{"id":11939,"date":"2025-09-20T20:19:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T19:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11939"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:13:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T10:13:32","slug":"a-measure-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11939","title":{"rendered":"A Measure of Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. How about numbers that paint a picture? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5-1 2-2; 0-0 1-0; 1-4 1-3 ; 1-2  0-5; 0-1  0-1; 0-3 ; 0-3; 1-3  0-2; 0-3  1-3; 2-2  1-2; 2-2  2-1; 2-0  2-2; 1-1  3-6; 0-2  1-1; 1-0  0-1; 0-0  3-0; 0-0  2-4; 2-0  0-3; 3-1 1-0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are the scorelines for Arsenal vs. Manchester City games in the Premier League from 2024-25 to 2007-2008 seasons, reverse chronologically ordered.  And the picture thus painted is clearly illuminative, filled especially with sharp contrasts, of the shapes and forms depicted. If we go further back in the past, that clarity starts to narrate \u2013 no longer just hints at \u2013 a story that is rather too well known to require much repetition. But the past is another country, and let us just look forward to the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The job of a football manager\/coach requires a very peculiar kind of madness \u2013 observing, along with Pascal, that man is so essentially mad that not to be mad amounts to just another form of madness \u2013 which often manifests itself in an obsessive search for excellence, especially in those who strive to implement a form of creative vision that goes beyond the ordinary spectacle of a sporting encounter that gets decided on the basis of just one statistic. Managers are, famously, in the \u201cresults business\u201d, but the genius of a great football manager is to be able to live daily with the paradox that the best way to achieve \u201cresult\u201d is not to focus on it, but to remain committed \u2013 in thoughts, words and actions \u2013 to their own personal vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever one\u2019s personal opinions about the two managers facing each other might be, no one can deny that each of them represent the archetype of a progressive, visionary football manager. While one of them has deservedly earned all the accolades by the virtue of how he has turned his vision into success (albeit with some of the greatest footballers in the history of sports to implement those ideas) and in the process became the most decorated manager in history, the other has taken a more deliberate approach of building towards a sustained and sustainable standard of excellence. While Mikel and his friend, mentor and onetime boss Guardiola share a common root \u2013 both being trained in La Masia with the Cryuff-ian paradigm of how football ought to be played, Mikel\u2019s itinerant playing career \u2013 Scotland, France, England; in teams brimming with creative players and playing expansive football as much as in set-ups that valued pragmatic defense-first approach above anything else  \u2013 has exposed himself to alternatives to that paradigm. His only trophy winning success had come on the back of such pragmatic performance by a limited team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that Covid-interrupted 2019-20 season of empty stadiums when en route to the FA Cup success in his very first season as the Arsenal head coach (before he was promoted officially to the manager role), Arsenal beat Guardiola\u2019s Manchester City 2-0, favorites in every tournament that season, in the semi-final at Wembley, thanks to a double from Mikel\u2019s then captain and talisman, Arsenal had beaten City only thrice \u2013 twice in the PL, and once in the Community Shield in a penalty shoot-out. Mikel\u2019s head-to-head record against Guardiola stands at: played 14, won 4, drew 2, lost 8. Pep and J\u00fcrgen Klopp, the ex-Liverpool manager, are the two opponents Arteta had faced most in the opposition dug-out, and his record against Klopp is better: 5-3-6. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to these numbers, especially for us Arsenal supporters, is that the trajectory of those results have been moving upwards in the last few seasons, as the meticulously built squad of players (not only of a very high standard of technical and physical abilities, but also capable of playing in tactically and positionally disciplined manner) have started to form a cohesive collective where their hunger, camaraderie and understanding of each other\u2019s strengths and weaknesses can stand out as decisive factors in tightly contested matches against oppositions of equal quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To repeat: oppositions of equal quality, and not superior quality for the Arsenal squad of 2025-26 is as good as any in European football. Among all the positive transformations achieved by the club \u2013 Mikel playing a key part, but obviously and evidently not the only one playing a key part \u2013 