Hopefully with more time with the boss, our midfielders will learn how to defend like Arteta : Gunners

while Arteta is a very intelligent player, his Barca schooling influences his defending style very much. While defenders or holding MFs more often defend the player (+ sometimes the ball) La Masia shifted the defensive education more towars defending the space and the ball. Therefore he solves many situations with positional awareness and anticipation.

Which, if you look at it from a coachs perspective, is much more general to teach your team, because the you don’t rely so much on physical superiority for winning possession. If you lose man v man as an DM you open up lots of space behind you for the attacker to exploit, whereas when you guard the space you can slow down the attack for your teammates to catch up and help out.

As a side note: you see especially at the beginning of the clip that he mostly goes for a tackle when the player is not in complete control over the ball (during first touch or follow up touches)

That is the kind of defending i admire, not physical but purely intelligent