A lot of the flak that has gone in the Arsenal manager’s direction after their Champions League exit at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain is not deserved and the Emirates future is still bright under the Spaniard’s leadership
Judging by a lot of the reaction to Mikel Arteta’s comments in the immediate aftermath of Arsenal’s Champions League exit, you would think the manager of the second-best team in England is some sort of deluded buffoon. You would have at least thought he was an embarrassingly bad loser.
Arteta is neither. In the sense that his team have won only five of their last 13 games in all competitions, have seen the Premier League title claimed by Liverpool and come up short in the Champions League, it has not been the best couple of months for the Arsenal boss.
That much is very true. The drop-off in league form has been particularly disappointing, Arsenal winning only three of their last ten matches.
As Arteta himself admitted – or was forced to admit when reminded of the evidence – Arsenal have regressed in terms of Premier League performance. In the unlikely event they win all three remaining matches, starting at Anfield today, they will finish with 76 points, 12 short of last season’s tally.
That will be the first time, as Arsenal manager, Arteta has not shown a season-on-season points improvement, and it was always going to be a tall order to do better than 89. And that is what they would have had to have done in order to pip Arne Slot’s remarkable Liverpool team, having twice played second fiddle to a remarkable Manchester City.
The overall trajectory of Arteta’s Arsenal is upwards. And it FEELS upwards. But most of the negativity now directed towards Arteta appears to be based on how he viewed the Champions League semi-final defeat to PSG.
First things first, I was in the post-match press conference in Paris and Arteta’s first words were to congratulate PSG. He also described them as one of Europe’s best teams. What he subsequently did – in the immediate, very emotional wake of a big defeat – was express the frustrations of a manager who had seen his side have more good chances than the opposition and lost. Simple as that.
It was a manager speaking as a bitter fan. And, hey, what is terribly wrong about that?
Do you want wall-to-wall automatons? Everyone pointed to the absence of a top-quality striker and Arteta knows that is an area to address.
But Declan Rice, Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka are high-class elite footballers and Arteta, rightly, would have expected one of them to finish the chances they missed. No wonder he was frustrated.
In a way, Arteta was trying to be positive and that is not a thing to knock in an age when the trend is for managers and players to make apologies that are not needed. Sure, he says some odd things but then he says a lot, so some of it is bound to be odd.
But he has toned down his technical area act – just the one yellow card this season, compared to Slot’s three – and represents his club and his team with distinction. He is no buffoon.
Arsenal have a very good manager. The Premier League has a very good manager.
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