Arsenal didn’t invent the ‘dark arts’

Morning all.

I have to say I’m most amused by the focus on Arsenal and the ‘dark arts’ after the game on Sunday. We’ve had a procession of Man City players come out to complain about it or, at least, reference it.

Manuel Akanji asked if Arsenal had mastered the ‘dark arts’: “Yes, I don’t think there are many better than them at it.”

John Stones in his post-game interview: “You can call it clever or dirty, whichever way you want to put it, they break up the game and it upsets the rhythm for everyone. They use it for their advantage.”

Bernardo Silva: “There was only one team that came to play football. The other came to play to the limits of what was possible to do and allowed by the referee, unfortunately.

“The referee allowed a sequence of time-wasting events. The thing that bothers me the most is having a lot of meetings with the FA at the beginning of each season. They tell us they will control this kind of situation and will stop them, but in the end it doesn’t have any worth. They say a lot but nothing happens.”

Nothing happens?! We literally had a player sent off for it! It also overlooks the fact that despite City going ahead, we played enough football to be 2-1 up at the break, and that second half promised a lot from us before the Trossard red card forced a change in tactics. Nothing happens. Get outta here.

What’s quite amusing about all this is the fact that Man City, and every Pep Guardiola team ever, has had a cynical streak a mile long. Even when he had players as brilliant as Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta at his disposal, they weren’t averse the kind of nonsense you’d see from Sergio Busquets on a regular basis. A brilliant player too, by the way, but someone who would dive, roll around, make fouls and disrupt the opposition’s rhythm at every opportunity. Even at 11 v 11, let alone playing an entire half half a man down.

And who do you think told him to do that? A man sitting not far away from Mikel Arteta on Sunday. A chair kicker extraordinaire. A man whose spittle was so white he might as well have been Riquelme facing Jens Lehmann. Here’s a pic I’ve shared before, it’s our manager while he was a coach at Man City – under Pep, to be 100% clear, and operating under his instruction – giving some pre-game instructions to some of their players:

I think I saw a quote from Guardiola afterwards where he basically said he would have done the same as we did in the context of the game. So, it makes it more funny that City’s players are complaining about something their own manager would do if he had to. Which is – to be clear – whatever it takes to get a result in a game of football. Arsenal didn’t invent this stuff, it goes on in every game at every level every weekend of the year, but it’s funny how it’s in the spotlight because of our performance against Man City.

Rather than be annoyed by this kind of stuff, we should be amused by it. We should be encouraged by it, because the way Sunday went and City’s reaction to it, tells you that we are not a team they take lightly anymore. Erling Haaland losing the plot and telling Mikel Arteta to ‘stay humble’ might irk some people, but it just makes me laugh. I thought the way the manager did a double-take as if he didn’t quite hear him, before just walking off was hilarious and perfectly dismissive.

The Man City Twitter account clipping up a video of Haaland committing a couple of rugby tackles on Saliba and Partey (both of which were more deserving of a yellow than anything Trossard did) tells you plenty about how this game went for them. He scored a great goal the other day, but they highlighted the fact he’s a 6’5 battering ram, as if it showed how we’d been pushed around. We all know we weren’t, because this is a team you can’t do that to anymore. Haaland, a brilliant goalscorer, beefing with a 17 year old who had just made his debut, spoke volumes to me.

I loved Gabriel’s response to a question about Haaland throwing the ball at the back of his head:

I don’t even remember this. It’s normal, they were happy after scoring in the last minute. It’s a battle, a war and provocation is normal in football. Now it’s over and we’ll be waiting for them at our house.

Note the difference in attitude there. As City’s players lined up to bitch and moan, their sense of entitlement pricked in a big way, Gabriel just shrugged it all off. Having been part of a defensive effort that almost won us three points, and been on the end of the ball thing, he probably had more cause to be bitter in his post-match interview than any of them, and he just said ‘Yeah whatever. We’ll see you next time.’

And we will. I love that. Anyway, enough of them. They have their own problems to deal with now, and we have to look forward and get on with the rest of what this week brings. There’s a Carabao Cup game tomorrow (Arteta will meet the press later today, so that could be interesting), and the team selection will be fascinating. We’ll have more on that tomorrow, and press conference updates over on Arseblog News.

In the meantime, if you want something to listen to, we put out three podcasts yesterday.

1 – Arsecast Extra covering the game against City.
2 – Arsenal Women Arsecast, a new format for this show discussing the 2-2 with Man City on Sunday.
3 – The 30 over on Patreon – discussing all the weekend’s Premier League action.

Hopefully that’s enough to keep you going for a while anyway. Right, I’ll leave it there for now, have a good one.