Why strikes from Arteta and Scholes signal a different kind of victory

This impartial observer is delighted at yesterday’s football action. Manchester City have dropped a further three points behind their city neighbours United in the race for the title.

I am impartial. No honestly I am, I don’t support Manchester United. But I do want them to win the league this season rather than Manchester City. In the past I have also celebrated their beating Chelsea to the title. But this evidence is circumstantial – I arrive at my conclusions for reasons other than a premeditated pro-United bias.

Many of these reasons have to do with the lack of respectable alternatives to Sir Alex’s men. This season, despite Tottenham’s lofty intentions, Arsenal’s resurgence and Chelsea’s budget, Manchester City have supplied the only serious challenge to United’s crown – and that challenge now hangs by a thread. I hope that what follows helps to shed some light on why it is that I believe Sunday’s results are a good thing for the league, and a victory for football.

Manchester City’s 2008 takeover, they told us, marked the dawn of a new era in the Premier Division; a new force had arrived on the scene and they had very serious ambitions to dominate the English game. After eighteen months or so of failing to make any real impact on - or even announce themselves as participants in - the title race, City’s hierarchy opted for a change in management. Mark Hughes was replaced by Italian scarf-wearer Roberto Mancini, who declared that City’s first title challenge would commence after a further summer of multi-million pound additions to the playing squad.

That particular assault on the title failed to materialize and Mancini had to settle for 3rd place, close enough to his superiors’ pre-season targets to warrant another shot at the title. They began this season in blistering form after adding the likes of Aguero and Nasri to a squad that already contained a plethora of ‘big-names’. Their home form was faultless, and team after team succumbed to the devastating technical ability of Silva, Aguero and Balotelli - most notably United themselves in a humiliating 6-1 decimation at Old Trafford. Yet the squad’s real strength is its depth.

For every player in the starting eleven a wonderfully expensive replacement can be seen waiting on the bench and several more not even included in the match-day squad, depending on the manager’s squad rotation system. And this is what both my distaste for the club, and, in my opinion, the club’s own eventual failings in the league this season can be traced back to.

There is an artificiality to Manchester City’s Premier League strategy that just doesn’t sit well with the football purist in me. When a squad is put together this hastily, and systematically, it lacks an organic quality that you will see in all the great sides over the years. Their players have arrived, almost exclusively, in the last two seasons in a strategic overhaul of the club’s playing staff.

But it doesn’t extend just to the playing staff. The training ground and academy have been radically redeveloped, and even the appointment of Mancini struck me as ticking boxes in a boardroom master plan. Continental coach? Tick. Wearing a blue and white scarf? Tick. Manchester City is an organisation, a project, a pseudo-club.


City’s identity is difficult to pin down. Were Arsenal, Tottenham or even Chelsea to win the league, I would at least know who I should be pleased for. They have players and management who are so deeply ingrained that they are almost part of the very fabric of the club. Terry and Lampard embody what it is to be Chelsea, Wenger and van Persie are the same to Arsenal. No such comparison can be drawn for Manchester City.

All of this is why it gave me such pleasure to watch Mikel Arteta hit a late winner at the Emirates yesterday. A football club with a bit of tradition is going to win the league this season. Scholes has almost become a tradition in of himself, and his excellent goal to see off QPR further vindicates his return to the side.

Arteta’s late strike perhaps signifies the revival of another football club that values tradition.

Arsenal’s woes of two months ago suddenly look very far away. The calls for Wenger’s head look more foolish by the day as his side plays with a fresh impetus and determination. The significance of Arsenal’s recovery will only be truly tested next season, but for now their form is highly rewarding to watch.

The history books will show that Easter Sunday’s fixtures resulted in victories for Manchester United and Arsenal, but I know better: football was the winner there.