While Pep Guardiola is the original architect of many ideas Arteta uses, it’s clear the master is learning from the student these days.
Guardiola is now using Nico O’Reilly and Núñez — both attacking midfielders by trait — as inverted fullbacks to create midfield overloads, control play between the lines, and progress the ball, just as Arteta has successfully done at Arsenal.
He is also experimenting with positional rotations and a high defensive line with midfield cover, tactics Arteta has expanded and perfected in his own way. The ideas may have originated with Pep, but Arteta has reinvented them, and now Guardiola is adapting to his former student’s innovations.
And yet, despite all this, people still claim Arteta has learned nothing from Pep — clearly forgetting that he not only absorbed Pep’s ideas but has expanded and reinvented them in a way that even the master now studies.
Show some love to the one and only Mikel Arteta.






