Their management styles and what we can learn from it.
The master, Pep Guardiola and the protege, Mikel Arteta. As we now see both managers go head to head at the top of the English Premier League table with their respective teams, Manchester City and Arsenal, this article will seek to critically compare their different management styles. From Mikel’s mysterious metaphors to Pep’s enigmatic team talks – what can we can learn from them? Much of the research and content for this article has been taken from Amazon Prime’s All or Nothing series, with Manchester City in 2018 and with Arsenal in 2022. Research has also taken place by following both teams closely over the same time period. These excellent Amazon Prime series give an insight into what it is like to perform at the top of the Premier League for the managers, players, boards and back-office staff. This binge-able type of show, from Sunderland till I Die to Juventus’ All or Nothing, really demonstrates the critical role of the manager for each team as well as other internal and external pressures from both the board and the fans which the staff and players face. This piece will also be sprinkled with comparative reference to other football managers such as Brian Clough as well as my own experiences of management.
In the famous words of Sir Alex Fergurson, ‘Steven Gerrard is not a top top player’, it could be argued that Mikel Arteta’s current management career, fits the same description given his relatively junior experience to reach ‘top, top’ status. By at least the World Cup in mid-November, or perhaps by the end of the Premier League season in May 2023, I would like to be proved wrong. Having watched Arsenal’s All or Nothing when it was released in August 2022 during their pre-season, I was nervous to write this article. Simply because I knew Mikel Arteta would achieve big things with Arsenal in the 2022–23 season from the momentum he had gathered with his team in the previous season — let alone the incredible pre-season which Arsenal had this year. Disclaimer, I am a long-life Chelsea FC fan but I have to admit, I’m very impressed with Arsenal’s performances this season so far. I hesitated to write as I didn’t want to speak too soon or too critically as I knew Mikel Arteta was and is destined for success with Arsenal, despite the fact that I didn’t always agree with what I have seen of him as a manager. I would like to begin by saying that Mikel’s personality is very professional and likeable, he generally handles the demands of the media, fans and the board with great aplomb. The devotion Mikel Arteta shows to his role as Arsenal manager and to his wife and kids demonstrates that he is an empathetic man with a lot of love and passion to bring to the endeavours in his life.
The basics and standards:
High standards are enforced by both Pep and Mikel Arteta. While Mikel is a top manager, I believe Pep is a ‘top, top’ manager in that he has that expectation instilled into his players simply from his aura. In a similar way to managers such as Sir Alex Fergerson, Jose Mourinho and Brian Clough, the top managers command respect simply from their reputation and presence. You see in the All or Nothing documentary, Arteta, by comparison forcing his authority on his players in an aggressive way, while Guardiola will use a slightly more subtle, lighter touch but still remains assertive in his management and communication style. By comparative reference, Brian Clough always demanded that his players ‘wear a tie’ when travelling to away games with his beloved Nottingham Forest team. Clive Tyldesley, better known for his commentating career, respectively spoke about this on his first appearance for the club where he wouldn’t be welcome to travel on the train with the team unless he wore a tie. While this might seem petty, particularly in the modern era, this demonstrated Clough’s attention to detail and the standards he implemented which would eventually shape and lead the team to success. Nottingham Forest were an average second Division club before Clough and he would later make them European Champions. A feat, Pep or Mikel Arteta, incidentally, have yet to achieve with either of their current teams.
Attention to detail is a critical point and getting the small things right usually means we get the big things right. This can boil down to complying with dress code, being on time and other basics that we can all get right easily if we put our minds to them. Arteta too definitely has this mindset, which he is not afraid to share with his players. When Arsenal, coincidentally, lost to the then Championship side Nottingham Forest in the 3rd round of the FA cup in January 2022, Arteta highlights how attention to detail is so important, saying to his players after the defeat:
‘I accept losing guys, I accept losing, [but] I don’t accept these f**king standards…and it’s nowhere near…you agree with me guys? Yeah? But between you f**king doing it and demanding yourself.. That’s what I’m telling you in f**king training…because I see it in training, that it doesn’t matter to give the ball away… ‘it’s okay, sometimes I go to the next ball and I run’ No! [He screams in his breaking voice] Because in a game it’s a goal…When I lose a duel, I am upset… When you lose the small-sided games, I am upset…Because that’s the f**king standards..because you come here and you f**king lose [as he slams the laundry basket on the floor] — it’s nowhere near guys, it’s f**king sh*t.’
