6 1GS Saturday January 1 2022 | the times
Sport Football
Arsenal lost their first three league
matches by a combined 9-0
scoreline. But from the fourth round
of games onwards only Manchester
City have more points than them.Premier League from the fourth
match day onwards
P W D L F A GD Pts
Man City 17 14 2 1 41 11 30 44
Chelsea 17 10 5 2 37 13 24 35
Arsenal 16 11 23 32 14 18 35
Liverpool 16 10 4 2 44 15 29 34
Wolves 15 7 4 4 13 11 2 25
West Ham 16 7 3 6 24 20 4 24
Man United 15 7 3 5 23 24 -1 24
C Palace 16 5 6 5 25 22 3 21
Tottenham 14 6 3 5 19 20 -1 21
Leicester 15 5 4 6 27 28 -1 19
Southampton16 4 7 5 16 23 -7 19
Brighton 15 3 9 3 13 15 -2 18
Aston Villa 15 6 0 9 19 24 -5 18
Brentford 15 4 3 8 18 24 -6 15
Leeds United15 3 5 7 14 28 -14 14
Everton 14 3 3 8 14 26 -12 12
Burnley 13 1 7 5 13 19 -6 10
Watford 14 3 1 10 19 30 -11 10
Newcastle 16 1 7 8 15 34 -19 10
Norwich 16 2 4 10 7 32 -25 10If you forget the start
Cancelo to
play despite
his assault
by burglars
Paul HirstGuardiola will not have a chance to
shake hands with his protégé this
lunchtime — Arteta will miss the
match because he has caught Covid.
“I know exactly which Arsenal is
going to play, with or without Mikel,”
Guardiola said. “It will be a challenge
for us but we have an incredible oppor-
tunity to continue our [winning] run.”
That sequence will extend to 11
victories if City win in north London.
Embarking on long successful runs is a
hallmark of any title-winning side, but
Guardiola’s City seem to do them better
than most.
In his first title-winning season City
won 18 league matches in a row. The
next year they recorded 14 successive
wins at the end of the campaign to pip
Liverpool and last season they won 21
consecutive matches in all competi-
tions from December to March.The City manager has urged his
players not to get ahead of themselves,
however, even though their present run
has taken them eight points clear of
Chelsea at the top of the table.
“Thinking about the long runs and
how many games we have won is a
stupid thing to think about,” he said.
“It’s just: ‘What’s next, be ready,’ and the
most important thing is the desire and
the commitment.”
City have so far managed to get
through the festive period unscathed.
John Stones and Rodri are the only
players who are doubtful for today, but
it is almost inevitable that more injuries
and Covid infections will hit the team in
the second half of the season.
For that reason — and owing to the
competitive nature of the Premier
League — Guardiola is sure that City’s
winning streak will come to an end at
some point. How the players react will
then be key.
“Sooner or later we are going to lose,”
he said. “When it happens we have to be
calm, relax and try again. With this
amount of games — and I learnt this a
little bit last season because of the
Covid situation — being relaxed is the
best way to approach the next one.”Mikel Arteta will have a special camera
view and room to pace around when he
oversees his Arsenal side against
Manchester City from his home while
suffering from Covid-19.
The Arsenal manager will let Albert
Stuivenberg make the key decisions on
the touchline, although there is uncer-
tainty over which of the other assistant
coaches will be present at the stadium
because of the virus: Steve Round, was
absent from the 5-0 win away to
Norwich City on Boxing Day.
Arteta, 39, will have access to footage
from a camera high in the ground,
Guardiola: Arsenal are one
of two best teams in league
Paul Hirst
CHARLOTTE WILSON/OFFSIDE/GETTY IMAGESMartin Odegaard, left, celebrates scoring against Southampton with Kieran TierneyJoão Cancelo has decided to play in
Manchester City’s match against
Arsenal today despite his ordeal at the
hands of burglars on Thursday night.
Cancelo was left with a nasty cut
above his right eye after trying to fight
off four attackers during a burglary
at his house on the outskirts of
Manchester. The City full back said
that the attackers also threatened his
partner, Daniela Machado, and their
two-year-old daughter.
Greater Manchester police are
investigating the incident, in which the
thieves stole jewellery.
It is understood that Cancelo
suffered superficial injuries which
would not prevent him from playing.
Still, mindful of the psychological
impact the raid had on Cancelo and his
family, City held talks with the player
yesterday and made clear that he did
not have to play in the Arsenal match,which kicks off at 12.30pm today, if he
did not want to.
However, the 27-year-old told the
club that he felt able to play and
travelled to London with the rest of his
team-mates yesterday evening.
Cancelo branded the burglars
“cowards” in a statement issued on
Instagram on Thursday night.
“Unfortunately today I was assaulted
by four cowards who hurt me and tried
to hurt my family,” the Portugal
international wrote, alongside a picture
of his injured face.
“When you show resistance this is
what happens. They managed to
take all my jewellery and leave me
with my face with this state. I don’t
know how there are people with
such meanness.
“The most important thing for me is
my family and luckily they are all OK.
And after so many obstacles in my life
this is just one more that I will over-
come. Firm and strong, like always.”
City officials have provided support
to the player and his family at their
home since the attack.
