Swansea City v Arsenal: Arsène Wenger pays tribute to Brendan Rodgers' principles

In Arsenal’s trip to Swansea, we have a duel of the aesthetes in the major and minor key. The ball will not be treated like a live grenade and hurled back and forth until the referee brings proceedings to a merciful end.

This will be game in which pattern of thought is reflected in pattern of play.

Something will have to give, though, because neither Swansea nor Arsenal will surrender the ball.

Arsène Wenger’s side have the best pass-completion ratio in the league but Swansea are not far behind – Brendan Rodgers’ team are more accurate with their passing than even Manchester United.

Wenger has grown – fairly wearily – used to a clash of style on his travels around his adopted country but this afternoon he faces a team that plays by the same ambitious principles as his own.

That once rare treat is becoming more frequent. There is a quiet revolution taking place in the English (and Welsh) football underclass. Teams are discovering the high style.

“For me they remind me a little bit of Blackpool last year,” Wenger said. “They play with freedom, a positive style going forward. They are a bit more cautious than Blackpool because they were really a very offensive-minded team. You have to give credit to the manager for doing that. They are brave but not adventurous because they go through their wingers and keep possession. They do not throw all their bodies forward.”

Wenger points out that Swansea complete a greater percentage of passes in their own half. That is not, he is quick to stress, a criticism.

“They pass the ball well,” he said. “They have a kind of conservative possession so they don’t concede goals. That’s why I tell you they keep the ball a lot in their half and they are less adventurous than Blackpool were.”

For Wenger, seeing teams like Swansea playing as such augurs well for the future of English football.

While the ideas he imported about sports science are now de rigueur at any club that takes themselves seriously, the conversion to a more technical, passing style has been longer in the gestation.

Now clubs further down the league are starting to play in a way that bears resemblance to the Arsenal method. Wenger cites Blackpool, Wigan and Norwich who, like Swansea, have shown ambition and courage. Suddenly there is an opportunity for a different type of British player to make it in the Premier League.

Previously, if you were a small central midfielder who relied on his passing, it was extremely hard to breakthrough unless you were of the calibre of Jack Wilshere.

At Swansea, Rodgers has encouraged Joe Allen, all of 5ft 6in to flourish in the centre of midfield while Leon Britton, a 5ft 5in Lilleshall graduate who played for both the Arsenal and West Ham’s youth teams, is the player with the best pass-completion ratio in the Premier League.

Chelsea have sent the slight but gifted Josh McEachran to the Liberty Stadium. It is becoming a finishing school for the player of finesse.

As a result, not only are there more English and Welsh players at the highest level who are comfortable on the ball but, a British football audience grows accustomed to the idea that it takes more guts to make a risky pass or demand possession when marked than to slide into a tackle or thump the ball up the field.

For Wenger it is a cultural change that can be driven only by coaches.

“The younger managers who come up maybe have a different style,” he said. Conventional wisdom states that teams such as Swansea — naive idealists, to their critics — must change their style to survive.

Wenger dismisses that opinion with disdain. “When you come into the league for the first year, you impose that style, your deep beliefs, or you don’t. I don’t think they will change their style, no matter what happens.”