Arsenal vs. Manchester United Preview

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For sixteen years (1989 – 2004) the top flight of English football was won by either Manchester United or Arsenal save three seasons where Liverpool, Leeds United, and Blackburn brought home the silverware. The Red Devils and the Gunners achieved these sustained runs due in large part to their managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. Before Pep or José or Potter or Pochettino there was Ferguson and Wenger, two enigmatic, opinionated and highly-effective football minds literally inventing the role of the modern football manager.

Since that run however, both teams have suffered a fairly magnificent fall from grace, with 20 years since Arsenal’s last title and 10 years since Manchester United’s. In that span of 10 years since their last title the club has generated around £6.5bn in revenue with just under a £1bn net spent on players thanks to the Glazers their American owners not giving a damn about the club. Maybe Russia or Abu Dhabi is the way to go after all.

Ferguson showed a willingness to evolve his thoughts on the game to secure points for United even after he’d arguably passed his prime while Wenger tended to stick to his guns more and the stubborness ended up costing Arsenal to the tune of 19 consecutive Champions League seasons with no titles and only one appearance in a final. Good enough to get there, not good enough to win anything once there.

Unfortuantely, while these two were inventing the modern football manager and scooping up all the domestic silverware, London and Manchester each had a club with plans to do the same but with ludicrous amounts of money instead of coaching. This newfound money came from ethically-questionable Russian oligarchs and Middle-east oil barons too so it had to be laundered so as to not taint the public perception of these century old clubs.

Chelsea owner and Vladimir Putin BFF Roman Abramovich opened the door on this nonsense (which the league did nothing about for what it’s worth) and Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour propped it open so anyone with billions to blow could get in the game. Now guess who’s won the majority of domestic titles in England since that happened? Yeah, you guessed it.

But this is about two former giants who still try and act like giants when they aren’t really giants anymore. Manchester United and Arsenal both paid the price for riding the coattails of their own success and giving all of the power to the aforementioned Ferguson and Wenger who both outstayed their welcome at their respective clubs but who also left their clubs high and dry with no succession plan.

Arsenal went through one manager and an interim appointment before finding form with former club captain Mikel Arteta at the helm. Manchester United however chewed through eight managers before finally arriving at current manager Erik ten Hag, who hasn’t proven he’s the answer to United’s troubling decade adrift just yet but has come closer to anyone since Ferguson to getting this storied club back to its previous pomp.

Tactics

Erik ten Hag typically deploys the red devils in a 4-2-3-1 with the Portugese playmaker Bruno Fernandes pulling the strings from the center of the pitch. He’s whiny and a bit of a cheat but he gets results. He also fits perfectly into the mold of players who love to get the Gunner’s emotions running high and red-cardy (think Diego Costa at Chelsea) so the battle will start there in the middle.

United will look to have new signing Rasmus Højland at striker but their deadline day signing Sofyan Amrabat wasn’t registered in time for this weekend. They will also be without center back Raphael Varane and midfielder Mason Mount.

It doesn’t seem like anyone has a good idea as to what Arteta will do with his lineup and this seems to be exactly what he wants. He’s used the first three games of the season to experiment and get all his new signings on the pitch at once but to the tune of two victories that could’ve been lost and one draw that should’ve been a win. We may see Arteta Out trending for the first time in a long while if he doesn’t start the lineup that dominated the majority of last season in the league.

Arsenal have been the better team when these two have met recently and being at home should see them win the 3 points but this is a tie that always pushes both teams to the brink it seems so anything goes really.