Talking tactics: Chelsea knows Mikel Arteta is not Unai Emery or Pep Guardiola

Chelsea again faces a club with a new manager that cannot be accounted for. Arsenal will be tough but Mikel Arteta is not Unai Emery or Pep Guardiola.

Quick! Imagine any former top six player being announced as the manager of a Premier League club. Most would say they play expansive, attractive, possession based football and that they are great at developing young players. Pep Guardiola is a big reason for the birth of that stereotype so it is only natural that his assistant for the last few years, Mikel Arteta, would be just like him.

Except there is no evidence of that. Arteta has now managed exactly one match as a first team manager. That is not a sample size worth making any sweeping statements about his style now or in the future.

This is an issue Frank Lampard has faced a few times in recent weeks. Everton sacked Marco Silva before they faced Chelsea. Jose Mourinho has only been at Tottenham a few short weeks, far too little time to really make sweeping changes ahead of playing Chelsea. And now again, Lampard faces a team that will have one foot in the tactics of the old manager and a toe or two in the new manager’s tactics.

In his one match as a first team manager, Arteta set Arsenal up in a pretty standard 4-2-3-1. In fact, it looked a whole lot like a 4-2-3-1 Jose Mourinho would have picked had he gotten the job. A back four is headed by a combative pivot. One winger is a true winger while the other is a striker (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang) pushed wide. A creative if defensively passive number 10 (Mesut Ozil) sits behind a smart striker.

Tactically, the only thing that really can be said about Arteta’s Arsenal now is that they are starting with the basics (which is more or less true for every new manager). That likely played its part in Arteta’s use of a very standard 4-2-3-1. It is also the right direction to go after Unai Emery seemingly had a brand new philosophy every single week.

The intangibles are harder to determine at the moment. Arsenal did seem much more active on and off the ball against Bournemouth which, again, is pretty common under new managers. Every player wants to impress the new boss and that reflects on the pitch.

But it is still early in his tenure and Lampard can use that to his advantage. A lot of the same strengths and weaknesses from Emery’s time will remain, even if the players are working harder in the short term for the new manager. If Chelsea can overcome their own demons, they can exploit the remaining ones Arsenal holds.

Arteta is not Emery. But he should not be expected to be Pep Guardiola either. He could be eventually, but at the moment this is still the Arsenal team that had terrible positioning and low confidence. It will be up to Chelsea to exploit that as much as possible while it is still early days for Arteta.