It was a mere three weeks ago that I condemned Gabriel Martinelli to infamy: I said he was Arsenal’s problem in a nutshell. At the time, he was not doing enough. Goals and assists have been in short supply for the better part of a year and a half, but more importantly, the Brazilian was not even taking on his fullback. He also wasn’t running in behind with any kind of effectiveness — not stretching the opponent’s back line, and not getting into as many quality scoring positions with those once-trademark diagonal runs between the fullback and the centerback.
He wasn’t a threat. He was predictable — and emblematic of Arsenal in the worst of times in the Mikel Arteta era. And then came Sunday.
With 10 minutes to go in normal time, the fleet-footer came on for Jurrien Timber to provide a new kind of spark plug for Arsenal’s attack, which had been ramming up against the wall of Manchester City’s subterranean low block for most of the game. He darted around, putting defenders on the back foot, but it took 13 minutes for Martinelli to make the telling impact.
He locked eyes with Eberechi Eze — by then playing quarterback at the base of Arsenal’s midfield, the whole team desperately stretched — and scythed in behind City’s back five, splitting Nathan Ake and Joško Gvardiol. The latter trailed him as he latched onto Eze’s expert pitching wedge, controlled the falling ball deftly, ran onto it in stride, and looped a chip of his own over a Gianluigi Donnarumma stranded in no-man’s-land. The Emirates Stadium hushed and the seconds stretched elastically into minutes as the ball bounced off the turf and into the side netting. 1-1.
It was salvation for Arsenal, but perhaps just as important, it was redemption for Martinelli. Or was it comeuppance for all the rest of us, the haters baying from the gallery for so many months now? What I said three weeks ago was true, and yet — appropriate for this fixture — I now wonder if I should have #StayedHumble.
I didn’t advocate for selling Martinelli during this summer’s transfer window, but I did begin to write him off in my mind as anything more than an impact substitute. That is what he has done so well over the last week, coming on in the Champions League down in Bilbao to provide another telling contribution against Athletic Club before he knifed City at the death here.
Maybe that will be his role this season. Maybe it will be more. But something has come alive in his game again, an electricity that had been snuffed out. Nothing like a bit of competition for your place to get you crackling into life. He’s looking like that young kid who tore up Chelsea at Stamford Bridge again, full of frightening pace and running power and just a bit of killer instinct.
This is why we watch, after all. We think we know our stuff, but we never get the script in advance.
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One script I don’t need to see thanks to the plot’s sheer inevitability is the one where Manchester City’s approach to this match gets nowhere near the media firestorm that Arsenal’s more conservative match plans have garnered in recent years.1
Mikel Arteta has a well-earned reputation for pragmatism, solidity, control — one that was reinforced here with his midfield selection. A midfield of Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, and Mikel Merino is not the most creatively inspired, and the manager clearly planned to win the duels, physically dominate the big green patch, then bring on the creators later on to win it if that was what circumstances required. If Arsenal took an earlier lead through a set piece or a chance created through Noni Madueke’s devilry down the right, so be it.
But for all the meme-ified insinuations that Arteta has pioneered “haramball,” that he’s José Mourinho with dull press conferences, what City brought to the Emirates on Sunday was about 80 minutes of true anti-football. They were hoofing it, they were “direct,” and most of all, they sat deep. By the end, they had about 45 centerbacks and 14 defensive midfielders on.
Their game plan for the most part was to try to get onto Arsenal’s defensive line after two or three passes and get it to Erling Haaland. (This was wildly successful for their goal on nine minutes, indeed a devastating counterattack.) At times, they were playing the kind of two-man attacking game that I’d more closely associate with a Brentford or — back in the day — a Sam Allardyce side. They had the big man, Haaland, and the runner-dribbler, Jérémy Doku, and there wasn’t much else going on. I’d like to congratulate Pep Guardiola for taking on a new challenge managing Bolton Wanderers.
Ah, but I can already hear the excuses. City had three games in a week! They had to play their opening Champinos League fixture on Thursday, with two days less rest than Arsenal coming into this one! Just take a deep breath and ask yourself whether you’d make any of the same excuses for Arsenal, or indeed whether you have in the past. Fixture pile-ups? Injuries? Savvy game-management away from home that trades the naïveté of the late Arsène Wenger years for a steely pragmatism fit for a results business? None of these are luxuries granted to Arsenal and Mikel Arteta.
Some of that is down to the fact Arsenal haven’t yet won a major trophy, some of it is real over-conservatism from Arteta at times, and a lot of it, I suspect, is that trolling Arsenal fans is such a great business decision in today’s football media. No one can or would resist it. The discrepancy between how Arteta and Guadiola are assessed is likewise down to Pep’s formidable trophy cabinet (medal drawer?) compared with Arteta’s sole FA Cup, though that doesn’t actually say anything about style. Mourinho’s got plenty of medals, too, so I also suspect it’s down to reputation beyond silverware.
This is, technically, the same Pep Guardiola who coached the greatest stylish team of modern times, that famous Barcelona side, and he’ll probably always get more slack no matter how his current team plays. Personally, I found City to be a bit antiseptic and bloodless even when they were dominating English football with 89% possession every week, but it was basically impossible to make an argument about their entertainment value then.2
It’s easier now that they’ve been poor for a season, and yet it’s so unlikely this week will be spent talking about the failings in their approach or their ambition. In fact, it’s been all about Arsenal's failings in that department so far — and again, not without reason! Mikel Arteta could take a swig of the Brave Juice ahead of these encounters, particularly at home. But let the record show that, while the Arsenal manager picked two box-to-box midfielders and a deep-lying string-puller to start the match on Sunday, City went Full Mourinho — if not Full Allardyce. Pep does, after all, have a well-documented love for old-school English managers.
Perhaps more important than any of those complaints is that City did not show much on Sunday to indicate that Stephen Warnock and I got out over our skis in the pregame podcast when we suggested they would trail Arsenal and Liverpool in the table this season. They nearly got the better of Arsenal here, but they haven’t shown much this season to indicate they’re going to consistently dominate matches at the level required.
They aren’t defending at a particularly high level, the midfield is a long way from the De Bruyne-Gundogan glory days, and the wide attackers — even Doku — aren’t what they once were either. Maybe it’s no wonder they approached the game this way, and why even many Arsenal fans are disappointed with Arteta’s approach. This is a game the Gunners really should have won, because they look at least a half-step above the Citizens. There’s still time for the latter to rip into a new gear, I suppose, and they do have Erling Haaland.
OK, at least the social media foot soldiers are sticking the boot in, including with this incredible Pep Pulis meme above.
As another data point, when City came to the Emirates in the heat of the 2022-23 title race and essentially ran a (direct and vertical) two-man game with Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne to break Arsenal’s high press, it was rightfully greeted as a tactical masterstroke rather than a betrayal of principle.