Mikel Arteta was Pep Guardiola’s sidekick when the Manchester City manager was confronted with the question of the quadruple. “Almost impossible,” Guardiola said then. History would suggest he is correct but fast forward seven years and now Arsenal are the team who are still in contention to win the lot. Is it possible? “For them, yeah,” said Guardiola.
He has a different kind of vested interest now. City are in three competitions, but increasingly it looks like they can only win two: they still have a Premier League meeting with Arsenal but, currently nine points behind Arteta’s team, it looks less like a title decider than it did. For Guardiola’s season to end with silverware, he will probably have to beat Arsenal: if not at the Etihad, at Wembley either in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final or, should he negotiate a last-eight meeting with Liverpool, in an FA Cup semi-final or final.
Three years ago, Guardiola was only denied a quadruple by Nathan Jones, with a rare victory in his ill-fated time in charge of Southampton. Now he could turn quadruple buster, like a king reduced to the role of kingmaker. Although, as Guardiola did note, he has won four trophies in a season, combining the Carabao and FA Cups with the Premier League and the Community Shield when assisted by Arteta in 2018-19.
“A quadruple, domestic and not the [most] prestigious but we did,” he added.
Guardiola secured the most desirable treble available in 2022-23, of the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League. His advice to Arsenal is that it can be accomplished without getting carried away. “Go game by game,” he said. “And when the mood is good, and wins help win, the confidence is high, always it’s possible. Everything is possible.”
Perhaps Arteta’s time alongside Guardiola taught the Basque that. The danger for the Catalan is that he schooled the man who will become his successor as the dominant manager in the English game. Guardiola has always called Jurgen Klopp his greatest rival, a point he made when asked on Tuesday about Real Madrid’s habit of eliminating City from the Champions League, and when his run of four straight Premier League titles was ended, it was by Arne Slot.
Yet now Arsenal have the claim to be Europe’s best team; or, depending on the criteria, the most formidable. City were often described as such during their heyday, in part because of the football they played. Another of the 2019 power structure at the Etihad may have played better football than Arteta this season: Vincent Kompany, the City captain who announced his departure the day after that FA Cup final, and now Bayern manager.
But Arteta’s method, besides his famous fondness for set-pieces, has involved making Arsenal almost immune to defeats. While City entered injury time at the Emirates in the lead in September, Arsenal equalised and have lost just three of 50 games this season; City have been beaten nine times, while Guardiola’s fewest losses in a campaign in England is five, excluding a couple of penalty shootouts.
Arteta may have a deeper squad than his mentor; Guardiola’s best 11s had more stardust, though. The Arsenal manager has imported personnel from his former club – with Oleksandr Zinchenko gone and Gabriel Jesus a substitute, the most influential may be the set-piece coach Nicolas Jover – and some of his tactical shifts have been shared by Guardiola: City’s 2023 treble came with centre-backs Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji at full-back, so Arteta’s strapping defence is nothing new.
And yet his football seems to have gone in a different direction: less purist, more pragmatic. There was a time when it seemed everyone wanted to be Pep or hire Pep or borrow from Pep. Now, with the Premier League’s focus on physicality, dead-ball situations and stoppages in play, Arteta looks more influential. Guardiola may not be the role model anymore. Instead, he cited the importance of original thinking.
“I don’t know for Mikel, when I came here I never had the intention to do something differently, just that my team, Man City, play in the way we played and try to get the good results,” he said. “The rest, if they copy-paste, it’s not interesting or not.”
For him, one risk is that the next few weeks are seen as a shift in the balance of power. Arteta is unbeaten in six games against Guardiola, after losing the previous eight. He could deny him the Carabao Cup, take the Premier League title that was long his private property, perhaps become the next treble winner.
For Guardiola, who long had an outstanding record in finals, there could be a different hat-trick. He has lost his last two Wembley finals, both in the FA Cup, and a setback in a different competition may be seen as a sign his powers are waning.
But as seasons are backloaded with difficult games, Arteta may discover the lesson that meant the quadruple always eluded Guardiola. The Champions League is the hardest of all to win. Fighting on four fronts tends to involve losing on at least one. And Guardiola has the chance to orchestrate that defeat.
