Why Manchester City and Arsenal will dominate the Premier League season again.

 Last season saw Manchester City win the Premier League title by a margin of 2 points over Arsenal, with both teams battling it out till the last day of the campaign. But a league campaign is a long journey of 38 football games in over ten months, playing in 20 different stadiums, including your home grounds, at different kickoff times, which are mostly during the weekends and sometimes during the week, every game brings a different challenge in terms of the fitness of each player in the squad, level of fatigue, travelling for away games, and tactical preparations for the opponent since you face different players, managers, and styles of play every week. Manchester City have won 6 of the last 7 Premier League titles, and Arsenal have also dominated the league along with City for 2 seasons, winning 54 of their 76 games, scoring 179 goals, and keeping 32 clean sheets in that time period. City, the team that won the title on both occasions, won 56 out of their 76 games in that time frame, scoring 190 goals and keeping 26 clean sheets. The Premier League is filled with lots of talented players, yet these teams still dominate. What are they doing better than the rest of the league? Here is my opinion on why they are by far the best teams in the league and why it will be hard for teams to stop them from dominating.

    A regular top-level footballer plays an average of 45 games every season; that makes it 67 hours and 30 minutes of football every season. That means running around and kicking the ball for an average of 100 minutes every week, which includes cup competitions. What majorly separates teams like Arsenal and City from the rest of the league? Quality of players? Yeah, that’s the obvious and popular answer, but you can also have 11 random quality players, and as long as they don’t communicate telepathically, they can never reach the level of dominance these teams have attained. One factor a lot of football fans ignore is how teams play. We mostly appreciate what we are watching when the ball moves around the pitch with different players with their abilities and hits the back of the net, but what happens in the areas of the pitch where the ball isn’t? .How is it easier for the ball to hit the back of one net than the other? Or how a team can spring 15 passes together in tight areas without losing the ball in less than 10 seconds and the other can't complete 2 touches in the opposition box? Or how one team wins the ball back in dangerous areas seconds after losing it and the other is facing a counterattack? The answer to these questions doesn’t just lie in players abilities alone; players can't keep doing this collectively well and getting it right 70% of the time while thinking about it; it all comes down to how well defined a system is and how easy it is to apply it to 70 to 90% of scenarios a player can go through in every game. The remaining 10% is the “Sh*t happens” scenario, which in most cases has no logical explanation.

    Manchester City scored 190 goals in 2 seasons, but how do they do it so easily? Haaland is the easiest answer, but he only scored 63 of the 190 (which is incredibly insane), but how did the 128 remaining come to be, and how does Haaland manage to score 63 Premier League goals in over 2 seasons even after missing 62 big chances? Not any other club can pull that off in the league; the only other club close to doing that recently has been Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool, whose system, however impressive, takes a massive toll on the players in the long run. Haaland, Foden, Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, and Rodri are impressive players, but the major fact people ignore about City is how it's been drilled into their subconscious by Pep Guardiola's ability to find spaces and easily spot the closest player in those spaces; they do this very well better than any other team in the world. That’s why when City signs a midfielder or attacker (except Haaland) there is always a similar profile of how good the player is in tight spaces and how they can easily play their way out of it; their tactical and pressing discipline is later drilled into them by constant training. That’s why it's hard to see new signings go straight into their starting lineup, as there are basics about the system that has been drilled into the rest of the starting lineup the new signing would have to catch up with in order to keep up with the team. There is always an option: a player in a pocket of space. If the player on the ball can't get it to him, there is a player available for the pass who can eventually get the ball to that player (in the pocket of space). Arsenal are the closest team to the city in terms of this, but they haven’t gotten to the level of the city. City's defence is one of the best in the league personally, I feel, because of how devastating cities are when they go forward and teams aren’t confident enough of going after them, and when teams actually do go after, then they reset into shape and press outward, forcing their opponents backwards, which forces them to take risks, which would be rewarded if they got it right, but once they got it wrong, City will pour 6-7 bodies forward, outnumbering their opponents in their own half. The only teams who have done this a little bit better than them recently are Jurgen Klopps Liverpool and Arsenal, but here is Arsenal's slight difference: they take fewer risks. Whenever Arsenal and sometimes city are on the transition unless there is an open space to run into they will all pour bodies forward in two lines while the first section of the first line waits to receive the pass and the other section is making decoy runs to free up spaces in front for the second line who are mostly fullbacks or their midfielders and most times by the time the player in the second line receives the ball late the player who made the initial pass (to the first section of the first line) is already making a run into space which the defenders have neglected because of focussing their attentions to the initial runners creating multiple options, that run then triggers the defenders attention and they lose sight to who to mark leaving the initial runners free in spaces to receive the pass creating a dangerous constant moving triangle which is very hard to defend that’s why most cases teams back off in that scenario and just try to reshape.

    With defending for both teams, Arsenal edges it a bit for me and it's how the entire team does it as a unit. When they are pressing and trying to squeeze their opponents, the communication between the defence line and the midfield is just so good whether it's to join in on the press or back up in order to avoid a long ball over the top plus they never leave their defence incomplete a midfielder or attacker always drops in during a press to complete the defensive line. Sometimes when the press is unsuccessful the speed at which they regroup and restart the press is just a joy to watch, hence their large number clean sheets.

    People often wonder why small teams respects them and just sit tight and try not to lose the games by a large margin, most people often think it is because of the attack but I think it’s a bit of both, it's not every day the attack will be at its best and its not every day the defence will be at its best and when human factor happens which makes all the departments not at their best Muscle Memory kicks in and helps them out because of doing this every time hence their consistency.

    The similar system employed by both teams makes it hard for their opponents to defend, win the ball back and if they do, they can't attack without taking risks upon risks.

     I hope this was insightful and enlightening write up, kindly share this with football fans and drop a comment about what you think, till next time.