Another long ass article from the Athletic that addresses Arteta's ability to coach a defence. Again I implore you not to quote the fucker in it's entirety.
When Arsenal sold Alex Song to Barcelona in 2012, they were expected to replace him with an archetypal defensive midfielder. Instead, Arsène Wenger asked Mikel Arteta to step into the role. The Arsenal manager had sufficient faith in the player’s tactical acumen to believe he could thrive in a new position — and he was right. Over the course of the next 12 months, the Spaniard steadily established himself at the base of the Arsenal midfield. He couldn’t match the physicality of many Premier League midfielders — but they couldn’t match his mind. Arteta has already taught himself to defend. Now he must impart that knowledge to this Arsenal squad.
The need is pressing. Although Arsenal managed to keep a clean sheet against Everton, it was their first away from home in the Premier League since the opening weekend. Arsenal have conceded 27 goals in 18 games. Between the top of the table and 15th place, only one team has a worse record — and no goalkeeper in the Premier League has made more saves than Bernd Leno.
At his maiden press conference on Friday evening, Arteta laid out his manifesto for “the fast-flowing, attacking football that Arsenal supporters want to see”. The new coach is correct to suggest that Arsenal fans yearn for attractive football but there’s also a huge desire to see their defending improve. This is a club built not only on the aesthetics of Arsène Wenger but also the mechanics of George Graham.
For Arteta, those two facets of the game are not mutually exclusive. Sitting down for his first in-depth interview as Arsenal’s head coach, Arteta confirmed: “I want to attack them as much as possible” but then, in the same breath, “I want to prevent them from attacking me as much as possible.”
Arteta has inherited Pep Guardiola’s credo that attack can be the best form of defence. Both men are control freaks, and it is by controlling the more chaotic elements of the game that Arteta can stabilise Arsenal.
Working alongside Guardiola last season, Arteta helped to achieve the holy grail of defending: a Premier League match in which an opponent was not allowed to muster a single shot. The feat came in a 1-0 win over Bournemouth, who at the time were the most prolific team outside the top six. Although Guardiola’s teams are regarded for their beauty, their efficiency is often overlooked. In Guardiola’s 10 full seasons as a coach, his team have conceded the fewest goals in the league in eight of them.
At City, Arteta helped implement a philosophy based on the idea that possession of the ball is the most effective way of nullifying the opposition’s threat. Like Guardiola, Arteta is a graduate of Barcelona’s La Masia academy, schooled in the art of tiki-taka. It’s a strategy that has been the foundation of the Spain national team’s 21st century success. As Michael Cox points out, during Spain’s three international triumphs of 2008, 2010 and 2012, they kept 10 clean sheets in 10 knockout games.
Arteta has the knowledge to help Arsenal keep the ball but his skills go beyond that. The idea that a creative player will consequently only be comfortable coaching attackers is a fallacy. Although Arteta’s one-to-one work with Raheem Sterling is celebrated, it was not unusual to see him engaged in long conversations with Vincent Kompany at Manchester City’s training ground.
Of all the City staff, it was Arteta who worked most closely with Fabian Delph and Oleksandr Zinchenko to mould them into emergency replacements for Benjamin Mendy at left-back. When Delph was the subject of interest of interest from Stoke City in 2017, Arteta was clear that he did not want him to leave, sensing his potential. He diverted that concern into intense one-to-one sessions, focusing on body positioning, passing lanes and positioning on the pitch.
Arteta’s ability to forge full-backs out of midfielders is of particular relevance to Arsenal. With Kieran Tierney and Sead Kolasinac both sidelined, Arsenal are without a recognised left-back. Arteta will be tasked with coaching Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Bukayo Saka into a new role.
Full-backs are of great tactical importance to Guardiola’s City, and one can imagine that will be true of Arteta’s Arsenal too. In the book “Pep’s City: The Making of a Superteam” by Lu Martin and Pol Ballus, Arteta lays out why full-backs are of such vital importance in the Premier League:
“For City, or any top side, it’s obviously great to have players who’ll bring you control of the ball, control of matches. But in the Premier League, it’s vital to have guys who’ll offer massive amounts of intensity and athletic aggression in key one-v-one moments. If you don’t have that, then, for however much you construct intricate interior play, the big beasts of the Premier League will eventually press you and rob the ball from you.
“It’s vital to have versatility — a variety of options. It’s not enough to have four full-backs in our squad who bring guarantees in terms of keeping possession. For City there will often be moments when we impose ourselves so much on an opponent that we can have too much control. Perhaps that’s when an explosive, anarchic wing-back can offer the breakthrough run — which is why having players with different skillsets who offer different solutions is so vital to us.”
