Goonerholics Forever

From the moment of his appointment, Mikel Arteta has been the focus of heavy criticism from sectors of the Arsenal fanbase and, but for a brief pause after the FA Cup victory in 2020, occasional calls for his head have persisted. Some criticisms have been constructive, many have been bizarre and sadly, some from so-called fans have been, frankly, vile. At this point, I should come clean. I believe Arteta has done a marvellous job at Arsenal, being the prime mover in the transformation of a club that was in serious disarray both on and off the park and building a team that is, at long last, challenging again for the big prizes. Here I take a look at criticisms that I have seen thrown at him. I apologise if I have overlooked your favourite brick-bat and urge you to fire off in the Drinks to rectify my omission.

1. Arteta is too inexperienced and is learning on the job

This was clearly the first criticism aired. It was a bold move by the Arsenal board to appoint Arteta to the role of first-team coach when his only coaching experience was being assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and he only retired from playing some 3 years earlier. That decision was all the bolder in that the then sainted (though now somewhat blemished by a recent court judgement over tax avoidance) Carlo Ancelotti was also in the frame and had expressed strong interest in the job. However we now know from Arteta’s many interviews and press conferences that he talks a very good game and his ambition, focus and drive come through very strongly. Indeed, it was observed after the first interview when he lost out to Unai Emery that he had impressed the panel then and would one day be a successful coach. So it has proved and I am certain that the impact of that first interview was a factor in his ultimate appointment. As to learning on the job, I would observe “Who doesn’t?” and the day you stop learning on the job, you might as well retire. As one of my old bosses said, “The only remediable flaw in a candidate for a job is inexperience!”

2. Arteta’s teams play boring football

This was the next criticism I came across, both in the Twittersphere and from some people whose judgement is often quite reliable. I would go further and observe that we were playing not just boring but frankly terrible football at the beginning of Arteta’s first full season (2020-21). Arsenal had a truly awful run of results after a decent league start of 3 wins and a 3-1 away defeat to Liverpool where we scored first but had only 2 more shots on target. After a creditable, narrow 1-0 away defeat to Man City on 17 October (creditable compared to the June 2020 visit when we lost 3-0 and had no shots on target) we lost 0-1 at home to Leicester, achieved a surprising 1-0 victory at the Old Toilet when an Aubameyang penalty separated two poor teams each with only 2 shots on target. Then the show went completely off the rails with a 0-3 home defeat to Villa, 0-0 away draw to Leeds, a 1-2 home defeat to Wolves, a 0-2 away defeat  to ‘That Lot’, a 0-1 home defeat to Burnley (!), 1-1 at home to Southampton and a 1-2 away loss to Everton. One win and two draws in ten games with some absolutely shocking home performances. On 21 December Arsenal sat in 15th place with 14 points from 14 games, 4 points above the drop zone with a goal difference of minus 6. That bad run saw the growth of the ‘Arteta Out’ movement which has never completely died out. The press uniformly observed that, had Arteta not engineered our FA Cup win the previous season, the Board would have given him ‘his jotters’. I am sure that there were internal discussions. Had they sacked Arteta at that point the ‘Arteta Out Brigade’ would have got their wish though I’m not sure whether they’d worked out who they wanted instead. The Board held their nerve and Arsenal turned their results around beginning with a 3-1 Boxing Day home win over Chelsea that is memorable for the performances of Saka and Smith Rowe (who were said by some to have saved Arteta’s job) bringing youthful energy and dynamism to a previously lethargic and pedestrian side. Arteta’s team went on to produce some decent away results but also had further dispiriting home defeats to City, Liverpool and Everton (!) and bore draws at home against Palace, United and Fulham. They finished in eighth place below Leicester, West Ham and ‘That Lot’. Was Arteta lucky to have a patient Board? He certainly was. However, he had sold his vision for the team and the 5 year project it required in his interview and the Board had bought into it. What effect did the Coronavirus pandemic and lock down have on the situation? It’s not clear. I’ve seen it argued that it saved Arteta’s job but also that it delayed his project.

However, Arteta had inherited a squad that comprised a mixture of washed out, lazy and mediocre players with a sprinkling of young talent, in a dressing room riven by difficult personalities and cliques and a prevailing culture of comfort persisting from the latter years of Arsene Wenger: Leno, Martinez; Bellerin, Maitland-Niles, Luiz, Sokratis, Mustafi, Chambers, Holding, Mari, Kolasinac, Tierney; Pépé, Saka, Xhaka, Willock, Torreira, Guendouzi, Ceballos, Özil, Martinelli, Nelson, Smith Rowe; Aubameyang, Lacazette, Nketiah. Spot the survivors. It was clear to anyone regularly watching games during Arteta’s first three seasons where Arsenal finished 8th, 8th and 5th that the players he inherited could not play the system he wanted the team to play. I still have nightmares about those players defending like clowns and playing out from the back like headless chickens. Major surgery was required to deliver the project he had sold to the Board – and they had bought into it and knew that it would take time. We may still have problems with low blocks and have drawn too many games last season but this Arsenal team usually isn’t boring to watch.

