Morning.
The only place to start today is the news that Mikel Arteta has put pen to paper on a new deal with the club. It was announced yesterday, and it’s no real surprise. I know some people were fretting a bit once he got into the final 12 months of his deal, but my understanding is that this was all agreed some time ago, and it was just about when it would be announced.
I suppose the timing is interesting. On the one hand, an Interlull is ready-made for this kind of thing, and I think the club were cognisant of not doing anything during the transfer window to ward off accusations they weren’t focused on what they needed to do with player arrivals and departures. On the other, going into a North London derby where we’ll be without Martin Odegaard, without Declan Rice, without summer signing Mikel Merino, and potentially without Riccardo Calafiori due to the Looney Tunes nonsense inflicted on him when he was playing for Italy, this announcement provides a bit of a boost.
Speaking to the official site, he expressed his happiness about committing to new terms and staying longer. This is a team that he has built – or, at least, played a very significant role in building because there has been teamwork and a lot of joined up thinking to get us to this point – but one which has unfinished business. From his side, the side of the players, and the fans. The club has been transformed from an unhappy place to one where optimism and unity abounds – in no small part because of Arteta, but also because the club have given him what he wants and what he has demanded.
Asked what excites him most about the future, he said:
The people and the ambition of the club. They are ready to do whatever it takes to take this club to the next level and win.
There’s more detail here, but it’s interesting to consider what this next cycle should bring. If the first contract was about taking stock of a club in disarray and then knocking things down to the build them up again; and the second was about rebuilding and making progress – which I think we have undoubtedly done; then this one is about winning. It’s about taking that next step and adding silverware.
I don’t mean that to sound entitled, or anything like that, but I think the first person to acknowledge that is Arteta himself. He is so driven, so demanding, so passionate, and so intense in the pursuit of the biggest prizes for this team and this club. We have come close in two successive seasons, and as difficult and challenging as it is going to be this time around, the ambition has to be go one better than last time. And that’s just the Premier League.
Although he’s never spoken much about it (mostly because he hasn’t had to), I can only imagine Arteta would love to ink his name into the history books by being the first Arsenal manager to win the Champions League. The demands he places on his players, on everyone around him (and himself), are all about achieving the kind of success his contemporaries have enjoyed. He wants what Pep has, and even though part of him must understand the way City has been built makes that so tough for anyone to compete with, that’s not a challenge he will back away from.
I don’t think you absolutely need to to win trophies to be considered a great team. What Arsenal did last season was incredible and enjoyable, and objectively you can say we were a brilliant team who, in any other era, would have won the league by a distance. But we know there’s another level; we know what it takes to go down in history and to get your pictures on the walls of the training ground for future generations to look up to; we know that trophies are the thing every football fan, and every manager/player, craves.
That’s the mission for this new contract period. Do I have any doubt about his desire or motivation to help us achieve that? Not at all. Do I have belief in that this group of players shares that, and is good enough to go the distance? Yes. I think we have some pretty stern challenges ahead of us in the very short-term for reasons we all understand, but I think what’s clear is that everyone at Arsenal right now is on the same page, and that kind of togetherness is vital if you do want to win the biggest prizes.
I’ve seen a few comments about the duration of the deal. It’s a two year extension on top of the year (more or less) already remaining, so it takes him to 2027. I really don’t see a problem with this at all. It gives everyone the ability to take stock as time goes on, without over-committing on either side. For managers, things can change very quickly, and to me it just makes sense. It’s a non-issue.
So, as he celebrated with his glass of champagne (or sagardoa) last night, Mikel Arteta will have reflected on how he came into a job with so much to do, and years later, with the derby on the horizon, he still has lots to think about. The problems are different, the landscape has changed, but the demands on any manager are fairly relentless. For now that’s something he embraces, relishes even, so let’s hope that in this period all the groundwork and all the hard work lead us to the success everyone is so desperate for.
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Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We will have an Arsecast for you in a little while, so stand by for that. Also, after the manager’s press conference this afternoon, we’ll be previewing the derby in some depth over on Patreon. If you’d like to join us and you’re not already a member, it’s just $6 per month for instant access to the preview pod and all the content we produce on there.
For now, have a good one!
