki Begiristain and chief executive Ferran Soriano could go with him.
Arteta and his young, clever and athletic team have been on City’s shoulder for a while now
Arteta's Arsenal side mirror City somewhat in terms of their stability, vision and strategy
There is a concern that Pep Guardiola could leave City after this season along with football director Txiki Begiristain (R) and chief executive Ferran Soriano (L)
Begiristain and Soriano actually arrived at City from Barcelona four years in advance of Guardiola but on the understanding that their great friend would eventually follow. As a trio, they have subsequently built one of English football’s great dynasties. Pretty much everything that happens at City has a Catalan stamp on it.
And while nobody expects City to fall apart if and when the three men leave, such a day would inevitably present challenges and the champions are acutely aware of it. As we stand today, with Arteta now committed and locked in, Arsenal are the best placed club to take advantage of any change in their modern rival’s circumstances.
Arsenal mirror City a little in their modern form. It was what Arteta always wanted when he came home to the club for which he once played. Arteta wanted some of City’s stability and vision and strategy. He wanted some of their football culture too. Working closely in particular with football director Edu, Arteta has brought all of that and more to the doors of this great London sporting institution.
City didn’t have to show any of the patience that Arsenal have while Arteta’s reboot has taken place. Guardiola found everything in the Premier League – styles of play, scheduling, refereeing – something of a puzzle in his first season back in 2016/17 and his team finished third in the Premier League and fell at the first knock out stage of the Champions League. City were ready for Guardiola, though. The foundations had already been set in place by Begiristain and Soriano. Guardiola’s team won the title by 19 points the next season and have not looked back.
Arsenal have had to wait a good deal longer than that and are not there yet. Arteta’s only trophy remains the FA Cup lifted at the end of that first half-season in charge. At some point that will have to change. Nevertheless, the nerve held by Arsenal as Arteta struggled to turn that vast red and white tanker around serves as an example to others whose steadfastness so often betrays them in this most treacherous of sporting environments.
Another look back to that day at the Emirates against City in December 2019 shows only Arsenal player in the starting eleven that can expect to play against Tottenham in the north London derby on Sunday, the Brazilian winger Gabriel Martinelli. The City team, meanwhile, contained six players who would still expect to get in Guardiola’s team tomorrow against Brentford if fit and well and available.
That illustrates the scale of Arteta’s revolution. That is the bones of it. Mesut Ozil and Pierre Emerick Aubameyang played for Arsenal that day and the club simply do not entertain such wastrels now that Arteta’s time has moved through its second phase and in to its third.
Arsenal are waiting patiently to seize any potential opportunity to overtake City
We expected Guardiola and Jose Mourinho to have the next big Premier League rivalry
Arsenal and Arteta have managed to move through the pack and worry Guardiola
Arsenal have a young team now, one that continues to be improved by smart work in the transfer market. Again there have been shades of City about their work. Recruit when you are winning and when you are strong. Do it before the need is clear and obvious to everybody else. Move quickly and quietly and smartly.
Edu closes those deals but it is Arteta’s fingerprints that lay heavy on the make-up of his squad. Had it not been for the Arsenal coach and his smarts, the last two title races would have fizzled out. Liverpool were nine points adrift in third last season while Manchester United were 14 points shy the year before.
The challenge before the Gunners now is clear. Win the first one. Take the next step. Arsenal are on a road, though, and it would be a surprise if there were too many kinks in it that they have not already anticipated.
When Guardiola arrived in Manchester eight-and-a-half years ago we expected the big rivalry to be between him and Jose Mourinho, installed that same summer at United.
We were wrong. That space was soon taken by Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. Now the world of the Premier League has shifted on its axis once again and it’s Arteta who has moved through the pack to worry his old friend.
For how long we just don’t know. For in Manchester a door may soon be about to open and Arsenal are standing neatly and patiently on the threshold. That is why this feels like not just a big day for Arsenal but also for the Premier League.