3 Arteta doesn’t trust flair players, iced out Özil, Aubameyang and Guendouzi and sold Smith Rowe

There were cries of outrage when Arteta stopped selecting Özil after the 1-0 victory over West Ham in March 2020 and again when the player left on a free transfer. However, the rot had set in when Özil was given a £350k pw contract in January 2018 (the very day we bought Aubameyang) when the club broke their wage structure to ensure that we wouldn’t lose a second marquee player that season after Sanchez engineered a move to United earlier that window. As has been seen before and was to be seen again, the large contract seemed to affect the player’s motivation. The outrage was all the louder because Özil had developed a massive social media following, vastly greater than the club’s. Yet Arteta didn’t freeze out a first choice player. Unai Emery had quickly begun to question Özil’s motivation, used him sparingly throughout his tenure, rarely for a full 90 minutes, and openly raised concerns about his fitness and commitment. Arsenal tried to move Özil on in the summer of 2019 but no-one would take on his salary. It was clear after Baku that the player’s relationship with Emery was poor. On taking over as interim coach, Freddie Ljungberg restored Özil to the team but quickly lost patience with his petulance and dropped him. However, Arteta played Özil in his first ten games in charge. The 1-0 victory over West Ham on 7 March 2020 was Özil’s final game for Arsenal. The final straw for Arteta was Özil’s refusal to display solidarity with his teammates in taking a 12.5% salary cut during lockdown. Arteta saw that as a breach of one of his ‘non-negotiables’ and the German never played for the first team again. Özil was left out of the Premier League and Europa League squads for 2020-21 but continued to train alongside the first team and to court his personal fanbase on social media commenting on the team’s results and his relationship with Arsenal. The club sought an exit strategy and paid the bulk of his remaining contract to allow him to join Fenerbahce on a free transfer in January 2021. A sad end to what had seemed a dream signing, an Assist King for several seasons but his relationship with the club had soured before Arteta took over and sadly it could not be rectified. In Turkey, Özil didn’t exactly find a revived commitment to football.

Arteta was certainly the moving force behind Aubameyang’s exit. Aubameyang was stripped of the captaincy, exiled from the first team and subsequently sold leaving only Lacazette and Nketiah as central strikers though the club did try unsuccessfully to bring in Alvaro Morato from Juventus. Only 16 months earlier, in May 2020, Aubameyang had scored twice to secure Arsenal’s 14th FA Cup by beating Chelsea 2-1, following which Arteta had played a key role in securing the £250k pw deal that Aubameyang signed in September 2020. Aubameyang played his last game for Arsenal on 5 December 2021. Six days later he was exiled from the first team and left out of the squad for a warm weather training camp in Dubai. He left Arsenal “by mutual consent” in February 2022, joining Barcelona on a free transfer after four years at the club. He had shown superb form from debut to Cup Final victory. Aubameyang scored 49 goals from his debut in February 2018 to his brace against Everton in February 2020 (equalling Salah’s tally and beating Kane by 12 goals over that period). However, after signing his new contract in September 2020, performances and goals fell away and he appeared to be a player in decline. The disciplinary issues that forced Arteta to act are clear. As a senior player, let alone club captain, Aubameyang was setting an awful example to the emerging young squad. He had been dropped from the squad for turning up late to the NLD in March 2021, having been reprimanded in February 2021 for a breach of Covid-19 regulations. The final straw was a late return from an authorised trip to France. Arteta said, “What I expect from any person at this football club that is representing this badge [is] that he has passion, that he gives absolutely 100%, that he puts the club in front of any personal interests and is able to do anything to fulfil the badge that we have on that chest. Apart from that, you can listen to the individuals, you can understand the different cultures but that commitment, that passion has to be there and unfortunately it wasn’t.” Later Arteta observed, “I know he is our best goalscorer, he is the club captain, he is the highest earner at the club but for disciplinary reasons I don’t want him at the club!” Once again the Club Directors backed the coach. It was a brave move by a coach with a clear vision and utter conviction who demanded high standards. Aubameyang’s subsequent performances at Barcelona and Chelsea confirmed that he was incapable of reproducing his form from 2018 to 2020.

