I have to get this off my chest:
When we were first linked to Arteta after Wenger left, I wanted him at Arsenal as manager. I was completely convinced. When we were linked again after Emery lost the dressing room and the trust of the ownership, I said he was always the one. When he was failing, and the Aubameyang cup win started fading into memory, I held the line. It was Everton 2020 when some of us were saying Arteta was the worst manager in the league and I kept defending him, saying he’d prove them wrong. But I remember the Everton game a year later in December 2021, almost exactly two years into Arteta’s reign and a year after the famous ESR performance against Chelsea, where the players still looked completely unprepared and Arteta looked baffled and scared. I hated that game. I think it was then that I suggested we bring out the sack.
The documentary sustained my ambivalence. He is just so cringe. His commitment to what I see as a dumbed-down corporate pseudo-psychology and the attendant egomania grated on me. It still does. He refreshed the team with his own signings, but his own in-game management and team selections did not really change, and I really started losing patience. The old reasons (excuses) no longer held. The problems were Artetas, they were not inherited.
Then, of course, the Thomas Partey Affair. He should have been immediately suspended, and never offered a new contract. I will never fully trust Arteta after this.
2023-2024 saw us score 91 goals, the crowd was back on-side, and we were building on an excellent campaign the year before with a young squad. The feels were good, despite the shadow of Partey’s crimes looming over us. Although that West Ham game will forever haunt me, it turns out that Arteta actually could coach an attack.
But he decided not to. Injuries are only part of it. He went full Mourinho and decided that we had to be practical to win. He was not wrong, but it was not particularly fun. We did win, however.
For all of Arteta’s corporate cringe and self-satisfied pragmatism, he is also a loveable dork. That interview with Tom Hiddleston reminded me of what a fundamentally unimposing figure he cuts. The thing about Arteta is that even though some of the nonsense he gets up to is fundamentally inauthentic, he does everything so authentically. He cares. He loves. He feels every single moment and he is doing everything he can to make it happen. My read on it is that it’s not actually the stupid lightbulb or that horrible “Champions of Life” in a heart drawing on the back of a cardboard trophy that means anything to the players, to the owners, to the fans - it’s Arteta himself, caring enough and passionate enough and dorky enough to try something so stupid in the first place.
What I love and appreciate about Arteta is that he always fights outside of his own capacity. What I mean is, he goes for things that are beyond him, he pushes further than he rightfully should, and he knows that he’ll outwork the other guys even if it comes more naturally to them. He loves hard - too hard. He’s not the coolest can in the fridge, not by a long shot. But the reason he always convinces players is because he is himself convincing. I really believe that it is Arteta himself they are convinced by, not what he says or does. If he needs to embarrass himself with dorky shenanigans, fine. But I, for one, hope that he finds a new sense of peace and conviction with this title win that allows him to just be the convinced and convincing guy that he is without all the props.
Lastly, I will say that Arteta was and is right. He is right to stick to his ideas until they break, to hold the line until change is necessary, because if you chop and change all the time, you will definitely fail. He does change and has changed, in very impressive ways, but rarely does he do it impulsively. When he does (4 subs at once, etc.) it doesn’t really work. I don’t think he’s the most naturally intuitive guy, and sometimes he makes mistakes because he does things that have the aesthetics of intuition rather than actually being intuitive. When he makes calls, they are usually tough ones. Sometimes, they are tough because he makes them tough, but that is a skill as well. I genuinely believe that you cannot know if you have gone far enough until you go too far. Trying to toe a line that you’ve never crossed will make you think you’re right at the edge when you’re actually miles away. In this sense, cowardball is actually its opposite. It is conviction, it is intrepid, and it is holding the line in the face of all the evidence until the real change that is needed becomes clear. By all accounts, he genuinely let go a bit at the end of this season and acted a bit more on feeling - long may it continue.
I have no doubt that he’ll continue to frustrate me to no end, and I know that I will never forgive him for some of the things he’s done. While it’s easy to say after winning the league, there are also aspects of him I will always love, and moments he’s given me that I will certainly cherish.
Thanks, Mikel. You are a steely little fucker, and a big fucking dork.
