ARTETA COMMITTING TO 8 YEARS

HE SIGNS THE TING NOW IT'S TIME TO WIN

I’m a little late to the Mikel Arteta story, but what a glorious one it is to tell. Arsenal have completed the final boss of contract negotiations—everyone is signed to new deals, including the manager. If this were Elden Ring, we’ve levelled up to 150, we’ve got our great shield, we’re maxed out on our katana, and we’re ready to mow down the Premier League like we’re taking on civilian NPCs.

The three-year deal always puts me on edge, but that might be because I’ve been watching Chelsea tie everyone down for life like a Texas court. This deal lines up with many of our players—that’s a tactic I’ve seen elsewhere. It’s a bit of a power move, a bit of ‘betting on yourself,’ and it offers some security for clubs if they need to part ways. The reality of contracts these days is that they’re not worth much if one party wants out.

The money on offer is rumoured to be upwards of £15m a season, making him one of the highest-paid managers in the world. It’s hard to scoff at that figure; you tend to get more value from super-managers these days, and despite the lack of heavy metal, Arteta’s body of work over the past five years certainly places him in that category.

Winning games is good for sponsorship deals, gate receipts, ticket pricing for normos, filling the premium spaces, and justifying big price hikes. It’s good for kit partners, the community, and it must be a revelation for the front office staff, who will soon forget what it felt like to be a banter club.

I wrote the November 2019 piece when I was pitching Arteta—I'm including it here so you can judge for yourself whether he delivered on that promise.

Coaching

It doesn't take much googling to find out that Arteta is a players coach. He's an obsessive and there are plenty of high endorsements of his work in the media from players like Delph and Fernandinho. The biggest credit to his name goes to the transformation of Raheem Sterling into one of the best players in the world. This is Guardiola.

“Mikel Arteta is working many, many hours and days after training specifically about the last action on the pitch – that control in the last moment to make the right movement in the final three or four metres.

“Raheem has wanted to stay there on the training pitch, to improve, to practise, to shoot at the goalkeepers.

This is is Arteta explaining in a new book exactly what he was looking for from the player.

"He'd picked up a few bad habits along the way,"

"He'd played on the inside a lot or out on the left wing. When you move to the right wing, the direction and angle of possession coming to you is very different. When the ball reached him he really had his gaze fixed on it - rather than half-touch instinctive control and the vision of what's around him."

“If he’s found a space about three metres off his defender but he’s half-turned towards the goal then his sprint takes him much more quickly to a space where he can shoot and that’s going to cause the rival much more damage. It’s also a tactic, dropping off a little, so that your defender gets drawn into a position he mightn’t want to be in. It leaves space behind him and Raheem can attack that space. If it’s close to, or in the penalty area, they also have to hesitate before putting in a challenge.”

The man was born to coach, he retired early to learn his trade, he went for mentorship under the greatest coach in the world and now he sits next to him in the dugout. According to reports, he also runs some of the training session there, he's no cone boy.

Elite work ethic

You've all seen the Pep documentary. You've read the books. Pep is a workaholic, he has more energy than anyone in football, a total obsessive. This is what he had to say on Arteta a few days ago.

"He was an incredible player, normally with a holding midfielder they have a vision of all the pitch," Guardiola said.

"The holding midfielder is an incredible lesson during your career as a player to learn what happens. You don't need to go to [coaching] school, he was so clever in that.

"More than that he is an incredible human being, work ethic, he works a lot. I said after a few months we were together that this guy would be a manager sooner or later. He is already a manager, he works like a manager.

"That is why we're satisfied to have him here."

That is high praise, the part about him being a great human is lost on me, but I do love that his work ethic is being called out by a man that had to quit Barcelona because his wife thought it would kill him. I want someone at Arsenal with that level of obsession, because that usually means attention to detail, that means curiosity and it hopefully means innovation.

Manchester City IP

Manchester City are now one of the best clubs in the world. I know Arsenal are a long way from that, but the things Pep has done there have transformed the place. The way he thinks about the game is different to everyone else, that's why he's consistently delivered world-class teams across 3 leagues (money helps, but look at Jose now). Pep Guardiola is different because he has a philosophy that has evolved over the course of time. That way of thinking is a process, Arteta has now been in the process contributing ideas, designing how they'll be implemented, and watching the master make the magic happen.

Manchester City won the league last year making the least tackles in the league. That is future football. Their off the ball movement is debilitating. Their on the ball approach is so good some sad sacks say it's boring. That is the sort of football that could be taken, developed upon and unleashed at Arsenal. It's a longterm punt at having a team built for competing in the Champions League in 3 years. It's not a stop-gap where the pinnacle of the football is 4th place and a last 16 spot in the Champions League. It is not taking a hit on the Arsenal brand and doubling down on bland pragmatic football. It is not selling your soul to Kia or Jorge. This is the sort of punt that we should be taking, because unless it's Poch, who else has the keys to a more exciting future this January?

The Culture

Let's get one thing straight, no manager is going to come in and sort out the leadership function of Arsenal. Raul and Edu have to address that, but they're not going to do that by installing an outsider with poor taste motives. They're also not going to achieve anything by bringing in someone with a giant stick, good short term solution, not for the longterm.

