Arsenal 1 Man City 3: How Guardiola won the tactical battle

Uh-oh, the title race might be back on. Man City have beaten Arsenal 3-1 at the Emirates to make the title race heat up. This is what the teams look like but there is one very clear tactical change in the second half which I think turns this game entirely to Man City's favour. What we had in the first half, both teams basically cancelled each other out. We know that Arsenal played in the 4-1-4-1, Jorginho came in to replace Partey who was injured. They did everything we thought they would. They might actually be coming a bit predictable, Arsenal, it's a problem. City kind of try and kill things, slow it down, take all the atmosphere out of the stadium. The Emirates have been so loud this season. Take the energy out, slow it down, make it boring. That's what they want to do. The one thing they had though is that in this Man City shape, which is what we thought they would do in our preview that me and John McKenzie did. If you enjoyed that preview, by the way, please let us know in the comments so we can do more if you like them. So they had the shape, right, which is a 3-2-2-3 and basically what they're trying to do is create a box midfield with these players here. So you think Bernardo Silva is playing at left back but he's not. He's playing both left back and a central midfielder and you'll see his touch maps, he receives it here, he receives it in the middle of the defence here, all around the pitch. He's meant to be there for helping move the ball forward. It's another one of Guardiola's left back experiments. So Diaz plays his centre back. So the idea should be then that when defensive phases occur, Walker becomes right back, Diaz shifts over, Aki goes to the centre defender role slot. Bernardo Silva comes over to be left back. That's sort of what's meant to happen. Then you can get, Gundogan can drop in as an extra pivot. But the way it was meant to work was not working. You can see Guardiola in conversation constantly with Aki and Silva to try and work out why this wasn't happening with Gundogan being called across as well to help out because Saka was getting 1v1 with Silva and causing him real problems and Silva should probably have been booked actually, maybe before he actually was. Then you had Odegaard recognise this problem really early so he started coming across to make it a 2v1 which caused more problems. Aki wasn't sure whether to come or go and there was just tactical issues with that that weren't quite working. So in the second half Guardiola made the change and it's maybe an obvious change you might think, something you might do from the very start because Arsenal mark man-to-man, they want to have players in every single person, man-on-man all around the pitch. So they took off Riyad Mahrez, off he came, on came Manuel Akanji who is a central defender and that means that they have a traditional, very normal back four. Kyle Walker the right back, Diaz here, Akanji, Aki at left back, Bernardo Silva goes to the right. Then De Bruyne pushes slightly further forward and what you end up having is the 4-2-4 shape that Manchester City won the league with last season. It's something that works really really well, tends to rely on having false nines so De Bruyne used to be joined by Bernardo Silva up top last season, we've got a video on this 4-4-2 and how it works on T4IRL. But instead we have Erling Haaland and it makes sense because Haaland is trying to make runs in behind, they couldn't find him, long passes to him weren't working, he wasn't able to win the ball, Arsenal did really well dealing with him in this sort of regard so they weren't creating any spaces for him to be able to attack, they weren't really able to create many chances they could score from, nothing was really happening. This suddenly meant Saka had a real player to deal with in Nathan Aki so that's something they had to deal with and it meant that then you had Grealish wide, Silva wide but the important thing for me is that you had players on different lines so you may have Haaland the furthest forward then De Bruyne then Grealish, Silva, Rodri. So basically rather than having just a straight flat three lines of players you've got you get the idea and it means that they can fill in gaps between Arsenal players. So the way they got back into the game was by having more of these players closer together so rather than trying to play slow like they did in the first half they wanted to press really high up the pitch and force errors and the first goal comes from an error by Arsenal. The problem starts really with pressure from Man City which forces Gabriel into making a pass he shouldn't make. Now Arsenal are play with keep the ball and make sure they're moving through the lines because that's what works for them really well and Gabriel's not bad at doing it and he gets the ball De Bruyne runs up makes a run on his blind side to try and get around him like this makes this sort of run which forces Gabriel to make the pass he forces it towards Martinelli on the left here Silva's already read the pass because he knows once De Bruyne starts going the ball is most likely going here going there like that and so when the ball does come like here Silva steps over wins the ball then you've got because De Bruyne is out the game taking Gabriel with him Silva now has the ball Erling Haaland makes the run he runs between the gap that Gabriel and Saliba have created by well not being in tune with each other. Jorginho can't track him Haaland goes the ball comes in he gets in here and here we see the rest of the problem they've got with this new shape because Gundogan can make a run from deep which he does Haaland finds him with the pass over and then Grealish can make a run from deep in here so they create overloads both on this side of the pitch where they've got Rodri, Silva, De Bruyne and Haaland all outnumbering the three Arsenal players wide then that leaves players spare at the back post where Grealish can get in to score that goal that's how they score the second goal which puts them ahead and the third goal that kills the game again it's from the system that's how they've changed it so Walker can push up on Trossard puts pressure on him wins the ball turns it over that ball then goes into Rodri who's now suddenly free because of the way that the system is set up Rodri can then carry it inside he goes past the challenge gets inside Gundogan is then spare the ball goes to Gundogan loads of movement around and Arsenal in trouble Saliba and Gabriel create a space between them they don't know where the runners are going where they're going to come from and suddenly what happens is De Bruyne is about to make a run through this gap Jorginho can't cover it Gundogan takes the ball across slots it through De Bruyne gets in between the chaos Arsenal players start to react so they then start getting back as fast as they can trying to deal with De Bruyne so as everyone gets back Haaland does what he does makes the run forward but stops and just stands on the edge of the box so that when the ball comes he's ready to take it in his first touch and then finish with a second to make sure they get the goal and all of this the way they're doing it the way they're winning the ball high at the pitch were they able to defend and block Arsenal towards the second half of the second half is all from putting the kanji on to change the game and go back to that system that worked so well last season that we thought Erling Haaland couldn't play in but he can and he scored and now they're really close to Arsenal in the title race the game is on the game was afoot subscribe to the channel and you will win the loot that didn't rhyme because it wasn't quite the same vowel sound but you know what I mean bye if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel The Athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists including journalists dedicated to each Premier League team so every fan gets the coverage they deserve not just the big clubs and you can try it for free now for 30 days see the link in the description