Morning champs.
As we watched the scenes unfold at London Colney, when players and staff celebrate Bournemouth taking the points off Man City that secured the title for Arsenal, one man was conspicuous by his absence. There was no sign of Mikel Arteta.
I wondered on the Arsecast Extra if this was a deliberate choice, allowing the players to be front and centre at that key moment. Turns out it was, but not quite in the way I had thought. The manager spoke about it a bit at his press conference, but went into more detail in an interview with Sky Sports (watch here). I think it’s worth replicating in text format this morning
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After Burnley, Martin comes to me and said, ‘Boss, I think we should watch the game together, and I think you and the staff should be there with us. That’s the way we want to do it’.
I said, ‘Yes, if you want to do it that way, let’s do it that way. It’s your moment’.
So we trained a bit later, that was planned to start at 7.30, I think 15 minutes before that I went upstairs in the restaurant, everything was set up and my energy wasn’t right. I had a feeling that if they’re going to be watching it, they’re going to be playing for every ball and if I’m there, I think it’s going to be different and the staff will be different.
So I went downstairs and said, ‘Martin, I’m really sorry, I’m going to head home. I think it’s the right thing to do. If the magic happens, I will see you straight away’.
So I went home, the game started, I didn’t know anything about it, I was driving in the car, half an hour, go home. No radio. Nothing, just music and drive and I go home, open the door and my kids and Lorena were watching the game in the living room. I just opened the door, ‘I’m here, see you after the game’.
I closed it, I went straight to the garden, I started to build some fire in the chimney, started to get the barbecue ready. I had Gabi and another member of the staff with me and I think it was the longest hour and a half of my life. And I was hearing things from the living room, from some of the neighbours.
I could not figure out what was happening. And then suddenly my oldest son opens the door and I see him coming, he’s in tears, starts to run towards me, he jumps on me and says, ‘We are the Premier League winners’.
Two seconds later my other two boys come in with my wife and start to hug me and we all started to cry, it was so emotional.
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Being a football manager is a ridiculously difficult job, and I don’t think we talk about that enough. To be a Premier League winning football manager means you’re doing something that only a tiny percentage of those who operate at the elite level can do, and have done. That’s where Mikel Arteta is now.
What’s fascinating to me about this is that he is someone who, in his pursuit of success – whether it’s a win in the next game, or the big trophies each season – has done his best to control as much as possible. His preparation is second to none, we know his attention to detail is off the charts, even when we don’t necessarily see it ourselves. His quote about how he wanted Arsenal to be the best at everything, every aspect of the game, told you so much about him and how he operates. He’s also keenly aware that there are things you cannot control, external forces that are so often random and which can knock off course. Hence his desire to have jurisdiction over as much as he can.
And yet, he experienced this in the same way so many of us did. Those who sat and watched the Bournemouth game, fair play to you. You have balls of steel. I just couldn’t do it, even if I found myself in a position where I couldn’t avoid most of the first half. However you did it though, we had no control. Mikel Arteta had no control. Football, the great leveler.
I’m happy for him, because managers live in the spotlight. Every decision is analysed to the Nth degree, every substitution, every transfer, every word they say in press conferences and interviews, every day of every week during every season there’s no escape. That’s the job, and they are very well compensated, but that doesn’t meant it’s not without pressure, and that they’re somehow immune from the human condition because of their pay cheque.
I remember distinctly Arteta expressing some self-doubt over his ability when we finished second to Man City by a point in 2024. It seemed somewhat counter-intuitive that a season later, when we’d finished second again but by a greater distance to the Liverpool side that won it, that he talked about his conviction that we could become champions. I think he learned a lot from that season, and the injuries we endured. Finishing second unlocked something else, and perhaps we saw that during this season. When we played well, we won games quite convincingly, but when we didn’t quite hit that level, more often than not we still found a way to win.
I think I referred to it the other day as the Arsenal Industrial Complex. A football grinding machine. You might not like it, but we’re going to chew you up and spit you out. Come at us, we’ll rebuff your every effort (sometimes with a little help along the way … after review). But generally, this was arch-pragmatism on display.
Pragmatism | noun: dealing with the problems that exist in a specific situation in a reasonable and logical way instead of depending on ideas and theories : practical as opposed to idealistic.
I can’t lie and say Arsenal played my ideal brand of football, but then what I’d like to see versus what Mikel Arteta has to do are very different things. Ultimately, only one of them really matters. And as he spent time in his garden, barbecuing meat in memory of Edu, the reward for that pragmatism arrived with the final whistle at the Vitality Stadium, and our first title since 2004.
I know it’s been said before, but when you consider where we were when Arteta took over and where we are now, the job he’s done has been incredible. I’d delighted for him that he now has that tangible reward for his efforts. Analysis of football is often too binary, and I get why that is the case, but even without a title, objectively his work has been exceptional regardless of how frustrated we’ve been at times.
Now, even those who doubted the most, often loudly, have to give the man his flowers. They probably won’t, but they should. He deserves them, because I don’t think there’s any doubt how hard he has worked, how determined he’s been, and how driven and ambitious he has always been for Arsenal Football Club. The spotlight that shines so brightly when things don’t go well ought to be trained on him now as he gets the standing ovation he absolutely merits.
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Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. If you fancy some more audio chat, join us for a preview podcast on Patreon later, and I’ll leave you with a bonus Arsecast with the legend that is Ian Wright.
