Anniversary Special – 5 Downs and 5 Ups after 5 years of Mikel Arteta at Arsenal | OneFootball

It’s been 5 years since Arsenal gave Mikel Arteta his first job as a manager. In his first ever season as a boss he led us to our 14th FA Cup and as he reminded us of last week, two Community Shields.

At our worst he took us to our lowest league finish in 25 years and zero European Football for the first time In Quarter of a Century.

He has though fulfilled his promise of returning the Gunners back to competing at the highest level.

Here are 5 downs and ups from his reign …

5 Downs ….

Washes his hands of talent.

This continues to divide the fanbase.

From day one Mikel Arteta was adamant he would not tolerate anyone not willing to meet his standards. At first that seemed noble.

Yet you can name an entire team who in the last 5 years were paid to either sit at home, had their contracts ripped up, or loaned out while their deals expired. Too many to all be the player’s fault.

The owners should have ordered that part of a manager’s role was to get the best out of the resource he inherited. Our boss has been allowed to think it’s standard practice to just give up on talent, reducing the assets worth.

Unless of course he was helping the Kroenke Family reduce the wage bill?

Ozil never played for us again after refusing a pay cut during Covid. That’s while we finished 8th twice (our lowest finish in quarter of a century and the first time in that period zero European football) and bemoaned a lack of creativity.

We then simply gave Aubameyang to Barcelona and missed out on the top 4 due to a lack of a natural goal scorer.

Style of football

Let me stress there’s a lot of positive things that our manager has changed tactically.

Few teams lift trophies without a solid defence and keeper, so it makes sense that was a priority to fix. Yet as time progressed has our boss been too clever and over complicated decisions?

He had success in Zinchenko being a hybrid full back, but now wants Partey to do the same.

We play very slow, passing the ball sideways with players not taking responsibility.

There has been talk that his preference is youngsters who he can micromanage and not flair players who think for themselves.

Many feel that’s why Martinelli has regressed as he’s no longer playing to his strengths.

It can’t be denied that we are no longer an entertaining team to watch under the current regime.

Ideas

How much this concerns you will come down to the importance you put on motivation and team-building exercises.

Arteta either learnt ideas off Pep Guardiola or has a book of creative methods in how to lead a team.

Like his tactics, he may have been guilty of over thinking.

In preseason, instead of simply warning his squad to always be alert on the pitch he chose to take everyone out for a meal and pay for professionals to pick pocket his players.

Some of his most outrageous presentations have coincided with defeats. He brought a light bulb to work but that didn’t stop Brighton from defeating us.

While he tried to recreate Anfield by blasting Your Never Walk Alone out on speakers in training. He’s still yet to win there in the league

Mentality

While fulfilling his objective to have the Gunners competing again at the highest-level, Arteta now needs to prove he can get a team over the line when it really counts.

That dramatically improved in last season’s title run yet it was a coincidence we failed to beat Villa after watching Liverpool slip up putting pressure on our game.

The two campaigns before we went missing at squeaky bum time, costing us a place in the top 4 then the Prem.

It’s left the club with an image of being the near men, the assumption being the bigger the occasion the more we are crippled by a fear of failure with not enough experience to lead.

Some Gooners are questioning is Arteta the man to provide that?

European record

At times our manager has been compared to a Pep Guardiola or Arsene Wenger, yet this is yet to be translated in Europe.

In the Europa League over two legs, he was knocked out by Olympiacos, and Villarreal (made worse was that they were coached by Unai Emery).

In his one season in the Champions League so far, we went out to Bayern Munich with a whimper in Germany.

5 Ups. …….

Emirates Atmosphere

Mikel Arteta would eventually sit with Josh Kroenke, Edu and BFG and make an action plan regarding all aspects of the club.

One area he wanted to improve was the relationship between the team and fans.

Since the Emirates had been built it had become famous for its lack of atmosphere. It wouldn’t take a long time for the stadium to get apprehensive about something, as our ex-captain now-our manager had experienced.

The Spaniard was made aware of ‘Louis Dunford’s North London Forever’ and how some Gooners were pushing for it to be included pre match. As evidenced on the All or Nothing Documentary this is introduced to the squad and has remained ever since.

It’s contributed to the noisiest the venue has ever been, although that has been in danger of reverting back to type this season

Convincing Owners

Whether it was hitting rock bottom by not qualifying for Europe for the first time in quarter of a century or our owners going into damage control mode after the Super League debacle, the Kroenke Family sat down with Arteta and made an action plan together.

Along with Edu and BFG all departments of the club were reviewed.

For whatever reason our current manager was willing to get commitment from his employers that those before him were unable to do so, including transfer fees and wages to match others.

Hard to beat

As already mentioned very few teams win major honors without a great defence and that was the area that seemed to be Arteta’s priority to fix.

Only he knows if he intends to now improve our attack, as at the moment, we are no longer the most entertaining team in the country to watch.

Even in Arsene Wenger’s final years in charge you could always trust the Gunners to make chances. That’s no longer the case.

What Arsenal have been able to do in the last 12 months is go away from home and grind out results. We can now fight and dig deep and if needed we can see out narrow leads.

I would argue Arsenal have not been able to do that since the George Graham era

Contracts

While sitting down making an action plan for all departments of the club a conscious decision was made to tie down key talent to long-term deals.

As our skipper, Arteta had watched teammates run down their contracts. From a business point of view, serious assets had their value reduced by this business model. Players either left for nothing, for a cut price fee or could demand to be paid over the odds to stay.

Too many individuals are still allowed to become free agents, but they would be those their boss lost faith in.

Mostly those who our manager rate have committed their long-term future to the club.

That means as a worst-case scenario, if anybody wants to leave, we can demand a big price for them.

Trusting Legends

One of the biggest criticisms you could make of Mr. Wenger was it took him too long to trust his former players to come back and work at the club.

Mikel Arteta has never had that problem.

Already working with BFG and Edu (before he left) several legends have claimed that our manager has an open-door policy for ex Gunners.

He was instrumental in Mr. Wenger finally returning to visit the Emirates while David Seaman has been doing some coaching with the youth team.

One of the best things he did though was support Jack Wilshere in mentally accepting that his playing career was over.

Arteta firstly invited his former teammate to train with the squad and then after retirement put the 32-year-old in charge of our under 18 team.

Tell me your thoughts on Arteta’s highs and lows in the comments

DAN

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