They need someone to come in and connect with the players and the fans. That person needs to understand the club, how it operates, who the staff are and how the league works. There's no better person for that than Arteta. He can only look after the playing side of things, he can't do anything about the mess around it, but make no mistake, he'll come in, connect with people like Per and Freddie and he'll take a sweep to bus drivers that fight and do teamtalks, he'll move on Dave Priestly, and he'll make sure the people at the club are offering value and there on merit.

Galvanise the fans

There are no doubt going to be doubters, but I think the communcation of a clear and articulate vision of how he wants to play the game and what he's going to do to achieve it would be a huge step in the right direction. To remind you, he already outlined this to the Arsenal magazine years ago.

“My philosophy will be clear,” he said. “I want the football to be expressive, entertaining. I cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition.

“We have to dictate the game, we have to be the ones taking the initiative, and we have to entertain the people coming to watch us. I’m 100 per cent convinced of those things, and I think I could do it.”

“You can have an idea of a system, but you need to be able to transform it depending on the players you have – how much pace you have up front, how technical your team is, what types of risk you can take and whether your players are ready to take those risks.

“It’s important to analyse your players because you can’t always play the same way. There have to be different details and changes in how you approach things, and you have to look at how you can hurt whoever you are playing against. Is there something they don’t like to do? If so, we’re going to make them do plenty of it.

“Then the most important thing for the manager is that, the Friday before the game, you imagine what’s going to happen on the Saturday.

“And if what happens on Saturday is not what I had planned, then it’s not been good enough from me.”

Imagine how vivid his vision would be now? He's had 3 years in a winning machine to hone his beliefs about the game. I am positive he'd come to Arsenal with an exciting view of how the game is played and that would settle the fans.

Future

We are back at ground zero. We are where Chelsea were this summer when they hired Frank Lampard, coming off the back of a bland season with a transfer ban. Our ban is self-imposed because we spent next summers money this year.

This is the perfect time for the club to set a new agenda built around a 3-5 year plan that'll have us competing at the very top again. We could build our future around young players, we could refocus transfer efforts on players like Matteo and Martinelli, we could promise the fans ups and downs, but at the very worst... we'll be playing football you'd want to wake up for.

We need a future we can believe in, we need to be excited about football again, the person who could give that to us is Mikel Arteta.

Who's with me?

Sure, we’re at the latter end of the plan coming together—there was certainly a lost season with COVID and some questionable signings—but overall, it’s been one positive after another. I used to write about previous managers that capital was a reward for showing signs of improvement. Mikel Arteta has progressed the team every time he’s been given money, and when he’s been given BIG money, he hasn’t missed.

Arteta came to Arsenal because he loved the club and wanted to rebuild it in a vision befitting a giant. He was in the dressing room during the Wenger years; he saw the lack of preparation, he played with players who would fake injuries to avoid big away games (beyond who you might think), and he felt the pain of being part of the banter years.

Having an ex-captain come to the club to rebuild it was the perfect alignment of stars. The ownership group deserves a huge amount of credit for taking a massive risk after the safe options post-Wenger turned out to be a bag of misery. We can never forget the chorus of people who hated the idea, hated the pain associated with change, and hated that we didn’t move Arteta out as quickly as we moved on from Unai Emery. You’ve also got to give a lot of credit to Tim Lewis and Edu, who have backed the manager to the hilt and convinced him to put pen to paper with clubs like City, Barça, and PSG lurking in the background.

But we’re in good times now—there’s no cost for being militant about impending failure, though there was a cost for being toxically positive through the changes. Funny how the internet still works to this day… we’re still giving airtime to the voices that said Kai Havertz was going to end Arsenal.

So what’s next? Major trophies. We can’t be the Buffalo Bills of the Premier League. Second place doesn’t get talked about in 20 years’ time; it doesn’t cement legend, it doesn’t smell like ‘job complete.’ I think we’re going to win the Premier League this season, and I think we’ll be in a Champions League final within the next three years, winning one in the next five.

Arsenal have bet on a bright future charted by Arteta and the exceptional team behind him. Our squad of young players is about to enter their peak years. They’ve dealt with painful failures, learned to support each other through the ups and downs, and now they have all the ingredients needed to make a massive push for glory this season.

If they win the Premier League, this will be one of the greatest turnaround jobs in the history of Premier League football. I’m here for it. You’re here for it. Let’s have a great season.

P.S. One other thing I wrote in 2019.

I am nervous about this hire. As they say in politics, it's easy to be in opposition. I've been in opposition for 18 months, not really expecting Arsenal to make an incredibly bold and ambitious move. Now they have, I have to shut the fuck up and back this until the end. I'm confident though. Settling for a has-been would have been regressive. I don't want a super-agent bitch at our club. There was no way we could have waited until the end of the season. Arteta is a very smart risk, he's our moon-shot, the upsides to this are electric.

I stayed true to this! That sentence was for all those who wrote ‘you’ll never be happy’ over the years. I’m happy. x