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When footballer Pep Guardiola was looking for a club in 2005, he spent a rainy afternoon craning his neck as Manchester City and West Bromwich Albion played a goalless draw made up largely of headed tennis.
“I’m squirming because it’s a pretty simple game,” football agent Tony Sharkey, who arranged Guardiola’s stopover in Manchester, said in a BBC documentary about the City manager earlier this year. “David James pitches him for video and he moves through midfield entirely. “
It’s the security-focused style we once knew as English football, before Guardiola’s gospel of short passes, goalkeepers gambling with the ball and opposing full-backs guided the Premier League towards tactical enlightenment. At least that’s what history says.
Guardiola has encouraged disciples such as Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, his opponent in Sunday’s clash between two big-name contenders. It will be the meeting of two football aesthetes, who need to keep the ball on the carpet at all costs.
However, this contradicts the extent to which City and Arsenal are willing to combine things with long balls when the time is right. Both have goalkeepers who excel at precise distribution and from long range, City will be without their first choice, Ederson. Haaland and Kai Havertz have wonderful strikers who offer aerial presence and the ability to play straight from A to B.
City and Arsenal are the two defenders in the Premier League, the two most compact teams from front to back. With world-class ball winners Rodri and Declan Rice patrolling the crowded central areas, it can be tricky for either team to play through the other. So why not go through it?
Sunday’s game can be decided on which team handles the long ball better, as well as the important second-ball competitions that result.
Manchester City’s two league wins over Arsenal last season were decisive and each time they discovered lasting joy. In fact, City are the biggest and most powerful team, it is Guardiola who has adapted to Arsenal.
In City’s 38 league games last season, their two games against Arsenal were in the top four by long-term pass percentage played. He highlighted City’s 3-1 win at the Emirates, with 17 per cent of passes played for a long time. Passes were played over long periods of time. City had just 36 per cent ownership that night and finished just 72. 28 per cent of their passes.
City struggled to play despite Arsenal’s press switching from a zonal 4-4-2 to an intense man-to-man technique after certain triggers. With Arsenal facing City, reserve player Ederson and Haaland had only one cross. Guardiola values possession, but he also needs his team to locate dominance where they have the advantage. On this occasion he is the player furthest from the ball.
“Erling helped us a lot because being one-on-one with them, so aggressive, the only loose player is the goalkeeper and, of course, the long balls against Saliba and Gabriel are easy,” Guardiola said after that February game.
For City’s first goal in the Emirates, Arsenal returned the ball to Ederson, who hooked a long ball with his left foot.
Haaland in a one-on-one duel with William Saliba on the midline line. The Arsenal defender won the first contact, but was under so much pressure that he could only throw the ball into the right-hand side area.
That put Takehiro Tomiyasu in a war against Jack Grealish, but despite the Arsenal full-back’s victory, he panicked and made a poor backpass.
Kevin De Bruyne came in first and made a good debut over Aaron Ramsdale. This goal shows that the danger is not over after winning the first header; It’s about managing the second ball and avoiding losing the ball in the moments of recovering the ball.
City and De Bruyne exposed Arsenal with a long ball in front of them for their first goal at the Etihad.
Playing from the back and direct play are necessarily mutually exclusive. There’s an old adage that says you have to “play long to play short,” turning the opposing defense early to come back and give players time with the ball. However, City, like many teams, like to play short for the sake of betting long, which makes the opponent work hard before passing the ball to them.
Keen to get a decisive game off to a quick start in April, Arsenal tried to get out of the traps and put pressure on City when Ederson passed the short, square ball to John Stones. Of note is the position of Martin Odegaard, pressuring Stones, and Granit Xhaka, capable of pressuring Rodri. They are two of Arsenal’s three midfielders at the top of the pitch.
Haaland took the first ball this time, cushioning the ball in a one-on-one with Rob Holding.
De Bruyne wins the race against a tough Thomas Partey, the only Arsenal midfielder pictured after Xhaka and Odegaard drove the first phase of the move. De Bruyne, transparent and with his right foot, did the rest.
With William Saliba back in the Holding position, and Rice more tidy in midfield rather than a semi-in-form Partey, Arsenal deserve to be in a better position to cope with City’s direct play, they are sweating over Gabriel’s availability. option to play longer, with Havertz being a missing target in his line before last season. The goalkeeper, consistent with David Raya, can locate him and if the game turns into a second-ball bout in midfield, few are better than Rice. This season, Arsenal ranked last in the Premier League for the percentage of long goalkeepers with completed passes at just 24 per cent. This season, they’re in a more respectable tenth position at 39 percent. City set a league record with 55 per cent. With Cent, he was a consistent long goalkeeper with passes last season and is the most sensitive in the table with 49, consistent with Cent. Opta defines long balls as passing attempts of 32 metres or more.
Arsenal’s winning goal against City in the Emirates in October came from a rudimentary game of football, a move that was probably not repeated in the educational field.
Partey made a long diagonal pass into the box, where Arsenal placed Tomiyasu and Havertz in City’s defence as two old-school English centre-forwards. Tomiyasu won the shot, Havertz returned the ball to Gabriel Martinelli and the Brazilian’s deflected shot sent the Emirates away. in a frenzy.
Martinelli also scored the decisive goal of the match in Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Liverpool. Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, of course, were the culprits, but the danger came from Gabriel sending a long ball for Martinelli to chase down. None of them were the benchmark football, but without them, Arsenal could be out of the name race.
City and Arsenal don’t just have the team to threaten with long balls; Both defenses rarely seem nervous when asked to deal with first route tactics. This is partly due to the dominance exerted by City and Arsenal, with defenders able to pass through the halfway line of the box without holding hands. Any mistake can be fatal. In Brentford, City conceded a goal kick. Ivan Toney and Neal Maupay were hiding City’s 4 defenders in an ‘offside’ position, aware that you can’t be offside directly on a goal kick. Once the ball was played forward, Toney teamed up with Nathan Ake and used the strength of his upper frame to hold him down, allowing the ball to pass to Maupay. It took City a while to come up with Brentford’s strategy and Maupay converted.
Manchester United’s goal at the Etihad was similar, with André Onana locating Bruno Fernandes’ run past City’s defence. There were offside calls but Ake gambled against Fernandes. The United midfielder returned the ball to Marcus Rashford to score a shout, from which City recovered.
There were also cautionary signs for Arsenal. In the first minute of a different and exemplary performance against Liverpool, Arsenal were to blame for bouncing a long ball. Van Dijk threw the ball forward, Gabriel stepped back and set up Cody Gakpo. to control the duel, and Liverpool might well have scored first if Diogo Jota’s throw-in had not left him.
Brentford’s first two, Ivan Toney and Yoanne Wissa, also showed that early balls ahead can upset Arsenal, even with Saliba and Gabriel nearby. On this occasion, Gabriel got caught underneath a bouncing ball in the canal, allowing Wissa to escape from it. The Arsenal defender had to push Wissa back after receiving a yellow card.
Later in the half, Gabriel challenged an opposing goal kick to Toney, with Rice dropping to his left centre-back position. Toney puts the ball under his spell and, with Jorginho drawn, releases Mathias Jensen into the box with Rice in a different way. engaged. Arsenal survived, but swap Jensen for De Bruyne and Wissa for Haaland and the end results may be different.
Like the match between Guardiola and Arteta, Sunday will see moves and counter-moves, as well as a great dissection of a team’s build-up and tension patterns. However, don’t be surprised if it comes to the festival up which team is most productive in the moments when the ball is under control.
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