in the last few years, hauling ourselves back out of that depressive cave of an inferiority complex against the best teams stands out, in my humble opinion, as the finest measure of our success. The entire squad know, and most importantly believe, that they are as good as anyone else, the fans feel that sense of positivity, respond to it and players feed off that support, as a result the opposition teams face the kind of intense psychological pressure at the Arsenal ground that for long had been missing since we had moved out of Highbury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot has been written about our summer transfers \u2013 Arsenal now has a deep enough squad to better withstand the inevitable injuries, as well as a wider repertoire of skills and abilities that would allow Mikel to work on multiple different tactical variations. The players coming off the bench now bring their unique strengths that would present a different set of challenges to the opposition, and the substitutes can more often be involved in defining and decisive actions. The midweek Champions League victory away at Bilbao was a perfect example where the two substitutes combined successfully, twice, to bring home a 2-0 win that for the most part of the match didn\u2019t seem likely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mikel, having to start with possibly the least balanced and most incoherent Arsenal team in modern times, had to painstakingly build a squad capable of consistently challenging at the very highest level, Guardiola has to face a somewhat different challenge of rejuvenating his team as a generation of great players move past their prime. While getting the players he wants may not be exactly a challenging proposition, finding ways to rebuild the previous cohesiveness needs some time. I don\u2019t mean that as a sign of sympathy to Pep or City \u2013 for that would naturally be ridiculous, even the most empathetic minded of football followers would find it difficult to engender such supportive emotions towards them, unless of course they are from the blue half of Manchester, in which case they themselves deserve all the derision that they face \u2013 but more of a potentially important factor for this Sunday\u2019s encounter. Some of the City stalwarts that have offered them strong foundations over the years \u2013 Ederson, De Bruyne, Gundogan, Walker \u2013 have left, but they have brought in players of high quality: Donnarumma, Khusanov, Cherki, A\u00eft-Nouri, Reijnders et al<\/em>., and they would be as dangerous an opponent as ever, even though they might have lost two matches in the PL already.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ourselves of course have brought in our fair share of new players, and against Bilbao we started a front three that had never played together. Mosquera continued his impressive deputizing for Saliba as Wilo was awarded a rare opportunity of a prolonged recovery period, staying on the bench. Martin \u00d8degaard and Bukayo Saka are still recovering, and though there is a minor chance of the captain being ready to face one of the title contenders, I think Mikel will choose to rely on his squad if there is any doubt about Martin\u2019s fitness. If that happens, would he start Nwaneri \u2013 who has looked as accomplished as anyone else on the field whenever he played this season \u2013 in the \u00d8degaard role? Or would he err rather on the side of unpredictability and bring Eze into that more familiar creative midfield role, with Martinelli likely to find space in front of him to run into? Or just continue with the starting midfield from the midweek? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the positions seem more predictable, though Lewis-Skelly makes a good case of starting on the left back role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is my prediction for the starting line-up      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timber \u2013 Saliba \u2013 Gabriel \u2013 Calafiori <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zubimendi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nwaneri – Rice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madueke \u2013 Gy\u00f6keres \u2013 Martinelli  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we play to our strength, and the home support continues to offer that extra advantage, I think we should be able to make our defensive solidity count and find a way to score enough goals. A 2-0 scoreline in this match sounds rather unlikely, so all the more reason for me to predict it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come on Arsenal!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. How about numbers that paint a picture?  5-1 2-2; 0-0 1-0; 1-4 1-3 ; 1-2  0-5; 0-1  0-1; 0-3 ; 0-3; 1-3  0-2; 0-3  1-3; 2-2  1-2; 2-2  2-1; 2-0  2-2; 1-1  3-6; 0-2  1-1; 1-0  0-1; 0-0  3-0; 0-0  2-4; 2-0  0-3; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11944,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11939\/revisions\/11944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}