Guendouzi was another talented footballer whose future at the club was compromised by “attitude and general conduct” and who felt the metaphorical boot of Arteta. The first public indication of a problem was his alleged taunting of Neil Maupay (I know!) about wages during an altercation in which he gripped the Brighton player by the throat. However Guendouzi had crossed the line before. On the first occasion, he was offered an olive branch. He fell out with Arteta during Arsenal’s 2020 winter training camp in Dubai, soon after the Spaniard’s appointment. Arteta was unhappy with the Frenchman’s attitude towards a training session and dropped him from Arsenal’s next match day squad. He was then brought back into the fold, but made just four further appearances before his clash with Neal Maupay. Arteta’s anger did not purely stem from the incident itself, but more from Guendouzi’s refusal to apologise during internal disciplinary meetings. That further breach of Arteta’s non-negotiables signalled the end of the road. His behaviour was deemed to display a lack of maturity and fell below Arteta’s demand for high standards of conduct, discipline and professionalism. Their relationship broke down and Guendouzi was subsequently excluded from the squad, sent on loan to Hertha Berlin then sold to Marseille for £10m in July 2021, significantly below market value.  

On his arrival in December 2019, Arteta repeatedly spoke about the standards he expected from his players and warned that those who opted not to meet them would be shown the door. He was true to his word. To anyone upset by Arteta’s handling of these three players, I would suggest that it’s unlikely that you have ever been or will ever be a key member of a successful team.

Smith Rowe’s Arsenal career was impaired by recurrent fitness problems rather than by Arteta. Arteta admitted that he hadn’t “got the best out of” the player, noted his struggles with injuries and fluctuating form and acknowledged that he couldn’t guarantee the regular playing time that Smith Rowe needed and wanted. Thus he was sold in the 2024 summer window to Fulham for £34m though sadly he hasn’t set the Cottage on fire. When challenged on the sale of Smith Rowe during Ødegaard’s absence last season, Arteta observed, “It was a very tough decision to let Emile go, especially because personally I feel really grateful for what he did for the club and for me in a period of time that I think he was instrumental to change something around it. But at the end, players have to play. He had a lot of difficult moments, a lot of struggles with injuries when we were together and he needed a fresh start. It’s normal, we understood that and we allowed him to go.” He added, “We allowed Fabio [Vieira] to go [to Porto on loan] as well because we wanted to create the room and the space for Ethan [Nwaneri].”

4. Arteta is too controlling, driven, stubborn and intense

Arteta is clearly a driven and intense man highly focused on his project and on making his players and team better and successful. It is difficult for a simple fan like me to say whether he is stubborn or not. He clearly has a group of trusted coaches around him to whom he appears to give a lot of authority and to whose advice he almost certainly listens. The extent to which he is seen as controlling probably depends on one’s own perspective. He has a clear idea of how he wants his team and the individuals within it to play. Watching him on the touchline during a game is quite exhausting and he appears to be constantly telling his players (or at least those that can hear him) where he wants them to stand/move/run if he thinks they aren’t doing what he expects of them. He is clearly more controlling than Carlo Ancelotti or Harry Redknapp both of whom allegedly choose their teams and simply tell the players to “go out and play”. He knows what he wants from his players and has no compunction about telling them. My view is that that is his prerogative as coach and it’s what he’s paid for.

A related criticism is that as a result of Arteta’s controlling personality, his team is too robotic (aka boring). Arteta has been accused of treating the team as if he’s playing a computer game. I think he is a driven guy who spends hours coming up with a strategy to win every game and knows exactly what he wants his players to do at any moment within every game. I really can’t see him changing.

Another related criticism is that as a result of his need to control the team and his risk aversion during build ups, these are too slow and as a result we always face an organised low block that we then have great difficulty breaking down. I think the players we have had in midfield have been a significant factor in these slow build ups and hopefully the replacement of Partey and Jorginho with Zubimendi and Nørgaard will see an improvement in the speed of our transitions and attacks. It’s definitely a problem but I don’t believe that Arteta wants these slow transitions.

5. Arteta doesn’t trust or develop young players

I don’t think this criticism holds any water. It first emerged when Saliba was sent on loan to Marseille for the whole 2021-22 season. He had signed for Arsenal at the age of 18 in July 2019 and spent 2019-20 back on loan at St Etienne then he spent 6 months (because of a cock-up it wasn’t a full season) of 2020-21 at Nice without playing a single first team game for Arsenal. The centre back made his first team debut for Arsenal more than 3 years after signing. Another way of looking at this is that Arteta looked after a promising young defender, ensuring that the young player gained necessary experience out of the English media spotlight and played him when he was ready. Centre back is a position where experience and good decision making is critical and young defenders have to learn through their mistakes. Arteta inherited a defence that was hapless and he knew from his playing days that the Arsenal fanbase had crucified a series of centre backs over recent years. His man management of Saliba was exemplary. 

