I came across someone lucky. It came in at 18-1*. I have a feeling this year is for me and you. Maybe. On the other hand, we can wait until April, wait for Guardiola’s spring rise, post-surgery Kevin De Bruyne, and look again then.
Arsenal’s trip to Anfield on Saturday evening looks like a golden opportunity for Jürgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta for now. In a nice cinematic twist, and in deference to Aston Villa’s presence in the mix, the penultimate game of the pre-festive pile-up is actually a play-off for the important ceremonial role of the League’s Best on Christmas Day. .
This shouldn’t mean much in the broader scheme of things. Christmas is not a sports-related event. Christmas is shopping, family regrets and arguments over meat. Noel has absolutely zero impact on things like team building, squad depth, administrative management, and all the other elements that actually decide who wins.
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In other news: Top of the League on Christmas Day! In a sport still steeped in idiosyncratic signs, rituals and omens, Top of the Table at Christmas is a true record of such things as feel-good, morale and internal energy. Bring us your snow-covered graphics, your experts in sweaters, the whimsical energy of the Match of the Day Christmas tree, the emotion beyond all the plots and signs of the year.
Dig a little, the Christmas power rankings will also be an accurate indicator of future performance. 10 of the last 14 Premier League titles have been won by the top team on Christmas Day. Manchester City won the other four. There are basically two options here. Get on the table at Christmas. Or be Manchester City. The only teams that have outperformed City this term (Chelsea, Manchester United, Leicester and Liverpool) have been rabbits in the spring as well as in mid-winter.
With this in mind, we view Saturday afternoon as less of a ritualistic box-ticking act and more of a step towards genuine front-runner status. With City struggling elsewhere, victory would leave them eight points ahead of Pep Guardiola’s reigning champions Arsenal and seven points ahead of Liverpool.
There is also a development issue here, a matter of matching yourself with your closest relative. At the end of a week in which Premier League broadcasters were genuinely annoyed by Liverpool and Manchester United’s refusal to provide a proper jazz display, these are two teams that present a fascinating contrast.
It has become a tradition to compare Arteta’s methods to those of his former boss at the Etihad. But there are also strong similarities with the way Klopp builds his Liverpool teams. Both sought to create a base level of energy in their pressing and attacking combinations and from there impose some control, defensive solidity and possession capacity, non-negotiable qualities in sustaining a title challenge.
In this sense, team building is a bit like making French onion soup. The first phase, which Liverpool are still in, is adding heat, energy, flavours, mixing and refining, taking wrong turns, changing settings.
From now on you will do what Arsenal did this season. You collapse, erect and reduce, allowing this substance to become thicker and more concentrated with greater ease.
Four years shy of Mikel’s age, Arsenal are at least a season ahead of Klopp’s latest version. But success for both will depend on finding a balance between control and intensity.
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A comparison needs to be made between the way Arteta reined in last season’s fledgling title challenge and the way Klopp moved from the exciting, enthusiastic style of Mohamed Salah’s first season to the more mature title-chasing machine thereafter.
Certainly the current team is in a more volatile phase. Liverpool are second in Europe’s top five leagues in terms of shots per game, with a total of 123 shots off target, more than any other Premier League team. The numbers are pretty wild by any measure. They are the seventh team with the most offsides in Europe. Most of them score own goals. Those who received the most red cards in the Premier League. Constant change of personnel (eight forward combinations in the last 10 matches). This is the giving up phase, the energy phase, the onion sizzle phase, the part that is exciting with its possibilities but also requires constant patience.
Arsenal, on the contrary, is in decline. This season has been about control: equal last in Europe (with City) in shots, 89th out of 96 in bookings (Arteta is their most booked player and tied with notorious fighter Kai Havertz).
After the match against Brighton, Roberto De Zerbi spoke of his team being swept off their feet by Arsenal’s physical intensity and positional discipline; It was a reminder of how Klopp’s strongest Liverpool teams exhausted their opponents a few seasons ago.
Arsenal, too, is now shaped by the feeling of approaching the point where personnel and formation changes will be tactical and adapted to the opponent, rather than looking for chemistry.
Arteta has fielded the same team since the 6-0 defeat by Lens, with Havertz/Rice/Ødegaard in midfield plus Saka/Jesus/Martinelli in attack. This stuff is still simmering, but it’s thicker, stickier, and closer to done.
Despite all this, Liverpool continue to dominate at home with seven wins and one draw in eight games this season, conceding just five goals, including three in the wild comeback victory over Fulham. It was 4-3 at Arsenal, too, but it was also seven one-nil or two-nil. This is their control version. Will it be enough?
Whatever happens on Saturday will of course be overshadowed by the second option: City Supremacy, a team with the kind of running capacity that changes the mood and takes the chase away from everyone else.
*The real odds of Arsenal or Liverpool winning the title are: 5-2 and 11-4. Don’t gamble. Watch the match instead. The fun never really begins.