So are Arteta’s rebuilt Arsenal the real deal?
Emotional, expletive filled team-talks. A special social media team to rebuild fan support. An owner finally in control. Manager’s authority backed to the hilt
IF triumph is forged through adversity then Arsenal have had lots of practice for their recent success. It would be hard to pinpoint the nadir of Mikel Arteta’s time at Arsenal, but Amazon Prime’s behind-the-scenes documentary last season provides a strong selection of possibilities.
It could be the abject FA Cup defeat at Nottingham Forest, where Arteta’s rage is so visceral that his voice breaks into a falsetto scream as he shouts: ‘No! It’s nowhere near! It’s f ****** s***!’
Or possibly it is the moment, in the midst of their collapse at the end of last season, where they chucked away Champions League qualification by losing 2-0 at Newcastle, that he yells: ‘Embarrassing! What happened today is f***ing unacceptable! You didn’t win a f***ing duel. You didn’t win a f***ing second ball. We were horrible on the ball! You had nothing. So shut up and eat it.’
On that occasion, he stomps out like a sulky teenager, sarcastically telling his team: ‘Don’t worry, I will face the people. I will take all the s**t again.’
What that tells you, other than that Arteta’s team talks will not ever make family viewing, is that Arsenal are far from being a robust team of winners yet, despite sitting second in the table. And also that the controlled, earnest man you see in press conferences is repressing a huge weight of emotions.
Yet despite those moments, and despite a 5-0 defeat at Manchester City last season and a fall-out with his captain that necessitated selling him, something appears to building at Arsenal.
‘It’s the best I’ve know it for years,’ said one source at the club, whose memory stretches back into the Arsene Wenger years.
Another, also around for the peak Wenger years, agrees, saying the stability the club gave Arteta during moments of doubt have allowed him to impose his authority.
Another adds that Arteta’s emotional intelligence with the players is key. In fact, the shouty dressing downs are rare — the Spaniard’s preferred mode of communication is to entertain and cajole his players, offering fist bumps and low fives to players after a game to establish a physical connection.
In the view of one observer, he has earned the right to bawl them out now and again because they trust him. When he became a manager, Arteta says he made a decision to open up emotionally to his players. ‘If you do that you have to accept that you are going to get hurt,’ he says.
It appears they understand he cares. ‘I f***ing killed you at halftime,’ he shouts at Nuno Tavares after one win, so close you winced. ‘You deserved it!’ He pauses. ‘But you were much better in the second half,’ he deadpans, to laughter all round, including the player.
Most of the time he has them on his side, delivering team talks about how he had a great night when he first met his wife — ‘a beautiful girl, I thought I had no chance’ — to much laughter and delight.
He establishes a connection with the team, though they did lose that game to Liverpool. Then there is the one where he brings in a light bulb to show how it is nothing unless connected to the mains, because the team has no power unless they have a connection.
It is easy to mock his cutesy homilies, but this is a man pulling every lever to bond a group of millionaire twentysomethings into a unit. And ultimately he succeeds.
From looking like they were making it up as they went along as a club, when Unai Emery was appointed alongside an executive team, almost all of whom left within two years, Arsenal now seem to be pointing in the right direction.
Arteta was hired for his tactical insights, having been mentored by Pep Guardiola at City. ‘Tactically it’s crazy how good he is,’ says Kieran Tierney. ‘I’ve never seen the game like this before.’
The full Arteta package though is far from just the dry analyst. His methods rely as much on Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer as they do sitting in a darkened room watching endless videos to ascertain weaknesses in the opposition.
A notable feature of this Arsenal renaissance has been the atmosphere at The Emirates, long derided as the most sterile of Premier League arenas. Arteta is partially responsible, as is the large team of social media employees at Arsenal who seem good at picking the mood among grassroots fans.
It was the media team and Arteta who picked up on Louis Dunford’s lament to Islington ‘The Angel: North London Forever’ which became a hit among fans towards the end of last season.
