In a game that saw Manchester City host Arsenal in an important encounter between the top three teams in the Premier League, City lined up in 4141 with RubenDias, Ake, Akanji, Gvardiol at the back, Rodri at the back, DeBruyne, Kovacic in the midfield, Foden on the wings, B.Silva, Haaland up front
City's defenders Walker and Stones were both injured after the national team's match day, City's backline is now tight, and with goalkeeper Ederson injured and replaced by Ortega, it's basically better not to have anyone else injured in the defense, City has left two hands, Doku and Álvarez on the bench.
Arsenal played 433 with Saliba, Gabriel, BenWhite, Kiwior, Jorginho, Rice, Ødegaard, Saka, Havertz, Jesus, and you can clearly see that Arsenal also stayed in the game, with Martinelli, Trossard, and even Kenyo Tomiyasu on the bench. This midfield formation is obviously based on ball control, so Havertz is placed in the center forward position and Jorginho is allowed to play in the midfield, but Jorginho may not be able to hold out for the whole game, so it is obvious that he will be replaced in the latter part of the game.
In fact, from the start, it was clear that these two teams decided to win only in the second half, and that includes the Premier League which will have three days of matches and then the Champions League. Even if they win this game, they still haven't earned points in the future if the losses are too great, so both Guardiola and Arteta actually have their hands full
(Pre-emptive link)
Arsenal started well in possession, trying to create passing opportunities on the right. Shortly after the start of the first half, a cross led to Akanji losing the top.Jesus found holes directly behind and missed the target. In fact, Jesus is in great shape. Tonight, he actually had a lot of shots or created gaps to shoot from. He rarely broke the ball, which greatly created a crisis for City
On 24 minutes Jesus sent a sublime short pass from the left for Havertz to shoot, a collision with the keeper didn't go in, but then Ake was injured and Guardiola surprisingly had to replace Rico Lewis in the first half and changed his personnel to bring Akanji in at center back.
With 30 minutes on the clock, Jesus received a ball transferred from a cross and held off a City defender's shot between two men that nearly went wide. At this point, Jesus actually threatened City's box on a number of occasions, with this shot being a small curling effort that would have been difficult for the keeper to latch onto
Arsenal's Gabriel from the beginning of the game has been specializing in keeping a close eye on Haaland, in the game there are many times he grabbed Haaland's jersey, the purpose is to not let Haaland have the first high-speed burst start, affecting him to move to receive the ball, Gabriel did a good job, and Haaland is not a fake wrestling personality, the result is that he has been pulled but did not fall to the ground. And the referee in this game obviously do not want to use the yellow card to affect the game, because like this big battle, once a player yellow card, will immediately affect his next action, will affect the game or even cause goals, so the referee Anthony Taylor obviously do not want to public relatives into the matter of the Lord, he has been avoiding to issue a card, the scale of the penalty is considered to be very wide, and he is also very obviously do not have the kind of accumulation of a number of times And he obviously didn't have the attitude that accumulating many small fouls would turn into issuing a yellow card. Therefore, as long as Gabriel kept harassing Haaland at the edge of the foul and pulling his shirt, the referee wouldn't give a card if it wasn't a single serious pulling that caused Haaland to fall down, and lastly, with Haaland's simple attitude that he didn't make any exaggerated moves to intentionally fall down, the result was Haaland was being pestered by Gabriel for the whole match. The result was that Haaland was tangled up with Gabriel for the entire fight, which was probably expected by Arteta.
City's ball control dropped because they put Kovacic in the middle of the field, and it was still the same at the beginning of the second half, but both teams were extremely careful, basically, the defenders didn't go up to attack too much, and they were defending against the opponent's very sharp side cuts. Therefore, although City's defense had problems all the time, but everyone couldn't speed up the game in terms of the game's speed, and the Gunners couldn't clearly punch out the gaps on the side.
Ø While degard made crossing passes in the 50th minute that almost allowed Havertz to catch them, the fact is that catching the ball was almost impossible. His passes were always very quick and powerful. If Havertz wanted to make a direct pass from such a close distance, he would have to stop the ball and couldn't shoot straight at the goal. Moreover, the ball is very difficult to stop, and as soon as he stops, the defender will turn and block it
Riklis did well after the game, he kept moving into a central midfield position to score goals, which allowed City to score well at the back and gradually prevented the Gunners from pressing forward, allowing City to gradually start to push forward, and by completing this, City's difficulty in resisting fast attacking weaknesses at the back would have disappeared as the defenders wouldn't have needed to chase
