This weekend, two of the Premier League era’s most consistent performers will meet at the Emirates Stadium.
As Manchester United travel to Arsenal, it won’t just be a rivalry between clubs, but a thoroughly reliable rivalry between the managers, too: Arsene Wenger has beaten Jose Mourinho only once in the Premier League, but even that was only after the Red Devils had given up on the league last season on their way to a Europa League triumph.
But this season, the reliability of both sides is surely in question, and therefore that of both managers, too. Manchester United are boosted with the arrival of Paul Pogba, and Arsenal are fresh from a thumping victory over Huddersfield, and yet both sides have underwhelmed on several occasions so far in the first few months of the season. Both have flowered us with flattery before duly delivering deceit.
But at least Arsenal’s deception – if we can even call it that these days – is expected. If the Gunners disappoint, it’s only because you made the increasingly stupid mistake of believing this time would be any different to the previous ones. If you believed the hype then more fool you. United’s first month of the campaign, on the other hand, promised much more than the dour 0-0 we were treated to at Anfield before a run of games took a Manchester shootout of a title race seemingly so thoroughly out of our willing hands.
There’s still time to put that right, but the hope is vanishing, and Mourinho will now have to decide if his United go all in on a hand he may well have already shown to be a weak one: it will take victory over Arsenal as well as triumph over Pep Guardiola’s runaway train Manchester City to spark some sort of a title race, and even then he requires a collapse. And yet in the period when Paul Pogba was absent, the Red Devils showed little evidence that they’re capable of coming at City from so far behind.
If you wanted a morale-boosting away victory over a top six rival before taking the league leaders back to your place the very next week, though, you’d certainly choose Arsenal at the Emirates. There should be no doubt that the Gunners look like the softest of the top sides this season: they look like the weakest prey, and Mourinho, the quintessential Premier League predator will surely have sensed that. And yet, away games against top six rivals are often simply exercises in clean-sheetery for the Portuguese coach. This weekend, he will have to provide quite a bit more.
If a title race is to break out before Christmas, Jose Mourinho will probably need to dig into the reliability reserves in order to mastermind victories over both Arsene Wenger and Pep Guardiola, but if the past is anything to go on, the Manchester United coach won’t open up and have a go.
But if there is to be a title race, it won’t be a normal one, and that’s the tragedy for United this season.
Although Mourinho is a man who still has all the tools to win a Premier League, his method seems to work as a matter of attrition. Grinding away relentlessly as others drop off, the United coach’s gameplan is simply to outlast the others at the start of the season because when his sides takes a lead, they hold onto it.
Interestingly, this season it’s worked: his side are three points ahead of any other normal team at this stage of the season. They have scored more goals and conceded fewer than anyone else. They have a goal difference of at least ten better than closest their rivals. And usually, Mourinho would be able to hold onto that lead until the new year, solidifying his side’s position and then holding out for the rest of the season, emerging with two hands on the trophy and a snarl on his face.
But not this year. This time they are up against a Manchester City side who are playing a brand of football the Premier League has not witnessed before.
This season, reliability has gone out the window because this is no normal Premier League season. The presence of Manchester City has taken the title race out of the hands of mere normals and Mourinho will have to adapt if he’s to make up the gap because no longer can he win by attrition.
This weekend, Mourinho will face his Old Faithful in Arsene Wenger, but rather than beat Guardiola by making sure he doesn’t lose to top six rivals, he’s now up against a very different task where consistency and reliability won’t be enough. This is a Premier League title race. Just not as we know it.