Mikel Arteta offered further evidence that Arsenal may have found the manager to lead them back to glory as he masterminded a 2-0 win over his former club Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley on Saturday.<\/p>\n
A month after his first head-to-head against City boss Pep Guardiola ended in a 3-0 Premier League defeat, Arteta proved he is a fast learner as he conjured the perfect strategy to get the better of the man he served as assistant until December.<\/p>\n
While Arsenal\u2019s first goal had the stamp of Guardiola\u2019s style of play all over it \u2013 an 18-pass move finished off by striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang \u2014 this was not a case of the apprentice beating the master at his own game.<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s side relies heavily on possession based football along with quick passes and a killer instinct in front of goal. Yet, it was Arteta\u2019s Arsenal which made the most of their four attempts, scoring two goals while Man City had 16 attempts with none of them reaping any rewards.<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s side perfectly executed the kind of game plan so often used by Guardiola\u2019s old rival Jose Mourinho in his prime with Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
Defensive discipline, shape and unwavering concentration have not been associated with Arsenal in recent years as their stock fell in the latter Arsene Wenger era and under Unai Emery. But they displayed those attributes in abundance at Wembley with Luiz, Xhaka, Mustafi, Ceballos and Tierney outstanding in a rearguard action.<\/p>\n
After Pepe\u2019s initial cross in for Aubameyang\u2019s side footed goal, Kieran Tierney set the Arsenal captain off on his bike once again, resulting in a finesse finish through Ederson\u2019s feet to round off a 2-0 victory.<\/p>\n
In the space of a few days Arsenal have beaten Premier League champions Liverpool and former champions Manchester City. A look at the league table looks grim for Arsenal, being ninth. However, just months into his first managerial role, Arteta could well be on course to claim his first trophy.<\/p>\n
He said after the game that that there was still a \u201cbig margin\u201d between Arsenal and the likes of City and Liverpool.<\/p>\n
But the team appear to be heading in the right direction again after seasons of drift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta\u2019s Arsenal defeated Guardiola\u2019s City 2-0 at Wembley to reach the FA Cup final<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":32536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[270,220],"class_list":["post-10028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-arsenal","tag-manchester-city-f-c"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}