Arteta’s deep understanding of the full-back role could be crucial in revitalising the Arsenal career of his countryman, Hector Bellerin. Bellerin is one of the few people still at Arsenal who played alongside Arteta, and the elder Spaniard was a mentor figure for him as he broke through into the first-team. In 2016, Bellerin revealed that Arteta had been “like a father” to him and it is understood that he was a frequent source of advice for the young defender. Now, Bellerin will look to Arteta again as he seeks to finally fulfil the potential he showed in those early days.
The risk of a possession-based style is that you become vulnerable to counter-attacks. Freddie Ljungberg has spoken in exasperated tones about Arsenal’s vulnerability “in transition” and it’s here where the full-backs could prove particularly crucial. In Guardiola’s City team, they were asked to tuck in as auxiliary central midfielders or centre-backs, ensuring there was more cover in critical areas against potential counter-attacks. Bellerin, who like Arteta and Guardiola was a midfield player at La Masia, seems ideally suited to this sort of multi-functional role. Intriguingly, Maitland-Niles is another who could potentially flourish in that kind of flexible system.
Another way of guarding against counter-attacks is to employ tactical fouling. Guardiola’s City have made an art of this and in the Amazon documentary “All or Nothing: Manchester City”, Arteta admitted: “David [Silva], Kevin [De Bruyne], Gundo [Gundogan], make fouls. If there’s a transition, make a foul.” It’s this kind of pragmatism that has been so absent in this Arsenal team.
The key for City is always to regain possession as swiftly as possible. Last season, no team in the Premier League won the ball back more times in the opposition third. City press in a coordinated fashion, with two possible aims: win the ball high, or force the opposition to go long, thus surrendering the ball.
Arsenal’s press, until now, has been disorganised and disjointed. After Manchester City dismantled them at the Emirates Stadium, Kevin De Bruyne told reporters: “We saw up front in the videos… the attackers, they try to press up but when we pass their front four, they really don’t help the Arsenal defence. So they always stay with four up front, except [Gabriel] Martinelli, who comes [back] a little bit more, so we always get spaces somewhere over the pitch.
“‘I think it’s really difficult for the six defenders to control that because obviously, you can come from everywhere on the pitch. I think they left some open spaces and we exploited them really well.”
Arteta will have been part of those preparations and will surely not tolerate such inadequacies in his own Arsenal team. In his first press conference, he stressed the importance of “people taking responsibilities for their jobs” — and prior to the Everton match, he told the squad he would be watching how they reacted to losing the ball. His ambition will be to impose a shape and system on this team which enables them to defend from the front. In midfield, it’s easy to project how a player like Matteo Guendouzi might benefit from the positional discipline Arteta was able to apply to his own game.
Attention to detail is one of Arteta’s strengths. It won’t have escaped his attention that Arsenal have conceded seven goals from set pieces this season — as of Saturday afternoon, only Aston Villa had a worse record in the Premier League. At City, Arteta helped Guardiola implement a tactical plan for every conceivable set piece. Even defending throw-ins meant different configurations, with players expected to adhere to detailed positional plans. As for corners, City made up for their lack of height by ensuring they conceded just 86 corners in last season’s Premier League — by far the fewest of any team. Arsenal are not a tall side, so would be advised to be similarly circumspect.
Arteta has already begun assembling the staff he requires to implement his plans. One of the first names on his list was Brentford’s highly-rated goalkeeping coach Inaki Cana Pavon. Although Leno has proven himself to be an outstanding shot-stopper this season, there are other areas of his game which could improve. Earlier this month, Jens Lehmann told The Athletic: “It seems as if he [Leno] does not organise a lot. He is very nice and kind. He is quiet. As a goalkeeper, you have to organise when your defenders cannot look around themselves anymore. You have to find that moment when you tell them to adjust their position while expecting a cross or a pass.”
Pavon is known to have the meticulous approach required to push Leno to his very limits. He is described by those that know him as “a goalkeeping fanatic”, obsessive about detail and highly particular about which keepers he is prepared to work with. He was influential in Brentford’s deal to sign David Raya, who has impressed since arriving in west London. Now it is Pavon who has been identified by Arteta.
The Everton match was sorely lacking in quality but Arteta spoke to the team at full-time to commend them for their commitment and their diligence. There is an acceptance that if Arteta is to take Arsenal forward, it must start from the back.
