Mikel Arteta shows his Arsenal side are happy to win ugly as Aubameyang double seals scrappy FA Cup final victory
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MIKEL ARTETA may be a disciple of the beautiful game but now we know he’ll happily go ugly if it means the difference between winning and losing trophies.
Arteta has studied under the master of tiki-taka Pep Guardiola but in the FA Cup final he showed he is not just a clone of the Manchester City boss.
For make no mistake, Pep wouldn’t have done what Arteta did in ordering his team to go long to expose Chelsea’s weaknesses in the back.
Arsenal had done their homework before the game and knew just how to hurt Frank Lampard’s side – and it wasn’t necessarily going to be by playing one touch passing football.
No, when push came to shove the Spaniard went route one to give the Gunners the best possible chance of winning the Cup.
With Reece James pushing up as the right wing-back, Chelsea’s three-man defence was vulnerable to one thing as they played a high line – the ball over the top.
It is why he opted to start with the pace of Ainsley Maitland-Niles out on the left, to run the channel and get into the space left down the side of the plodding Cesar Azpilicueta.
Mr Consistent the Spanish defender may have been for years, but pacy he isn’t and a good old-fashioned foot race was always going to cause him problems. And Arteta knew it.
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Every time Kieran Tierney got in possession on the left he was screaming at Maitland-Niles to get on his bike in behind and sure enough the ball was pumped forward.
It was just such a move that got Arsenal back into the game as they were left playing catch-up after falling behind to Christian Pulisic’s fifth minute goal.
This time it was Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang who was galloping away trying to latch onto Tierney’s lofted ball over the top with Azpilicueta floundering.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was damn effective as Aubameyang was hauled down to earn the penalty he converted to draw Arsenal level, and from that moment it was the men in red who were in control of the game.
The order continued to come from the man in black throughout that first half, and another punt had Azpilicueta stretching to get back so hard his hamstring went.
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It was only after they had Chelsea rattled that Arteta was happy to let his players build in midfield and they thoroughly deserved the win they secured.
Pep would never have done it that way, and as a result he would have missed a trick.
For Arteta, though, beauty is only half as important. Winning means everything, even if it comes ugly.