Why Arteta and Postecoglou adopted opposing football philosophies

Back in the happy early days of Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham tenure, it was a joke he was happy to be a part of.

After his Spurs side won 2-0 away to Bournemouth in the third game of that 2023-24 season, analyst Joe Cole asked Postecoglou live on the match’s British broadcaster TNT Sports how he had already managed to get his full-backs to turn into midfield and attack from there. Postecoglou smiled and pulled the trigger: “I’m just copying Pep, mate.”

When Tottenham beat Crystal Palace 2-1 on their travels two months later and Postecoglou was on top of the world, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher joked with him that he was still just “copying Pep”. Postecoglou was happy to run with it. “I just study one game a week, see what he does and go from there.”

The only other manager who has been accused of copying Pep Guardiola quite so much is Mikel Arteta. And while Postecoglou was only on the fringes of the Guardiola circuit, having managed Japan’s City Football Group side Yokohama F. Marinos, Arteta was right at the heart of the power. For three and a half years, he sat at Guardiola’s right hand and acted as his sounding board and tactical fixer at Manchester City. From there he went to Arsenal in December 2019 to build his own team.

If the above was all you knew about Postecoglou and Arteta, you might expect a North London derby at the Emirates Stadium tonight between two carbon-copy sides, each trying to implement the Guardiola playbook better than their opponents.

In a universe where Arsenal and Spurs is facsimiles of the same original, this game will be decided only by who is the most faithful version. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. These two coaches, although both associated with the same ideas and the same inspiration, have built teams that are radically different.

The experience of watching both this season has been almost like watching two different sports.

Tottenham’s games are defined by their openness and their unpredictability. Spurs are the most highly varied team in recent Premier League history. People tune in because anything can happen.

Following Postecoglou’s page is like being on a roller coaster – in the dark. On a good day they can beat four-in-a-row champions City, as they have done twice already this season, including 4-0 in Manchester. On a bad day they could lose to Ipswich Town or Crystal Palace. They can be beaten in games where they were 2-0 up, as they have been twice this season.

Spurs are the second top scorers in the 2024-25 Premier League (42 goals from 20 games) but have lost half of those games. Therefore, they are number 13 in the table with 20 clubs.

Arsenal are the opposite. You know exactly what you’re getting with them.

They have the best defense in the league and have only conceded 18 league goals in their 20 games so far. They also had the best defense in 2023-24, allowing 29 in the 38 games.

So while Spurs games are open and unpredictable, Arsenal’s games are carefully planned.

Rank all 20 Premier League clubs by total expected goals (xG) – for and against – in their top games so far this season and you’ll find the two north London sides at opposite ends of the table.

Arsenal’s matches average just 2.65 xG each. The only teams whose games have a lower average for that goal are Everton and Nottingham Forest (both 2.38), two teams whose whole focus is to keep it close and play on the break. Then at the other end of the scale you have the Spurs. Their games average 3.54 xG in the league, ahead of Chelsea’s 3.47. On this basis, Tottenham are the most entertaining team in the country.

Remember Spurs’ 3-2 defeat at Brighton in October 2024? The visitors were 2-0 up at half-time and collapsed in the second half, conceding three goals in 18 minutes. It was the sort of risk that Tottenham are particularly exposed to given how they play and the sort of results Arsenal avoid.

But before kick-off that day, Postecoglou was asked on Sky Sports how he planned for Spurs to control what was expected to be an open game. “We don’t,” he smiled. “Let’s keep it open, that way we’ll entertain everyone and hopefully get the result we want.”

It’s impossible to imagine Arteta ever saying that about an Arsenal game. He is obsessed with control, he just prefers to call it ‘dominance’.

Here you can see the difference between Postecoglou’s exciting but delicate Formula 1 car and Arteta’s robust SUV.

You can also look at their contrasting approach to set pieces.

So much of Arsenal’s success in recent years has been built on set pieces. They are better at these than anyone else, especially since Arteta brought in Nicolas Jover as a specialist coach to oversee them. Something Postecoglou promised last season he would not do. “Eventually, I want to create a team that is successful,” he said last May, “and it won’t be because of the set-piece work.” (Spurs did eventually bringing in Nick Montgomery over the summer to run their set pieces.)

