To borrow an old sporting joke, Arsène Wenger hasn’t managed 1,163 Arsenal matches. He has instead managed the same Arsenal match 1,163 times. At a time when Wenger’s team stand accused of congealment and standing still, it seemed oddly fitting that England’s second greatest modern-day spin-bowler Monty Panesar was guest of honour on the pitch at half-time against Manchester City. Although in fairness Shane Warne’s famous, and indeed unfair, jibe about Panesar playing the same Test 33 times without learning or progressing doesn’t really fit here.
With Arsenal the real stasis set in around the end of the austerity years, as opportunities appeared to push on and find a new gear. Mesut Özil arrived. Wenger talked about having the best squad of his time at the club. And yet somehow ignition has failed to come. Arsenal continue to wilt at the same stage, make the same mistakes, follow the same pattern, a team always crashing in the same car.
These are, of course, fine margins. In the 2-2 draw with City at the Emirates Stadium Wenger’s team came from behind twice, took a point without playing that well and refused to lose focus even after Laurent Koscielny had left the pitch with an achilles injury.
Still, though, the comparison with City is fascinating, not least because this new‑build Pep Guardiola team, for all their shared defensive flaws, do have something Arsenal are lacking. In Leroy Sané and, to a lesser degree on this occasion, Raheem Sterling they have players who have done the opposite of stagnate this season. Sané in particular has improved dramatically, to the extent that from a stodgy, stuttering start, he is right now one of the Premier League’s outstanding attackers, perhaps even a shortlist name for young player of the season.
Best of all, it has not been easy. Sané is a charming, slightly shy young man. He took a while to settle at City. His mum has been out from Germany to stay with him. When he did get a chance he faded in and out of matches. “Sometimes you need a bit more time to adapt,” Guardiola said in November. “He didn’t come here for three months, he came here for five or six years. I just want to help him to put it in the right moment and show us his qualities.”
Pretty solid work there, Pep. Sané scored a wonderful opening goal at the Emirates, making just the right run for Kevin De Bruyne’s precise pass into the huge open green spaces of the Arsenal defence. Sané has a genuine sprinter’s speed, able to accelerate effortlessly away from Héctor Bellerín while keeping enough control of his body to take the ball in his stride and slip it past the prone David Ospina.
Sané’s first City goal came against Arsenal in December, his 13th appearance for the club. This was his seventh in 14 club games since, to go with two assists and a confirmed place on the far left of City’s reconditioned three-man attack.
City have been heavily criticised for their skittish defending, with six goals conceded across two legs against Monaco, to go with three against Celtic, four against Barcelona, three against Chelsea, four against Leicester and four against Everton. But like all the best Guardiola XIs this team are pulling in all sorts of directions at the same time and City’s evolving attack is one of the most interesting subplots of the Premier League season.
Guardiola rejigged his front three for the 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur 11 weeks ago, staking Sané and Sterling out wide either side of Sergio Agüero. Gabriel Jesus’s broken foot saw Agüero reclaim the central spot in the 5-3 defeat of Monaco last month. Since then he has eight goals in eight games. Sterling has three goals and six assists since the Spurs rejig. Sané continues to bloom. It is a potent combination based on speed, swift passing, the freedom to dribble and above all sustained width.
This all comes from coaching and persistence. In early season Guardiola became so irritated by Sterling’s tendency to creep inside, defying orders, that he had a chalk spot painted on the training pitch and told him: “When in doubt, just stand there.”
Sterling, who is a real eager beaver, took it the right way. He does stand on his spot these days, just as Sané, on the other side, also seems to be improving with every game. Against England in Dortmund last week he kept the ball beautifully, a wonderful mover, always comfortable in possession, confident in his ability to punish any moment of slackness.
Indeed right now Sané and Sterling are perhaps the most interesting aspect of Guardiola’s first season, if only for evidence of hope, progress and an enduring ability to cast his peculiar kind of magic. Much was made of Pablo Zabaleta’s suggestion, offered with a chuckle, that some City players have been “bored” by Guardiola’s obsession with tactical analysis, just as Jérôme Boateng had spoken with real enthusiasm about the bracing agony of watching whole Bayern games again in Guardiola’s presence, with every mistake picked apart and magnified.
But it makes for an interesting point of contrast with the talk of stasis and comfort zones around their opponents on Sunday. City may have spent twice as much as Arsenal in the past two seasons. They may have a flaky backline of their own. But on the pitch there is at least a sense of a plan being winched into place, where even the defensive mistakes, the insistence on taking chances, are part of a design being sketched out.
This remains a work in progress. Sterling has a way to go, although hard work on his finishing and final pass has clearly had an effect. Sané, too, remains all potential. But both have at least improved, which is where those who bemoan the stagnation of late Wenger-ism perhaps have a point.
Which Arsenal players have actually improved in the current squad? Too many look like the opposite: talented footballers who could probably do with a move away in order to stretch themselves. Even a player as accomplished as Özil, the team’s de facto creative leader, seems to have shrunk into himself either side of a wonderful four months last season.
Granit Xhaka has become a standing joke, a player who adds little to the team beyond kind of red-mist slapstick. But he was only 23 years old when he arrived at Arsenal. Against France at last summer’s European Championships he completed twice as many passes as any France midfielder and looked calmly assertive, always with time on the ball. Where has that player gone? Where is his chalk spot?
Arsenal held their own against City. The draw helps both clubs a little. Looking forward, though, the performance of Sané in particular holds the greater promise, the suggestion that, even if this evolving Guardiola team fail to scale the heights, their hundredth game will at least look a little different from their first.
