Arteta fails audition for top job

PEP GUARDIOLA leaves an unfillable void on the touchline. It was obvious in the second half of their defeat by Liverpool in April and obvious last night too. He sat up in the stands alongside his son, Marius, brooding over a performance that had unquestionably been coming. Unfortunately for Mikel Arteta, it came when it was his chance to patrol the home technical area. This was not an ideal audition for the top job, which those around Guardiola — suspended for the opening Champions League game — claim his assistant could be offered in the near future. Some call Arteta a ‘photocopy’ of Guardiola and that goes some way to explaining the esteem in which he is held. As a teenager at Barcelona, the young midfielder was known by supporters as ‘Little Guardiola’. Yet the pretender would never emulate his elder’s achievements as a player and it is a tall order in management too. Arteta did everything he could to affect this game. He sent his players out early after half-time. He sent for Leroy Sane shortly after the break in the hope of overturning a two-goal deficit. But the Guardiola mannerisms on display were almost all negative. Arteta slaps his hands together in frustration just like the manager. A rub of the forehead when Lyon’s Maxwel Cornet and Nabil Fekir pounced on mistakes looked familiar too. At 7:17pm last night, Arteta was the first out on to the Etihad pitch. Business as usual, then, until events took a disastrous turn. Arteta had bounded into Monday’s press conference like someone relishing this chance. He claimed this team are ‘the best in the world’, and also labelled them ‘my players’. Last night they did not look like his . . . or Guardiola’s.