Cancelo has played 102 times for City
since he joined them from Juventus in a
£60 million deal in the summer of 2019.Cancelo revealed
his injuries in an
Instagram postArteta ‘won’t be able to stay on sofa’ while watching game with City
Gary Jacob
usually used by his team of analysts,
and communication with the bench.
No family will be allowed in his room.
“I will need a big room so I can walk
and move a little bit, because I won’t be
able to stay on my sofa,” Arteta said. “It
will be very strange. It is a big game for
us and it is a very frustrating thing to
not be able to be there helping the team.
“It is not going to be easy to feel
frustrated and with a lack of options
because obviously I’ve not been in
training sessions, not been able to pre-
pare things like you want, to pass a mes-
sage that you want, to have the players
feeling that you are next to them.”
He met Stuivenberg, a Dutchman,
when they did a Uefa coaching coursewith the FA of Wales. Stuivenberg was
Louis van Gaal’s assistant coach at
Manchester United and had the same
role under Ryan Giggs at Wales.
“Albert and the other coaches will
have complete freedom. I already
discussed that with them,” he said. “The
players are the ones who have to coach
themselves, that is the best way.”
Arsenal will be without Pierre-Emer-
ick Aubameyang, who has joined up
with the Gabon squad for the Africa
Cup of Nations in Cameroon. They
hope to have available Calum Cham-
bers and Cedric Soares, who tested pos-
itive and missed the Norwich match.
Ben White, who was switched to right
back at Carrow Road, was also missingbecause of the virus when they lost 5-0
away to City in August. They have since
taken 35 points from a possible 48 and
risen to fourth, although they have lost
matches against Liverpool and Man-
chester United in the past six weeks.
Arsenal have scored only one goal in
their past eight league meetings with
City and lost 11 of their past 12 matches
with them in all competitions. “It is time
to change that,” Arteta said. “It is about
the belief you have that you can do it
and that mental aspect has to be there
before stepping and crossing that line.
Hopefully we will have our people and
they will be more crucial than ever to
create this atmosphere, energy in diffi-
cult moments, stick to the team.”Albert Stuivenberg has
been affectionately
dubbed “AirPod Albert”
by Arsenal supporters.
The Dutchman, 51, is
rarely seen without his wireless
headphones, passing information to
Mikel Arteta. At Arsenal, Stuivenberg
focuses on tactics and planning and
is one of five assistant coaches. He
started coaching at the Feyenoord
academy. His only managerial role
was at Genk in 2017.Over to ‘AirPod Albert’
The first international break of the
season probably felt like the longest
fortnight of Mikel Arteta’s life.
While Arsenal’s players headed off to
their respective national teams on the
morning of August 29, Arteta was left
sweating on his future. The previous
day his Arsenal team had sunk to the
bottom of the Premier League after
being thrashed 5-0 by Manchester City.
That City won the meeting between the
teams came as no surprise.
Guardiola’s league record against
Arsenal since he became City boss in
2016 reads: played 11, won 10, drawn 1,
lost 0, goals for 28, goals against 4.
This defeat felt different, however.
Arteta, inhibited by a number of inju-
ries, lined up his team in a 5-4-1 forma-
tion. Damage limitation, rather than
attacking football, was the order of the
day, even before Granit Xhaka’s
35th-minute dismissal for a dangerous
sliding tackle on João Cancelo.
Guardiola ended the day with a
public plea for the Arsenal board not to
sack his 39-year-old former assistant
three games into the season. “He is an
excellent manager,” Guardiola said. “I
know that because I worked with him.
When all the players are back he will do
a good job.”
Four months on, as the teams
prepare to face each other again, the
picture could not be more different for
Arteta. Arsenal have climbed to fourth
in the table and have won their past five
matches in all competitions.
Arsenal are by no means the finished
article — there is still a whiff of fragility
about them, particularly against the
bigger clubs — but Guardiola regards
this afternoon’s opposition as one of the
best in the country. “Right now we are
going to face one of the one or two best
teams in the Premier League,”
Guardiola, 50, said. “This is
the best Arsenal I have seen
in six seasons.”
Guardiola regards
Arteta as the principal
reason for the turn-
around. José Mourinho
aside, Guardiola is not
one for trash-talking
managers or opponents in
the build-up to games.
In 2015 Guardiola described
Shakhtar Donetsk as one of the best
teams in Europe before his Bayern
Munich side promptly hammered the
Ukrainian team 7-0 in the Champions
League knockout stages.
When it comes to Arteta, one senses
that Guardiola’s praise is heartfelt,
however. His admiration for the
Basque, who, like Guardiola, grew up in
La Masia, and spent 3½ years with
him at City, is genuine —
which explains why he is so
happy that Arteta is over-
coming his doubters.
“To settle something
you need time and I
have the feeling that he
changed the team and
changed the club,”
Guardiola said. “I am pret-
ty sure he felt many things
were not good when he started
and step by step he is doing well.
“Mikel is the most important player
they have. I know his charisma and
ideas and his personality, to do what he
believes is the best for the team.”Arsenal v
Man CityToday, kick-off 12.30pm
TV: BT Sport 1
Radio: talkSPORT