There are a legion of talented young players whom we have seen play well for our youth teams but who have barely made it beyond the bench for the first team before being transferred or merely released. If you haven’t already done so, you should read CER’s excellent review of the hurdles that face aspirant youth players. Although the fanbase love ‘one of our own’ coming through and have looked eagerly for many prospects to progress to the first team, young players can be psychologically damaged by a poor performance if thrown into the first team too early. The list of nearly-men, though still really boys in first team terms, is long and many fans have bemoaned Arteta’s failure to throw them into the fray when we have had absences or been toiling in games. 

I think Arteta gets the big decisions right. He did not plan to make MLS our first choice left back when he introduced him to the first team last season but he judged him a more reliable choice than Zinchenko who had let him down twice before and whom he no longer fully trusts for 90 minutes. MLS grabbed the opportunity and has made himself first choice in that position. Nwaneri has been introduced to the first team squad and, unlike several other nearly-men before him, has established himself there. He has aspirations to play more regularly – indeed many fans thought he should have done towards the end of last season. However, Arteta chose not to overwork him as had been required of Saka at a similar age and rested him after a couple of games in which he had run out of steam and fallen below the standards he had set earlier in the season. Young players are often inconsistent and progression is rarely (Saka’s was astonishing) a linear ascent. Arteta has indicated that he sees him as a central attacking midfielder, a back-up or successor to Ødegaard, if you will, and, importantly, if Nwaneri has the patience to build up his game time. As we move towards a larger squad with two top quality players for each position, and a greater use of rotation both in starting positions and as games progress, there will be plenty game time. 

Recently, we have seen talented young Academy players like Omari Hutchison, Chido Obi Martin and Ayden Heaven chose to move to Chelsea and Manchester United because they were convinced that their path to a first team place was easier there than at Arsenal. They are undoubtedly talented but from an Arsenal perspective they have been poorly advised. Hutchison played only two games for Chelsea before being sent on loan then sold to Ipswich. Heaven played 6 games for United after his January defection so probably benefited from joining a club with a shambles of a defence while Obi Martin made 5 substitute appearances and became United’s youngest ever starter in their final league game last season as their strikers continued to be expensive embarrassments. So in terms of choosing an easy route to a first team place the latter pair probably made the right decision. Undoubtedly winning a first team place at Arsenal is challenging but only players with self belief and the will to fight for that place will make the cut.

6. Arteta trains players so hard and plays them so often that he breaks them

Last season we had a disastrous injury record, notably hamstring tears, that unquestionably damaged our challenges  for the Premiership and the Champions League. However, in contrast, we had few major injuries and absences during season 2023-24, which may have led to a degree of complacency/optimism that led to the gamble of not signing another striker in either the summer window or the January window. I know nothing about the Arsenal training regime and have to trust that we have taken a professional approach to fitness development. For more information about the modern science of fitness development and muscle injury avoidance you should read Trev’s excellent piece earlier this summer if you haven’t already done so.

The work load on key players like Saka, Saliba, Havertz and Gabriel has certainly been too high in recent seasons principally because of the lack of alternates of an appropriate skill level whom Arteta trusts as well as the congested match schedule. The reluctance to use back-ups is increased by the pressure on the team to win every game because of the standard set by creative accountancy fuelled Manchester City. The club is taking steps this window to address the lack of quality back-ups but it was inevitable as we rebuilt the first team with better players that the backups in some positions would be a significant step down in quality. A measure of the improved quality of the first team over recent years is that two players who were clear upgrades to the first team in 2022, Jesus and Zinchenko, have effectively been left behind by current first choices though the former has been handicapped by recurrent injury.

A legitimate beef with Arteta is the lateness of his substitutions when the team needs to be changed up to try to win a game but that again brings us back to his trust in the quality of the back-ups for the key players whom he expects to create and score to turn draws into wins. We have to trust his judgement as he sees these players every day but he doesn’t always get his decisions right (who does?). In 2023 when we lost Tomiyasu and Saliba in the first 20 minutes of a Europa League match against Sporting SP for the rest of the season Arteta chose to play Holding in Saliba’s place and our title challenge evaporated with a series of draws and defeats against mid-table clubs. Kiwior had joined Arsenal only 7 weeks before those players were injured and clearly had not yet won Arteta’s trust but, using the retrospectoscope (always dangerous), Kiwior’s excellent stand-in performances for Gabriel in big games at the end of last season raises the question of whether the choice of familiar slowcoach Holding over newbie (but faster) Kiwior was the correct one. I should add that there are two further mitigating considerations here: firstly that Arteta has shown a clear preference for playing a right footer at right centre back and a left footer at left centre back and secondly Kiwior’s excellent performances last season were, of course, at left centre back rather than right centre back. Nonetheless the enforced replacement of Saliba by Holding was a major factor in our failure to win the Premier League that season.

