Pep Guardiola vs Mikel Arteta 3 Old Master Reawakening

For a variety of obvious and entirely understandable reasons, the Premier League manager’s discourse is currently dominated by a few names.

Your slotsyour Artetas, your Amorims. Your Santos. Sean Dykes of this world.

But it occurs to us that very little is being said about Pep Guardiola at the moment, and we find that very interesting.

Because this is a very important turning point in the Premier League career of our league’s greatest manager. And we think he might be starting to enjoy himself again.

We’re pretty sure he didn’t really enjoy last season too much. You can see it in his face, sometimes insightfully and literally. A man used to competing for — and often winning — huge trophies suddenly didn’t do it any way, like not at all.

Man City’s bid for a fifth straight Premier League crown and a second Champions League title was barely conceivable. The former disappeared in a surprisingly miserable run last fall, causing damage to the latter that proved irreparable.

We spent a lot of last season wondering if he could actually walk away from the city at all, if he now had the energy or desire to push himself and his players to go again in pursuit of tons more.

Having had the self-awareness and self-awareness to walk his great rival Jurgen Klopp away from Liverpool only to realize he doesn’t have another rebuild in him yet, would Guardiola be thinking the same way anyway? We’re sure his mind has at least been crossed, especially with Klopp clearly enjoying his less intense and relentlessly pressing Red Bull role a lot more.

And despite his new deal, those thoughts resurfaced as City began the season in turmoil, with consecutive and horrendous defeats to Spurs and Brighton hinting at another transfer season, a season that lays the groundwork for something new rather than competing at the highest level.

Can Guardiola really be fired up with all this? Building a new team for a day made the Premier League seem embarrassingly easy against Arne Slott, or whatever phase Arteta is now weaponised? What will happen now?

It’s all shifted a bit, though. City have been great since the Brighton game and, with Liverpool/Slots losing their entire run in recent weeks, it’s once again Guardiola and his side that have emerged from the chaos looking for groove challengers to the now-dominant Arsenal.

And we know that energizes Guardiola against his old teammate Mikel Arteta. It might do it again. And we don’t even have to worry about how much Guardiola will be deemed a success that City are able to come out on top once again in this particular title battle.

The respect he has for Arteta and his team seemed to be bound by his respect The way he tried and ultimately failed on his way to a 1-0 win at the Emirates In one of the most out-of-character managerial efforts in the Premier League, Jose Mourinho, haunted by thoughts of revenge and last-minute lacing, decided to send Spurs to eliminate United at Old Trafford in one of those strange Quid Era games that still doesn’t feel remotely real.

There has been a clear sense this season that Arteta finally has something like his final form at Arsenal. For the city, it is not at all. It’s a new team playing a new way, leaning more heavily on the distinctive Erling Haaland traits that caught everyone’s attention at Borussia Dortmund.

And it’s starting to work particularly well. We’re not going away, as the Dutchman’s Premier League career always seems to involve flying out of the blocks with a flurry of early goals before the season ends (still pretty much) means it.

But there seems to be something different about the way Holland are scoring goals this year. A lot of Dortmund are Dutch goals and not so much Dutch cities. It’s fair to say that England probably wasn’t really playing to Holland’s strengths in his first three years in the city. Not making the most of it.

This new slightly more directly Holland-centric, post De Bruyne shows signs of capturing Guardiola’s imagination in the city in a way that nothing really happened last season. They have Created greater possibilities than anyone else In the Premier League this season.

When you’ve achieved what Guardiola has achieved, it must be incredibly difficult to come back and put yourself through that again.

It’s just playing on the road to get his blood up suddenly this season. A combination of rehabilitative change in their own team’s practices and familiarity with their direct rivals would probably be ideal.