Arteta must prove he can emerge from Pep’s shadow
THERE is one nagging question around the appointment of Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. It concerns the technical area during the second half of Manchester City’s Champions League defeat at home by Liverpool. Where was he? When Pep Guardiola was sent off, why didn’t Arteta — or anybody — take his place?
The empty square in front of Manchester City’s bench in one of their biggest matches of the season should concern Arsenal’s board. Yes, in many ways, his appointment is very appealing. Arteta is young, innovative, with fresh ideas and two years under the most vital coach in the modern game.
He has a good relationship with Arsenal’s players, fans and executives, notably Ivan Gazidis, and is widely admired by some very impressive people, not least Guardiola, Arsene Wenger and Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino. Yet on that night, when City lost their leader and most needed guidance, neither Arteta, nor anybody at the club, felt empowered to step into Guardiola’s shoes.
As Arteta closes in on the biggest rebuilding project in English football, that unoccupied space demands exploration. It demonstrates the true relationship between Guardiola and his backroom acolytes; the imbalance of ideas, influence and input. It is not enough to be a smart mind on the training field, as Arteta plainly is, or to have impressed in private meetings explaining Guardiola’s methodology to swooning Manchester City staff.
Arsenal need a presence, just as Manchester City did that night. City were 1-0 up at half-time, chasing a 3-0 first-leg deficit. They needed two goals in the second half to take the match to extra time — having scored eight times in two matches against Liverpool in their league meetings that season. Defeat was not inevitable.
It should concern supporters, if not Arsenal’s executives, that Arteta’s candidacy has grown stronger as the more experienced coaches around Europe have considered this summer’s budget and turned up their noses.
Luis Enrique was the first, now Massimiliano Allegri of Juventus. If the limit on investment this summer is the £ 50million reported, plus sales, that will not touch the work that needs to be done. Wenger said Arsenal are three players short of challenging for the title, but he is flattering Arteta’s inheritance.
Three players are what Manchester City might bring in this summer — and they are already 37 points clear of Arsenal. Wenger’s team finished five points nearer West Brom than they did the Premier League champions.
We imagine a new manager might get more from individuals such as Mezut Ozil, but it will require a ruthlessness that Arteta hasn’t yet needed to show. There is a difference between working intelligently one- on- one with Raheem Sterling, as Arteta has done, and being the hardnut who banished Yaya Toure to the crosstrainer for many months until his fitness met Guardiola’s exacting standards.
The sort of coach who does that, is the sort who would have taken the responsibility to march into Guardiola’s space and take charge, as German Burgos immediately did for Atletico Madrid when Diego Simeone was sent to the stands at Arsenal. That Arteta did not makes him very much Guardiola’s pupil.
He will need to have finished his schooling very quickly indeed because Arsenal next season is no place for a coach with L plates.
‘PlaY like this,’ said Chelsea manager antonio Conte after the final league game of the season, ‘and we’ll lose the fa Cup final.’ Yet what of the manager? If Conte had intended to extract the sting from what remained of Chelsea’s campaign he could not have done a better job. against Huddersfield, he rested four of the most in-form players in Chelsea’s squad — Eden Hazard, olivier Giroud, Victor Moses and Gary Cahill. In the final game at Newcastle, he left out some other high performers — antonio Rudiger, Marcos alonso and Willian. all the momentum gained from a five-match winning run, ending in a victory over liverpool, was lost. It wasn’t even as if fitness should be an issue. The Cup final was still six days away. Conte has performed the impossible this season. He has aroused sympathy for Roman abramovich in his dealings with managers. What began with reasonable misgivings about the strength of his squad descended into a weekly litany of complaints and gripes, talking down a group that should have cantered into the Champions league next season, given Tottenham’s year at Wembley and liverpool’s distractions in Europe. Conte’s criticism of Chelsea’s recruitment policy was seen as a direct challenge to former director of football Michael Emenalo. Now Conte says Emenalo’s loss in october was a huge blow for the club. There is no consistency in his argument. He has spent the weeks before tomorrow’s meeting with Manchester United talking up his achievements, particularly in comparison to adversary Jose Mourinho. Conte even claimed his 65 wins in his first 100 Chelsea matches were superior to Mourinho’s 72. ‘It’s a different era in the history of the club,’ he said. ‘I won a title with Juventus after two seventh places. When you win a title in this way, it’s a great achievement. last season we won a title after a 10th place. You have to see the era you are going through.’ Yet Mourinho’s title in 2005 was also Chelsea’s first of the modern age. The first is always the hardest. and Mourinho retained it the following season, too — something no Chelsea manager has done since. Conte performed an outstanding job last season. He reshaped the team, he brought John Terry’s time as a first-team regular to a dignified, sensible end, and it took Pep Guardiola’s centurions to erase many of his achievements from the record books. Yet that was a year ago. Conte this season has become a high-maintenance pest. He will leave his successor with Thursday nights in the Europa league and the very real possibility that Hazard will try to use the World Cup this summer to secure a move to Spain. His forlorn demeanour as Chelsea played Manchester City, away, in the style of a league Two side, was one of the defining moments of the season. Too often, Conte’s own mood has been sulky and joyless, too — he certainly seemed that way before sending out his players to lose 3-0 at Newcastle. If Wembley is to be Conte’s last stand, as seems certain, he needs to find a way of recapturing the spirit of his first season — not just in the players, but in himself. Conte, back then, had energy and enthusiasm to burn. It is ironic that he seems the person most significantly affected by the negativity swirling around his club.
MOODY CONTE IS
RUNNING THE RISK OF SPOILING HIS OWN FAREWELL