Morning all. It looks like there’s a bit of a media blitz about Mikel Arteta this weekend as we head into his 100th game in charge of the club. Certainly there’s lot of stuff on the official site which I haven’t had a chance to watch/read in any depth yet.
In his pre-game press conference, he was asked about the journey from his first game – a 1-1 draw with Bournemouth on December 26th 2019, and said:
“I am different. I see things differently, you evolve in certain ways, you learn a lot of things. We keep evolving.”
It’s something I chat about a bit with Lewis on the latest Patreon preview podcast, but it’s been a hell of a roller-coaster in 100 games. Whatever you think about Arteta or the job he’s doing, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that in a relatively short period he’s had half a lifetime of stuff to deal with: on the pitch, off the pitch, at executive level and from the world in general. It’s hard to think of any manager whose first job threw up quite so many challenges – some of them of his own making it has to be said – so it’s little wonder he’s different now. And look, I went through that entire paragraph without using the word ‘unprecedented’.
He also speaks about what he considers the identity of the club now, something which has been a discussion point since the departure of Arsene Wenger who was, to all intents and purposes, the figurehead. Arteta says:
“For me if I have to define our identity, it is one word now: unity. The past that we had in recent months, it is only one, unity.
“Without unity you can’t achieve what we want to achieve and unity means every person that works in the organisation, it’s our way of playing, it our way of transmitting, our way of playing, it is our way of transmitting our values, our way of connecting with our fans, our ownership is everybody, uniform, thinking in the same way, with the same purpose, without any individual agendas, without any egos, just that’s the task.”
He does have a tendency to use buzz words a bit, the ‘transmit’ bit is something James noted on the Arsecast Extra this week, but I don’t disbelieve him when he talks about unity because we’ve seen that on the pitch in the last couple of months. The reaction to those opening three games of the season was so intense and the scrutiny so high that even within the confines of London Colney where you can lock yourself away from most of it, Arteta had to fully aware of the pressure. Wasn’t there an incident when his car was surrounded after one of the early defeats? The real world is there, at all times.
Then came his odd-sounding remarks after the Norwich game when he said:
It’s the been the best week or 10 days of my career in this industry.
I mean, it still sounds a bit odd for a player who has won trophies, been part of a coaching team which won the Premier League, and lots more, but my own read on this was always that at a point when everything externally was on fire, Arteta realised that he still had the faith of those inside. I don’t even mean the board, Edu, