Thanks for the stats Claudius. I had a bit of a look at average time of goals scored and conceded (couldn't find average game state stats this time round, though I did earlier in the season). City lead the league on goal differential in the quarter hour after half time, we lead the league on goal differential in the final quarter hour.
Perhaps the main relevance of the comparison with City would be that that's where Arteta cut his teeth in management, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear that Guardiola believes in "sticking with Plan A" and delivered a few related nuggets of wisdom to his apprentice during Arteta's tenure at City.
However, mimicking City's approach perhaps isn't the best for us. City are currently flourishing with 8 wins in 9 since Haaland got injured. They have a superb squad, both the XI and the bench, and they tend to win matches either way, so even if they record a few bad results (eg when Foden makes errors and Palace scrape a draw with them), they generally do well whether or not they make changes.
In my opinion (and I think this tracks with what I'm watching, cf. matches where Saka's clearly been out on his legs but still running out the 90), our inability to close out games is probably contributing to Arteta's wariness regarding the bench. Our boss will often make one earlier change which seems to be based on the perceived robustness or stamina of a starter (eg Martinelli or Jesus will often leave the field), then make two or more extremely late changes, minute 85 or later.
Rather than being bad policy all round, it's arguably a trade-off that improves our results while denying fringe players minutes and opportunities. If we could collar games earlier with the chances and dominance we typically have in the first half, we could use the bench more as well.
It all points further to the need to change things up offensively. If we could sign anyone this winter, a top shelf player for "left 8" would be the man. Forget Onana, forget Toney, go out and get the guy who fixes our Havertz problem, and turn Havertz into one more option at 9—an option that lets us phase Eddie out.
