Mikel Arteta’s press conference took place yesterday, but so much of it was focused on the game against Liverpool tomorrow, there’s not much I can use from it because it’s more relevant to the preview post I’ll do tomorrow.
He was asked, framed around the position of Liverpool in the table, if this was the most competitive Premier League there’s been, and said:
For me, I’ve been in this league for 20 or 21 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Asked why, he continued:
Because of the level. The level of the managers, the level of organisation, the quality of teams, the individual quality of players, the capacity to change teams/players/formations – it’s something nobody has seen before.
I wonder is this something that is more evident at the bottom of the table than at the top. Normally, there’s one team, often two, who are marooned at the foot with little or no hope of escaping that at this point of the campaign. For example, after the same number of games last season, Norwich had 17 points, leaving them 8 behind the team in 17th (Everton on 25).
This time around there’s a only 7 point gap between bottom side Southampton and 12th placed Crystal Palace. It does look as if the Saints are in trouble, and I would strongly advise them to get three points today against whoever it is they might be playing, but generally speaking it’s much tighter down there than in any previous season I can remember.
At the top there have always been weird seasons where a team that should, by rights, be competitive in terms of the title just isn’t. Without wishing to scratch at any old wounds, the season Leicester won the title, Man City finished 4th with just 66 points, Liverpool 10th with 60 points, and Chelsea’s 50 points earned them a 12th place. Those things can happen, but I think a genuine measure of how competitive a league is can be seen in what happens below that, and this season we’ve got that evidence.
The old cliche about how there are no easy games in the Premier League is a nice soundbite but it’s not always true. There are teams who are just so far off the level they get eaten up week after week after week. There are so many examples of that down the years. This time around though, not so much. Not to mention the fact that we’re in April and almost every team has something to play for – whether that’s escaping relegation, qualifying for Europe, or the title itself, tells you plenty. Usually there are quite a number of teams so safely ensconced in mid-table their games are basically meaningless, and that’s not really the case this season (except for maybe Chelsea hahaha and Fulham).
It’s why Arteta talks so consistently about respecting the opposition, and why the new breed of manager/coaches have to have greater tactical variety than ever before. It’s also why I think managers like Antonio Conte, and Mourinho before him, found themselves becoming a bit obsolete before our very eyes. You can’t deny or ignore the success that they had during their careers, and while their interpersonal or man-management skills might have been found wanting, so too were their tactics.
Think of Conte’s last game, they’re 3-1 up away from home against the league’s bottom side, and he changed formation to a 5-4-1 (or a variation of that at least), because in the past that’s what worked. You get ahead, then shut up shop/park the bus in the final stages of the game to deny the opposition a way back into it. Hilariously, I think he was right when he talked about the selfishness of some of his players and their inability to do fairly basic things, but at the same time that kind of tactical approach is outmoded in a league where even the team propping up the table contains high quality players who can hurt you at any moment.
Sure, Southampton got a very generous penalty decision (good man Ainsley!), but it was a consequence of his decision to go defensive. Which isn’t to say that isn’t a valid approach. It can be, and we’ve done it ourselves at times, but it’s riskier than it ever has been. Given all that, the fact we’re top and have performed so well home and away this season is a real credit to the manager and the team. I don’t think there are any easy games, not this season anyway, but at times we’ve made it look that way. Which, for me anyway, says more about us than the opposition.
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For some extra reading this morning, this is a great piece in the Guardian (via The Blizzard) about an Arsenal win at Anfield in the 2001-02 season. A game which produced one my favourite Arsenal goals of all-time, when Pires sent Gerrard to the shops and Freddie nicked in at the near post to score.
Over on Patreon, there’s a Liverpool preview podcast ready to go. For now, take it easy, let’s hope for some good results today, and then we can focus on Liverpool tomorrow.
Have a good one.
