It was at the Kassam Stadium, the home of Oxford United, of all places, that the enmity between Manchester City and Arsenal began to surface. It will be rekindled when the sides meet again this Sunday in what has developed into a bitter, edgy rivalry. Both clubs feel provoked.
Unlike City’s epic battles with Liverpool – where it felt the dislike and anger did not infect the managers or players – this one runs deep. It stretches from the boardroom down to the pitch and has even led Pep Guardiola to uncharacteristically declare, after the explosive 2-2 draw earlier this season: “You want a war? Now we war.”
There are those who believe that Guardiola feels let down by Mikel Arteta, especially after how he helped to develop his former assistant’s career only for the latter then to make cryptic comments about City, saying: “I have all the information, so I know, believe me.”
What did Arteta mean by that? Arsenal sources have tried to play it down, insisting no disrespect was meant and arguing that he was just alluding to City’s desire to win and the use of so-called “dark arts” both by them and his own team.
That is not how it was taken at City – who are awaiting the verdict on the 115 alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules – where Guardiola’s close relationship with Arteta, who refers to his former boss as his “hero”, is now curtly described as “OK” when it used to be far stronger than that.
The first skirmish came just over five years ago. For those waiting in the tunnel that December evening in 2019, ahead of Oxford’s Carabao Cup quarter-final against City, it was clear the visitors were more agitated than would be expected as they prepared to face a League One side.
In fact City were seething. Less than 48 hours earlier, two Arsenal executives – the then managing director Vinai Venkatesham and Huss Fahmy, the club’s director of football operations – had been caught red-handed. They were photographed leaving Arteta’s home at 1.20am.
A few hours beforehand, City had comprehensively beaten Arsenal 3-0 at the Emirates and Arteta was alongside Guardiola in the away dugout. Arsenal wanted him to be their new head coach but the problem was, it appeared, that the first evidence City had of this was the incriminating photographs that were published of Venkatesham and Fahmy getting into a blacked-out Mercedes in a leafy Manchester road, with a senior City source labelling the behaviour as “shambolic”.
“It’s surprising to hear that plans are being made by Arsenal to unveil our coach as their head coach on Friday on the basis that no contact has been made by the club to discuss this matter,” the source said.
There was even erroneous speculation that Arteta might not board the City team bus for the midweek cup tie in Oxford. He went to oversee the warm-up, and kept a low profile during the game, rarely leaving the bench. By the Friday, he was indeed the new Arsenal head coach, declaring he would give “every drop of blood” to improve the club.
It was emotive language – this rivalry has become extremely emotive – but no one doubts Arteta has proven as good his word. Indeed City go into Sunday’s Premier League game accepting that, this season at least, they are on the back foot in the rivalry. Their big game this week is not against Arsenal but was the 3-1 home win over Club Brugge that earned them a Champions League play-off. Arsenal have serenely qualified for the last 16.
Those photographs of Venkatesham and Fahmy – both no longer at Arsenal – have proven emblematic of the rivalry. They fuelled City’s sense that, though Arsenal portray themselves as a club who do things properly and abide by the rules, they resorted to underhand tactics. For Arsenal, meanwhile, there is a whiff of hypocrisy in City getting so upset.
As ever, there are two sides to the story, even if Arsenal were bang to rights on the Arteta approach. Take, for example, the transfers between the clubs. Arsenal undoubtedly benefited from City’s spending between 2009 and 2011, in the first flush of the Abu Dhabi takeover, as they sold four players to them – Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri, Gaël Clichy and Kolo Touré – for a combined cost of £71 million. Bacary Sagna followed the same path in 2014 on a free transfer. That money was vital to Arsenal – a lifeline, it could be argued – at a time when finances were tight and they were struggling to pay off the cost of the Emirates.
Wenger barb sparked tensions
Arsenal happily did business with City yet, after Arsène Wenger left the club years later, he reiterated the provocative phrase he first applied to Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea when he spoke of “financial doping” and claimed he had been forced to sell those players.
For balance, City were then fine about selling Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus to Arteta for a combined fee of £75 million in 2022 – when it did not appear Arsenal were a threat – but refused to deal with them a year later when they enquired about João Cancelo. That was their prerogative, but it showed the landscape had changed.
Those deals went to the heart of yet more tension: the sense of old money against new; of an establishment against the redefining – or challenging – of the status quo. It is here that the boardroom and the footage of what happened at the Etihad after the final whistle of a dramatic draw last September, following John Stones’ 98th-minute equaliser, comes in.
Again there are two sides to the story. But the images clearly show Arsenal’s executive vice-chairman Tim Lewis hurriedly leaving his seat and walking up the stairs and out of the directors’ box without shaking the hand of City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak. A surprised Khaldoon is seen looking back and pointing in Lewis’s direction, while it is left to David O’Leary, an Arsenal ambassador, and the then sporting director Edu, to deal with the City party.
City undoubtedly felt slighted – the footage does not look good for Lewis – and the alternative interpretation, for balance, is not the strongest: he wanted to quickly head down to the dressing room to console Arteta and the players after such an intense game and he had mingled freely with City figures prior to kick-off. That explanation feels a little thin.
It is also understood that Lewis has been encouraging the Premier League to adopt “anchoring”, a new way of regulating expenditure as the financial rules are redrawn, and has been described, by several clubs, as being forceful in meetings.
Anchoring is controversial as it limits spending to a multiple of the smallest club’s broadcast earnings and is regarded by some as curbing ambition. Its chief opponents have been Manchester United and – guess who? Yes, City.
And on the pitch? That is where it has really turned spicy, with City beating Arsenal to the Premier League title two seasons in succession, winning four in a row.
Arsenal have made progress under Arteta but that has hurt, as did Rodri’s dismissive comment when asked why City had again won the league last season. “Arsenal, also they deserve [to be champions],” he said. “They did an unbelievable season but I think the difference was in here [pointing to his head].”
The rivalry is undeniably there even if City can point out that, unlike Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, Arsenal are yet to win much under Arteta, apart from the FA Cup at the end of his first season.
Guardiola mentioned “war” – not language he would usually adopt – in response to Gabriel Magalhães using the same word, declaring that Arsenal would be “waiting for them [City]” when this February fixture came around.
Gabriel was riled because Erling Haaland had hit the back of his head after throwing the ball in frustration following Stones’ goal. The striker, like his team-mates, complained about Arsenal’s alleged time-wasting, their feigning injury and gamesmanship.
“You can call it clever or dirty – whichever way you want to put it,” Stones said, although Arsenal argue they were trying to cope with only 10 men after Leandro Trossard’s disputed dismissal for a second yellow card, shown to the Belgian when he kicked the ball away 0.84 seconds after the whistle had been blown.
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It went on and on. City were angry that Arsenal were allowed to take a quick free-kick for their equalising goal; Arsenal felt hard done by when substitute Myles Lewis-Skelly was booked for running behind the goal to tell David Raya to go down injured.
Afterwards, Haaland was caught on camera turning to Arteta and telling him to “stay humble”. The point is this: neither City nor Arsenal believe the other has done that. There will be no lack of motivation this weekend.