7 Arteta buys more left backs and goalkeepers than forwards and signs too many players from Chelsea

In my opinion Arteta has taken a systematic and rational approach to building a competitive team. 

A look at Arteta’s signings window by window shows a tentative first January window, only a few weeks after he commenced his new job, making loan signings of frankly mediocre players in an attempt to stiffen the porous defence which was the team’s major problem when he arrived. In the next three windows he added quality to the defence and stability and creativity to the midfield and then in the summer of 2022 the team was invigorated and turned into challengers with the addition of Jesus and Zinchenko. Subsequent windows have prioritised acquiring quality players to fill gaps in the team with the summer of 2023 being an outstanding window, probably to be bettered by this summer’s business. Indeed, purchases have tended to get progressively more successful with the exception of last summer’s failure to sign a striker (too focused on Sesko?) and desperate last minute loan signings of Neto and Sterling. We do tend to do our business in the summer but the addition of Ødegaard on loan and Trossard were outstanding additions in January windows. 

Of course there have been turkeys. Every signing is a gamble but to my mind the successes beat the turkeys  18 v 11. Actually it’s 7 goalkeepers (mostly turkeys), 4 left backs (1 turkey) and 8 forwards, if we include Gyokeres (3 turkeys). 

As for the chavphobia, I understand that we still bear scars from William Gallas. Arteta has signed 5 players from Chelsea: two have been a success, two were complete failures and one has yet to be tested.

January 2020: Cédric (loan + free), Marí (€8.00m loan fee + €6.00m)

Summer 2020: Partey (€50.00m), Gabriel (€26.00m), Rúnarsson (€2.00m), Willian (free)

January 2021: Ryan (loan), Ødegaard (€2.00m loan fee + €35.00m)

Summer 2021: White (€58.50m), Ramsdale (€28.00m), Tomiyasu (€18.60m), Lokonga (€17.50m), Tavares (€8.00m)

January 2022: Trusty (€1.80m)

Summer 2022: Jesus (€52.20), Vieira (€35.00m), Zinchenko (€35.00m), Turner (€5.90m), Marquinhos (€3.50m)

January 2023: Trossard (€24.00m), Kiwior (€19.50m), Jorginho (€11.30m)

Summer 2023: Rice (€116.60m), Havertz (€75.00m), Timber (€40.00m), Raya (€3.50m + €31.90m)

January 2024: –

Summer 2024: Calafiori (€45.00m), Merino (€32.00m), Neto (loan), Sterling (loan)

January 2025: –

Summer 2025: Nørgaard (€11.60m), Arrizabalaga (€5.80m), Zubimendi (€70.00m), Madueke (€60m), Mosquera (€19.04m) ?plus Gyokeres (€73.40m)

8 Arteta should have won the PL by now in view of the money he’s spent

It doesn’t work like that in a league containing clubs funded by state treasuries. The reasons for our failure to finish first rather than second in the last three seasons are clear. The simultaneous loss of Saliba and Tomiyasu without adequate cover in the run in of 2022-23; an exhausted, overplayed, small squad ran out of steam collecting just 12 points from their final 9 matches in 2023-24; last season a combination of bizarre refereeing decisions that we will never see again and an appalling sequence of serious injuries torpedoed our bid for first place against a Liverpool team that had the luck of the Devil.

9. If Arsenal don’t win the Premier League or Champions League this season, Arteta should be sacked.

This is a mantra currently being recited by hostile pundits on sports channels, snide press hacks and some intellectually challenged Arsenal ‘fans’. I have never heard them name a successor who is guaranteed to do better.

10 Conclusions

I don’t play Football Manager or any other simulator on my laptop so I have no sense of my own brilliance as a manager of a top team and how much better a job that I would do as the Arsenal manager than Mikel Arteta. I just watch the games we play and as a result I think he’s done a bloody good job to date given the scale of the challenge he faced in December 2019. This summer the club is addressing the squad issues that have handicapped our title challenges in the last three years. The team will be stronger but so too will Liverpool, City and Chelsea. Let battle commence! I do know that we will miss Arteta, his drive, his intensity and his tactical ingenuity when he finally moves on. May that day be a long. long way off.

COYG