The contrast with Arsenal is clear. And not just because Arteta’s side have scored three times from corners in their last two trips to Tottenham, winning both games. There is a larger debate here about which aspects of football are important and which are not.

Even now, Postecoglou struggles to hide his feelings about that side of the game. “I know I’m alone in this, I don’t like them,” he admitted in November, after another brawl over a corner conceded by Spurs. “It looks like a (rugby) scrum. I just don’t think that’s what football is about.”

But for Arteta, football is clearly about exploiting every edge to try to win.

Arsenal, who have not won the Premier League since 2004, are relentless in leaving no stone unturned in their pursuit of success. Dead balls and the game’s so-called ‘dark arts’ may be part of it, but he is obsessed with wringing the maximum out of every improved detail.

Last summer, while in the United States on a pre-season tour, Arteta was asked what Arsenal could do better in the upcoming campaign. He specifically referred to “reboots”. No Premier League team is more focused on marginal gains, tweaks and details. It has felt at times this season that Arsenal have almost forgotten their core principles and the brand of football the club used to play in the pursuit of pushing every conceivable margin.

The Spurs come at this from the opposite direction.

Their focus is solely on mastering their Plan A, rather than making adjustments around the edges. The belief at Tottenham is that if they can beat their game plan and deliver it with full physical force, no one can live with them. They don’t have to worry about adapting based on the next opponents when they can be the protagonists themselves. And the benefit, if it works, is so great that the little details don’t matter. Maximum gains, not marginal.

At the heart of this is the question of what tactics are really for.

In Arteta’s pragmatic mind, any tactic is just a neutral tool to achieve a specific goal. At times under Arsene Wenger’s management from 1996 to 2018, Arsenal were accused of being romantic or artistic, of prioritizing goals other than success itself. No one would say that about their current team. Everything they do is aimed at winning. Just as it was for Arteta when they low-balled their way to lifting the FA Cup in his debut season five years ago.

For Postecoglou, there is clearly a normative dimension, a sense that he needs his team to play a certain way and represent certain values. The ‘style’ is not just a means to an end, but an end in itself. It cannot be disposed of just when times get tough. (It is worth acknowledging here that Tottenham have adjusted their approach in the last few weeks, playing in a more conventional 4-2-3-1 as they finally come to terms with the impact of their injury crisis).

Remember when Spurs hosted Chelsea in November 2023? They scored first and then held a 1-1 draw for most of the second half with just nine men. But they continued to defend on the halfway line and stuck to Postecoglou’s approach. Tottenham eventually lost 4-1, conceding twice in extra time, but they proved their commitment to his ideological principles. It was the foundational moment of their manager’s “That’s who we are, mate” football.

Last September, Arsenal played at Manchester City, 2-1 up at half-time, but down to 10 after Leandro Trossard was sent off. They took the exact opposite approach to defending a lead for Spurs that night against Chelsea, defending not on the halfway line but on the edge of their own penalty area. They came within seconds of seeing the game out for victory before City grabbed an equaliser.

It was a surprise to some to see Guardiola’s long-time apprentice use Jose Mourinho-esque football against him, but nobody at Arsenal would have cared if it had worked.

But should it really be that much of a shock? Some like to see Guardiola as a romantic figure, but ultimately his career is defined by building relentless winning machines at three of the richest clubs in the world, Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and now City. Style was the means, but never more than that.

There’s also plenty of flexibility, as you can tell by how much more physical City got between their 2018 and 2023 iterations. Arteta’s Arsenal are not radically different from how Guardiola’s teams play the game when he is at his most pragmatic. Arteta has spent enough time with his fellow Spaniard to know where his true priorities lie.

Perhaps it is Postecoglou who sees a different side of Guardiola; the idealism, the romanticism that we like to project onto the mayor from afar. It is Postecoglou who will test his ideas to destruction, even at the risk of losing his job, and continue to play the same way regardless of the circumstances.

Because it is only Postecoglou, rather than Arteta, who believes that his style of play can speak to a higher value or purpose.

Regardless of whether Guardiola himself would see it that way.

(Top images: Getty Images)