Bad blood, toxicity and needle – pass the popcorn please

The rivalry, the bad blood, the toxicity that has developed between Manchester City and Arsenal spreads from the pitch to the stands to the boardrooms. Not until this week has it also affected the dugouts.

Between Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta it has always been cordial, built on their friendship, but now it seems that dynamic, too, has changed and we are heading for a classic head-to-head between the two big beasts of the Premier League: pass the popcorn because this one could run and run.

It is absolutely not Guardiola’s style to seek out such personal confrontation but what has always been clear with the Catalan is that when he is challenged, he will bite back. Jose Mourinho snapped away at him in Spain when he was in charge of Real Madrid and Guardiola was with Barcelona because it is one of the key moves in his playbook.

“In this [press] room, Mourinho is the f------ chief, the f------ boss. I don’t want to compete with him in here… but this is a game of football,” Guardiola once declared. And, remember, that he and Mourinho were once good friends, back when the latter was Sir Bobby Robson’s translator at Barcelona and Guardiola was a player.

Guardiola does not want to be ensnared in that kind of personal rivalry ever again. It does not come as instinctively to him as it does Mourinho or, before him, Sir Alex Ferguson, who identified the threat of Arsène Wenger, met it head-on and fought tooth-and-claw to combat it. The pair are now firm friends but you do not have to delve too deeply into their history to dig up the animosity.

More recently, Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp avoided it even when Liverpool’s rivalry with City was at its fiercest. It never, ever became personal between the pair and there was a clear, mutual respect with them even joking at an awards dinner after Liverpool had won the Champions League and City the Premier League title, that each had what the other one craved.

Arteta may have gone too far

Now it appears that Arteta has changed things, although he may well protest otherwise and it may have been unwitting. He has made it personal and he may have gone too far. Guardiola will feel let down, for sure. “I was there for four years. I have the information. So I know,” the Arsenal manager said when dismissing City’s complaints about his team’s “dark arts” during the 2-2 draw last Sunday.

For Guardiola, that was like lighting the blue touchpaper and especially with the backdrop of the case beginning this week into the 115 charges that have been laid at City’s door by the Premier League for alleged financial irregularities.

Arteta was surely not referring to that when he talked about “information” but Guardiola raised it when he was questioned about his former assistant’s comments at his own pre-match press conference on Friday. Guardiola has already suggested that City’s rivals — and Arsenal are their biggest rivals at present — want them “wiped off the face of the Earth”.

Instead what Arteta appeared to be driving at — and let us not beat about the bush here — is that if there were any “dark arts” applied by Arsenal then they were ones he had learnt from working with Guardiola.

‘You want a war? Now we war’

He was pinning that directly at Pep and no one else and it should also be recalled that City midfielder Rodri said in an interview back in 2019 that he has learned about “tactical fouling” while working under Guardiola.

Arteta said the title race will not affect his friendship with Guardiola and the Catalan revealed the two had been in contact after last Sunday’s combustible, intense encounter. But certainly now the City manager appears to have reacted to Arteta’s provocation and in a way that suggests their friendship is being tested.

“You want a war? Now we war,” Guardiola said in a comment that will echo throughout this season, and although that referred to what the Arsenal defender Gabriel had said — threatening they would be “waiting” for February’s rematch — it followed on from him saying Arteta had his head in the clouds and needed to be clearer as to what he was accusing him and City of.

A rivalry for the ages has been born

Of course, ultimately, this is all just knockabout stuff which makes great copy, good headlines and fuels the fire. For Guardiola, in England at least and not since he left Spain, partly because he had had enough of Mourinho, it is new territory. He has not really been talked about — challenged? — in this way by such a direct rival since he arrived in the Premier League.

Given City have won the last four league titles, and six times in the last seven campaigns, maybe we need a bit more needle. Arsenal will believe it is a sign they have got under Guardiola and City’s skin and their fans will lap it up. What should they do? Not fight their corner?

City will believe it is another example of Arsenal’s arrogance, maybe even hypocrisy and certainly an attempt to do them down and carp about their achievements.

That is all well known. But up to this point Arteta has been gracious and Guardiola complimentary. Now that has stopped because what makes it different is the personal — and public — nature of it which Arteta has provoked. He has brought an edge and a spite and Guardiola has reacted. For good or bad, we have a rivalry for the ages on every level which now includes the managers.