Arteta can be the top flight’s saviour. He has a winner’s steel which is perfect for taking down the City machine
EVEN as Mikel Arteta was interviewed on the Emirates pitch, moments after the season’s end on Sunday, there was evidence of the ego which makes him the winner of very few popularity contests.
He became the director and curator of that moment, taking over the microphone to relate to supporters that his way had been the right way all along, even if it had taken them time to appreciate that. ‘You started to believe,’ he told them. ‘You started to understand what we had to do.’
Arteta has driven through unpopular changes at Arsenal — the marginalising of Aaron Ramsdale; the sacking of Steve Bould, shown the door after 33 years’ service; the ushering of older players to that same exit without compunction.
This is Arteta — extremely confident in his own ability and austere to the point of unpleasantness at times. Behind the sparkling eyes, crew neck and perfect hair, there’s an arrogance, and unlike Pep Guardiola, he doesn’t seem to care who sees it.
Contrast the saccharine Manchester City All or Nothing Amazon Prime documentary, in which Guardiola is generally all sweetness and light, with a scene in Arsenal’s own series after the team’s 2-0 defeat at Newcastle two seasons back.
‘Shut your mouth and eat it,’ Arteta tells his players in the away dressing room, with a ‘zip it’ gesture. ‘Don’t worry. I will take all the shit again. No worries.’
In management, this is what winners look like. Guardiola is supercilious on a regular basis. Klopp could be just as unpleasant at the best of times. Going back a generation, Sir Alex Ferguson’s nastiness frequently descended into bullying.
But never has the Premier League — or British football — needed a manager to maintain an arc of progression more than Arteta right now.
It is hard to see where, beyond Arsenal, a challenge to Manchester City’s vice-like grip is coming from next season. Liverpool are cast into transition, unclear which players Arne Slot will hold on to. Manchester United are wondering who on earth can pull off a miracle for them. Chelsea, a managerless basket case last night, still look years off
The Premier League looks to Arteta as its saviour. The one to keep the division’s competitive candle burning and the notion of a title story alive. The one capable of demonstrating that there is a way to win trophies which does not entail having a limitless budget and a Gulf state sovereign wealth fund at your disposal. The one who may deliver a title which does not require an asterisk next to the winning points tally.
The managerial rivalries have fuelled the Premier League narrative for more than 30 years — such as Keegan and Ferguson; Wenger and Ferguson; Mourinho and Wenger; Guardiola and Klopp. There will be no such fire next season, unless a Guardiola-Arteta rivalry begins to catch light. Can there be such rivalry between master and one-time apprentice? Don’t put it past Arteta to dispense with his present honeyed deference.
Some who worked with Arteta at City suggest that he was better one-to- one with players than Guardiola and has not been fully credited for his contribution. One of the few episodes of interest in that beige City All or Nothing series reveals Arteta’s work at improving Raheem Sterling’s goal tally.
He has injected something of the City culture at Arsenal, bringing Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko into what was the Premier League’s third-youngest squad. Now he will move on, most probably without them. The club’s sights are already set on another full back, midfielder, goalkeeper — and a centre forward, potentially the Swede Viktor Gyokeres, from Sporting Lisbon, RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko or Bologna’s Joshua Zirkzee.
Arteta’s judgment is proven. A recent piece of data analysis by the Financial Times designed to show how much value Klopp had added at Liverpool was presented as a comparison with Guardiola. City’s manager, it revealed, had been the fractionally superior of the two, achieving 12.7 points more per season than the Etihad wage bill would have predicted compared with Klopp’s 11.7.
But it was Arteta who emerged as the outstanding manager from that study, adding 15.1 points more per season than his club’s wage bill suggested he might.
‘ If you don’t have the right culture in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake,’ he said in Arsenal’s darker times. ‘So my job is to convince everyone that this is how we are going to live, and if you are going to be part of this organisation it has to be in these terms and in this way.’
They were more than pretty words. Many in football will be willing him to scale the final peak and take down the Abu Dhabi colossus.