The Angel, a song which barely mentions Arsenal but which beautifully captures the essences of the streets around the stadium, has the eminently chantable chorus line ‘North London Forever!’ which stirs the soul. The refrain is played pre-match now – the verses are too 18-rated for a family audience — and has become an instant rallying cry among fans.
Arteta played the song to players and had Dunford, an Arsenal fan, at the training ground.
As a Basque, Arteta is well aware of the connection between poetry, song and identity. ‘It’s like the sun has come to us in the right moment,’ Arteta tells the players when talking to them about the emotional connection the song provides with fans.
Watching a group of Arsenal’s fans in India belting out ‘these streets are our own’ indicates that resonance goes far beyond Islington — there is global craving for local identity too. Arsenal also appear to have transformed themselves from being the transfer window’s car-crash club to something more akin to today’s opponents, Liverpool, acknowledged as the best traders in the Premier League.
The Gunners’ last two summer windows have been a series of ‘hits’ with barely a ‘miss’ amongst them. The success has not just been in the players coming in, all of whom are weighed for personality traits that will suit Arteta’s demands — think Ben White, Aaron Ramsdale and Gabriel Jesus.
The decision to ditch PierreEmerick Aubameyang in January, because Arteta deemed him untrustworthy, was bold and could yet prove embarrassing now he is back in the Premier League.
However, it was a decisive moment in establishing Arteta’s authority with the team and his executives.
‘What we are building goes completely against any behaviour like that [Aubameyang’s],’ Arteta tells the team when informing them the striker is no longer captain or part of the group. ‘If there is any meaning to changing the culture and making sure we become a different club and team, we have to stand by those words.’ It made life
tricky for managing director Tim Lewis and technical director Edu and could have proved financially costly. Yet they backed Areta. With Richard Garlick, director of football operations, they even managed to get Aubameyang out for a fee and off the pay roll.
In the past, Arsenal have fudged such decisions and paid the price, financially and in terms of team morale. This seems a slicker, tighter executive team, aided by chief executive Vinai Venkatesham.
The balance of the squad is much better and everyone inside the camp comments on the decisiveness and positivity of removing players whom Arteta deemed not to fit his standards.
Edu, Garlick and Arteta have brought strategy and precision to the recruitment. Ramsdale seemed a risk, but Arteta liked his character. Martin Odegaard has thrived and Jesus is the front man they have needed since Aubameyang left, but without the baggage. Oleksandr Zinchenko, another signing from City, is a world-class full-back who, like Jesus, brings with him the serious standards and expectations inculcated by Guardiola.
If Arteta got lucky in William Saliba, a player he seemed ready to discard but who now looks one of the best defenders in the Premier League, maybe he has earned that piece of good fortune.
Saliba, Jesus and Zinchenko have lifted the quality of the team from being marginal top four contenders to the best of the rest, outside of City and Liverpool.
There are some caveats to this praise. First, the transfer window dealings have only been made possible by £150m in loans made by owner Stan Kroenke’s companies to the club, to bail them out of the Covid crisis and allow them to invest. The team now have to put three Champions League seasons together to ensure the revenue continues to match the ambition. Otherwise, the cycle can change quickly from virtuous to vicious.
And Arteta is clear about their status. Asked about Saliba and Gabriel in defence and when we could talk about them in the same breath as Virgil van Dijk and Joel Matip, the manager was clear they had work to do. ‘The moment they win everything the other two have is the right moment.’
Jurgen Klopp once referred to his team as ‘mentality monsters’ and that was another theme of Friday’s press conference. Might Arsenal be described as something similar? ‘Not yet,’ said Arteta, ‘We have to do that for a season, two seasons, three seasons, every three days, and we haven’t done that yet.’
Indeed. They may sit above Liverpool but it will be some time before they can be said to have caught them, or overtaken them. That said, for the first time in a while Arsenal are heading in the right direction.