2 weeks Ago By The Telegraph
Pep Guardiola is a man of such iron self-discipline that you only catch him smoking a cigar once the title for Manchester City is mathematically secure. But as he surveyed the wan half-smiles of Mikel Arteta and Arne Slot, both of whom were thrilled by their teams’ tempo and yet troubled by the potential advantage squandered in , he must have felt tempted to start puffing on his finest Montecristos. True, the clocks have only just gone back.
But the sight of the sky-blue leviathan restored at the Premier League summit serves as a reminder to Arsenal and Liverpool that time is already against them. The stark reality is that , so remorseless in the second half of the season, that even a draw for their rivals can take on the hue of a defeat. Guardiola’s players put together nine league wins in succession to burst Arsenal’s bubble earlier this year, and 14 in a row to thwart Liverpool in 2019.
Here are two clubs united by the trauma of those near-misses and by a shared appreciation of the level of brilliance required in trying to script a different ending. For , the frustration is doubly acute. While Arteta was distraught in the aftermath of City’s 98th-minute equaliser at the Etihad last month, he could at least clutch at the mitigation of playing the second half with 10 men.
This time his side stayed the course intact, only for the injuries to his back four to take a cumulative toll. With nine minutes left, Arsenal, fortified by a rumbustious crowd pleading for the decisive third goal looked poised to fully rekindle their duel with City. But one dreadful defensive lapse by Jakub Kiwior let in Mohamed Salah for the kill, and you could almost hear the air being sucked out of the Emirates.
It is not as if Arsenal lack the appetite for the fight. They proved throughout their last two campaigns that they were the contenders best equipped to keep City honest. October is hardly the time, though, for them to be nursing a five-point deficit.
They led City by eight points in March last year and still wound up being eclipsed by five come May. This time, the reassuring early consistency is conspicuous by its absence. Arsenal have won only two of their past five in the league and are starting to resemble a dazed collection of walking wounded.
As if Martin Odegaard’s absence is not grievous enough, Gabriel Magalhaes’s suspected knee ligament damage threatens to hole their challenge below the waterline. Arteta was reminded of the old maxim that, although you could not win a title inside the first 10 games, you could assuredly lose one. He responded with a savage look that suggested he wanted to turn his inquisitor to stone.
Having learnt at the feet of Guardiola, he has proved himself an exemplary manager, but when faced with the ultimate challenge – outwitting his former manager over a full nine months – he seems fated to fall short. The post-match accusation by Jamie Carragher that he is less the heir to Guardiola than an imitator of Jose Mourinho will cut deeply. On reflection, Carragher makes a cogent point.
The manner in which Arsenal sat back against Liverpool after going ahead for a second time, playing keep-ball in the corners rather than staying true to their attacking instincts, was unmistakably Mourinho-esque. So, too, was the claim this invited from the opposing manager that . Arne Slot, normally a peaceable soul, shouted “this is a f------ joke” to his centre-back Ibrahima Konate after seeing one of Arteta’s players on the ground once too often.
True, Guardiola has been embroiled in his fair share of skirmishes, but he has tended to avoid claims of rank skulduggery. If Arteta is inviting parallels with Mourinho, it is because his team are showing signs of desperation, resorting on occasion to negative containing tactics to protect a lead. Even Bukayo Saka, having electrified Arsenal with a superb near-post finish for the opener, lamented how they relinquished the momentum in the second half.
This is not a pattern that can continue if they have designs on denying City a fifth-consecutive coronation. Liverpool appear the likelier to ruffle Guardiola. Although these were the first points they had dropped on the road under Slot, their resilience was evident from their obstinate refusal to accept losing.
Neither Salah nor Darwin Nunez ever stopped harrying, the Egyptian finally securing his reward with a goal of exquisite poise. It is impossible to overstate how much his team-mates will miss him when, in all probability, he departs next summer. As a measure of his extraordinary reliability in the decisive games, this was the eighth straight season in which he had scored against Arsenal.
Slot, lacking the scar tissue of all Arteta’s bruising jousts with Guardiola, saw enough in this performance to predict that Liverpool could test City over the long haul. “Can you get a result in such a difficult away game as this one?” he asked. “The way we did it pleased me a lot.
But where that ends up leading to, I can’t say.” He will be hard pushed to prevent it leading to anything besides a repeat dose of City glory. Guardiola is a titan, so nimble at adapting his approach that City have won six of seven games even after losing a player of the stature of Rodri.
Can Slot match him for nous, for versatility, for sheer relentlessness? The odds are stacked against him. On a crystal-clear night in north London, you could sense a blue moon rising once more..