I do believe that focusing on high standards in training, which can be replicated on a matchday, is really important, which Arteta really rings home in his diatribe to the Arsenal players. However, his delivery and his language lets himself down in my opinion. He loses his head and arguably some respect from his players. As he storms out of the room, tripping over a kit bag, f-ing and blind-ing in the process, it makes for an entertaining watch but certainly demonstrates Arteta becoming quite emotional. For context, during the previous month, the club had gone through a Covid crisis of the winter of 2021–2022, where many games were cancelled or postponed. Arsenal’s top striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was also under disciplinary action from the club. Mikel is clearly under a lot of pressure at the time in the All or Nothing documentary and it appeared that his team’s defeat to Nottingham Forest tipped him over the edge here. It could be argued that this demonstrates his lack of experience at the top end of management, where the pressure is incredibly high, especially when things don’t go to plan.
Pep by comparison when he suffers a humiliating defeat, does not rise to the situation as much, in contrast to Mikel’s semi-breakdown. Comparably, for example, if you look at Pep when his beloved Manchester City loses to Wigan Athletic 1–0 in the FA Cup in February 2018, it’s a slightly different story. In this game, City midfielder Fabian Delph gets sent off in the first half and the famous Will Grigg scores to win the game for Wigan with their only shot on goal, despite City dominating the entire game with 10 men. Pep says to his City team after this loss:
‘We play to win a game. But we cannot lose it. And we lose it. Four [City defenders] against one [striker, Grigg] back, and we conceded the goal. In a final that cannot happen. We cannot just score a goal, guys. And we cannot concede a goal. It’s football, in these stages, this counts. [To get] those wins in this kind of game, we have to finish with 11. That is the point guys…are they playing better than us? No. And it’s a red card. Just like the seven red cards we didn’t concede, it is a red card. I know it’s so difficult to do this kind of thing. But we go through all the time in most competitions. There are moments when there’s 12 minutes left, 11, 10 minutes left and we don’t receive a goal, guys. That’s why we’re out. Go shower. Recover. Never forget it. Okay, guys. Now it’s time to cry a little bit. That is what it is. Let it go.’
Look at the difference in speech style between Pep and Mikel Arteta here. Note that Mikel is one of Pep’s assistant managers at the time and is in the frame of the 2018 All or Nothing Manchester City documentary. Pep sees the bigger picture here as they were challenging for the famous ‘quadruple’ at the time in 2018. He knows that this bitter experience, losing to Wigan, will be good for them in the context of other knockout competitions and how they can learn from it and perform in the future. He doesn’t swear at his players, he doesn’t raise his voice — which is in stark comparison to Arteta’s leadership when Arsenal get knocked out by Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup in 2022, which is discussed above. Pep knows what he has achieved more broadly with Manchester City and knows that this loss is a humbling experience for his team but positives can come from this. It could be argued that the FA cup to Arsenal in 2022 probably meant a lot more to Arteta to give him some redemption for his season in terms of demonstrating ‘success’. Perhaps that’s why Arteta became so passionate about this failure where his side lost to Nottingham Forest. Nonetheless, the way they both handle similar situations speaks volumes about their different management styles and why Pep is a level above Arteta as a ‘top, top’ manager in my view.
Attention to detail:
While of course not a professional football player myself, I similarly remember once being subject to very attentive management. My first role out of university in the security industry involved a great and very enigmatic manager, named Dave. One evening we were having a work team social and a few drinks down, he mentioned that it was his namesake ‘St. David’s Day’, the following day. In a slightly tipsy state he asked if we could all wear yellow daffodils on our jackets to celebrate the day and had asked if I in particular could organise this. The next morning he turned up at work and the first thing he said on arrival was ‘Leo, where the f**k are the flowers?’ to which I thought he was joking and I subsequently apologised when I realised he wasn’t. That lunchtime I went out and picked some yellow Daffodils on Regent’s Canal which I serendipitously found and gave them to him and the rest of the team. To which he replied, ‘your PDR (Performance Development Review) is going to be ‘right up here’ this year’ as he pointed to the sky. Dave similarly demanded that we all wear Poppies the week of Remembrance Day in the previous November. Dave had incredibly high standards and expectations, which made him a great manager, in a similar vein to the ways in which Pep, Jose Mourinho and Brian Clough are, for example. This is because they focus so much on standards and doing the small things right.
