Finally, an Arsenal manager who tells it like it is!

ARTETA HIGHLIGHTS TEAM’S SOFT SIDE AS KEY PROBLEM TO FIX

ONLY a day into what will doubtless be a challenging tenure, Mikel Arteta would already appear to have recognised something that seemed beyond predecessors Unai Emery and Arsene Wenger. There is, Arteta stressed, something fundamentally wrong at Arsenal.

Like the rest of us, Arteta identified it a good while ago and came face to face with it when Manchester City came to the Emirates and won 3-0 just six days ago.

‘I was here with City and felt down after the game when I saw what was going on,’ said Arteta.

‘It wasn’t only the performance, it was the atmosphere and energy that I perceived. That worried me a little bit.

‘I understand that the fans are used to success and fighting for things and at the moment it’s difficult for them to swallow the situation. So let me help.’

It was one of the curiosities of the last years of Wenger’s time at Arsenal that a great manager could not see what was so obvious, namely that so many of his players were not mentally or physically up to standard. In Emery’s confusing 18 months that followed, there was little improvement in that regard.

So, from that point of view, Arteta felt fresh yesterday. The 37-year- old — once a captain if hardly a legend here (right) — has been stolen away from a Pep Guardiola regime at City that has built its beauty on top of foundations of steel and hard work.

And while offering no guarantees that his team’s football would ever match the unique artistry of Guardiola’s, he did at least vow to imitate some of his mentor’s more rudimentary requirements.

‘ If players like Bernardo Silva, David Silva or Kun Aguero don’t get bullied, it’s because they defend their position like animals and they don’t allow the opposition to do that to them,’ said Arteta.

That sentence was delivered with a slap of fist into palm, but the emphasis was not really required. Arteta spoke for about 45 minutes at the Emirates as darkness fell last night and his message was clear from the off.

Asked if the Arsenal he knew had lost its way, the Spaniard said: ‘That’s what I sense from the outside. I have to understand why that is. That’s the challenge and we don’t have much time.

‘Everybody has to feel privileged to be here and the players will have to accept a different way of things. We have to build a culture. I don’t want people hiding. I want people who will deliver pass i o n and energy. ‘This is how we are going to live. The players are not performing and I need to know how they are feeling and what they are lacking.’ Having finally been freed from his obligations at Guardiola’s City, Arteta was at Arsenal’s London Colney training ground yesterday morning. He revealed that he had cried on leaving Manchester and that he feels a little apologetic for leaving Guardiola at a time when he ‘needed me’. But who can blame him for accepting this challenge? There was no guarantee that Arteta would be the man chosen to replace Guardiola when the Catalan leaves City and — as he found out when losing out on this post to Emery two summers ago — opportunities can come and go very quickly in football.

Clearly, the scale of the task at Arsenal is vast. Arteta’s squad is not without good players, namely the two forwards, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, and has young promise in the shape of Matteo Guendouzi, Joe Willock and Bukayo Saka.

But elsewhere it resembles a mish-mash of muddled thinking and flawed, directionless recruitment. Having been told by the club that they would like a return to the Champions League next season, Arteta is aware he may need to get there if he is to prevent the likes of Aubameyang and Lacazette looking to leave.

‘Probably, but that’s a consequence of what we have been talking about,’ he said.

‘If we can create and build a culture where everybody is accountable, then we can bring some leadership into the team and expectations and passion and clear direction and then create an identity. If players feel part of that identity, they will want to stay as they will enjoy it.

‘At the moment I feel as though those players suffer. When you are suffering, sometimes you want to go away. When you enjoy it, you want to be part of something.’

As for Mesut Ozil, the next step for the German midfielder is anyone’s guess. One of the few positive steps taken by Emery was to remove Ozil from his team. Wenger never had the foresight or the courage — it’s hard to say which failing would be worse — to do that and Ozil is a problem that needs solving quickly.

On this subject, Arteta was vaguely contradictory. On the one hand, he suggested the 31-yearold was a ‘massive player for this club’ but on the other he suggested players are generally either up to the task or are not.

‘It is part of your nature,’ he said. ‘You are or you are not. You can tweak the character or the personality of a player, but you are or you are not.’

So, from that point of view, given that Wenger and Emery failed to bring Ozil into line, how can Arteta expect to? ‘I get your point and I understand it,’ he said in response to that challenge. ‘But I’ve seen players not performing in a club and then they move to a different country, to a different club and they are a completely different player. And the opposite way around.

‘I would like to understand why they are not performing, what is lacking and what their needs are. And I want them to see the way of us behaving and playing and to say, “Wow, now I understand, I click, I feel comfortable. Let’s go for it”.’

Far too much can be made of what coaches say at press conferences. Anyone can talk. Fewer can actually play. But it is fair to say that any Arsenal supporter listening to Arteta’s version of the future last night would have headed into Christmas feeling a little better.

If Arteta has clear problems to solve, it will help that he has identified what they are in the first

MIKEL ArtEtA has fired a stark warning to his new Arsenal players by telling them: it’s my way or the highway.

the 37-year- old was confirmed as the Gunners’ new manager on a three-and-a-half-year deal yesterday and immediately set about laying down the law to his new charges.

‘I have to try to convince the players about what I want to do, how I want to do it,’ Arteta said. ‘they have to start accepting a different process, a different way of thinking.

‘I want to get everybody at the club with the same mindset. We have to build a culture.

‘If you don’t have the right culture, in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake, so my job is to convince everybody that this is how we are going to live. ‘If you are going to be part of this organisation, it has to be on these terms and in this way.’

Arteta (left) arrived at the club’s London Colney