Over six-and-a-half years, Mikel Arteta has taken a side once derided as a “banter club” and turned them into champions of England.
There are plenty of people at Arsenal who still recall Arteta’s arrival as a player. When he signed from Everton, they recall meeting a much more forthright character than they expected. In spite of that, his first meeting as the club’s manager in December 2019 still took them by surprise.
He had inherited a strange mishmash of unproven and under-delivering players -but in a stark, direct exchange, Arteta did not address the personnel in the squad but the culture. Angry, unsettled, jittery.
The word he kept repeating in those early days was “respect”. He demanded it from players, coaches, fans alike. There were clearly the bones of a project to work with but few took Arsenal particularly seriously.
The culture
One of his early moves was to arrange for players to be given food from their home countries at the training ground, mindful that over half of his squad have come from overseas. While he needed to help them settle, on the flip side he had to identify those who were never going to be there for the long haul.
Mesut Ozil was one of the high-profile casualties of that policy, left out of Arteta’s first full Premier League and Europa League squads in 2020. Ozil was furious but their exchange was a transformative moment for a manager who was still in his 30s.
Arteta had witnessed Arsenal up close as assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. It was impossible not to notice that the Emirates could be a hostile place for home players, rather than for their opponents. So upon hearing Louis Dunford’s anthem North London Forever, Arteta was struck with an idea – he requested that it be played before kick-off to improve an often-mocked atmosphere. The “Ashburton Army”, clad in black, played their own part behind the goal.
The recruitment
The strange disconnect between the supporters and the club most often played out in dissent towards the Kroenke ownership. The European Super League made that fissure worse but the relationship was already at breaking point after what fans perceived as years of underinvestment. It became a vicious circle – the more Arsenal spiralled, they fell out of the Champions League, and the longer they fell out of the Champions League, the bigger the financial hit.
In the Arsene Wenger days, chief negotiator Dick Law had so often been the one to identify key signings. He left in 2017 and a string of poor choices followed. Nicolas Pepe for £72m. Shkodran Mustafi for £35m.
Outgoings raised eyebrows too. Serge Gnabry’s sale felt premature, a view vindicated by his Bayern Munich career since. Some felt Lucas Perez was never given a fair shot. In fact Perez’s situation in the final throes of the Wenger era summed up everything Arteta felt was wrong with the dressing room, the forward’s No 9 shirt given to Alexandre Lacazette without him being told. Arteta arrived just as Unai Emery had stripped Granit Xhaka of the captaincy for screaming “f*** off” at the crowd.
When Vinai Ventakesham (then managing director) and Edu (then sporting director) sacked Emery, they also axed his entire backroom staff.
The coaches
Arteta welcomed the opportunity to start from scratch. He brought set-piece coach Nicolas Jover with him from City. Goalkeeping coach Inaki Cana is just as instrumental in preparing for corners at the other end, jostling with David Raya in the box in training. Raya’s evolution has been central to Arsenal’s more direct football, playing more long passes than in any other season.
Assistant coach Miguel Molina was a relatively young addition, but he would employ a masterstroke borrowed from US sports, preferring to sit up in the stands to gain a technical viewpoint unavailable to the head coach in the dugout.
Appointing Gabriel Heinze was an even bolder move. He was known as a huge personality who had ruffled feathers in his previous jobs, where he had been No 1, rather than assistant. Arteta had to navigate other exits, losing his main physio Jordan Reece to Manchester United, assistant Steve Round and goalkeeping coach Sal Bibbo.
The kids
To be more accessible to his existing staff, Arteta moved his office at Colney. He immediately took a keen interest in the academy. Those who work within Premier League academies speak of a loop – if there is no path to the first team, the youngsters start to stutter.
Of the current squad, 68 per cent come from overseas but Arteta has maintained a homegrown element.
For a long time Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe were Hale End’s flagship graduates. More recently it is Max Dowman and Myles Lewis-Skelly. Ethan Nwaneri, Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson were given opportunities.
Conversations are already ongoing over which youngsters might be allowed out on loan next season – including to Jack Wilshere’s Luton Town.
The final piece of the puzzle
The purse strings have loosened too as the Emirates has come of age. The ground was initially an enormous financial burden. In the five years after it opened, Arsenal had an outlay of just £100m combined on transfer fees.
Even allowing for the inflated fees of today’s market, that is a staggeringly low amount. Under Arteta, more than £1bn has been spent, much of it under former sporting director Edu, who was replaced with James King in 2024.
It has taken that overhaul, three second-placed finishes, 77 months and plenty of heartache to get here. Arsenal are champions again and Arteta has the ultimate vindication.
Read more
- Daniel Storey: Why David Raya is my Player of the Year
- Kat Lucas: The new age of Mikel Arteta
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