Another example of Mikel Arteta’s interesting management style was his reaction to Aubameyang’s late arrivals to training, matches and from his personal trip to Paris. Arteta was clearly so frustrated with Aubameyang’s attitude that he decided to discipline him and eventually the club terminated his contract as relations broke down. Pierre-Erick would eventually leave the club in the 2022 January transfer window for Barcelona FC and Chelsea later that year in the summer. Did this show a certain level of arrogance from Mikel Arteta or was it shrewd decision making? After all, Aubameyang was the club’s captain and top goalscorer at the time for Arsenal so it wasn’t an easy choice to make to let him go. Arsenal later struggled for goals, relying on Lacazette, Emile Smith Rowe and eventually Eddie Nketiah when he came into form later in the season. So was the decision to let Aubameyang go worth it in the end? In my opinion, I felt Aubameyang’s departure from the club was a harsh decision that arguably cost Arsenal a place in the Champions League. I genuinely believe if he had stayed he would have carried Arsenal into the top four based on the goal threat he posed and how reliable he was for the club. Instead, Arsenal would narrowly miss out to Spurs at the business end of the 2021–22 season.
If you compare Pep’s treatment of Phil Foden and Jack Grealish, when he found out that they went on a night out in Manchester for a few drinks, he simply benched them for a couple of games. Look at them now, two of, if not, the most entertaining English wingers in the league a few months later. Arteta’s decision to let Aubameyang go reflected a lack of trust and belief in him that he couldn’t turn it around and get his attitude together. The dynamic which Arteta employed felt like that of a school teacher and a pupil. Pep, like everyone else, knows that Phil Foden and Jack Grealish love going out more than anyone. The boys are from Stockport and Birmingham after all. He also knows that Foden and Grealish love playing football to an incredibly high standard and developing their careers, playing with some of the best players in the world in Cancelo, Kevin de Bruyne and now Erling Haaland. A similar example of a good man-management during uncertainty was from the enigmatic figure of Brian Clough with Nottingham Forest. Stuart Pearce, his talismanic defender and then England captain, went away on international duty.
Brian Clough asked when he would be back from the Tuesday fixture to which Pearce replied ‘Thursday afternoon’.
A disgusted Brian Clough said ‘Ok’.
When Stuart Pearce came back from the England game, Clough asks Pearce in his idiosyncratic accent: ‘How did you think you played mid-week in the Tuesday game?’
Pearce replies in his cockney accent ‘yeah I think I did alright, you know’.
Clough comes back to say ‘well I thought you were absolutely shit’ in front of the entire dressing room.
The manager had put an iron in a plastic bag on a towel in the middle of the same dressing room on Thursday’s training. Usually, there would be a football in a plastic bag here, which became a ritual for the Nottingham Forest team.
Drawing attention to this, Clough said: ‘In the programme last Saturday for our home fixture against Aston Villa, there’s an advert which says ‘Pearce’s Electricians’. What’s that all about?’
To which Stuart replies: ‘Yeah it’s a family business that we run.’
Clough then replies: ‘So if my Barabra has a problem with her iron, can I call the number in the advert and expect you to fix it?’
And so Pearce replies ‘No, it’d be my brother who’d do it’.
And he goes, ‘Well I’d like you to fix this iron by Saturday or you’re not playing.’
Brian Clough clearly wanted his talisman defender back from international duty as soon as possible on the Wednesday, not the Thursday and this was his discreet punishment of bringing him back down to earth. Clough had a great sense of humour, which I think at times Arteta lacks by comparison. Perhaps he could have had more humility with the Aubameyang incident and who knows how it could have turned out? The Arsenal manager refers to any misbehaviour in his team to reflect a ‘Casa Pepe’, which is a Spanish phrase for a house where anything goes. Clough’s approach, rather, demonstrates how humble of a manager and a person he is, where he manages to discipline Pearce, while also entertaining the dressing room, Stuart Pearce and football lovers for years to come.
In conclusion, the comparisons between Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola make for an interesting study. Both are Spanish in origin, coaching top level English Premier League sides not in their mother tongue. I think what they have both achieved is incredible, but Pep with his superior experience across La Liga, the Bundesliga and the Premier League knows how to manage his team effectively and get the absolute most out of his players. Mikel Arteta from this season, with strong commitment from Arsenal’s board and their technical director, Edu, former ‘Invincible’, is doing very well. However as a manager, Arteta still has a long way to go to make Arsenal a top-top team that will win the league and can compete in the Champions League on a regular basis. He needs to demonstrate more composure, or ‘pausa’ as he says to his players, when communicating with them and less arrogance when making big decisions around players’ futures, as demonstrated by the example of Aubameyang-gate. Pep by comparison, gets the big decisions right and communicates respectfully and calmly to his players, earning him the respect and success he and his team deserves. Pep makes for an excellent manager of the beautiful game which many young managers such as Arteta should continue to look up to admirably.
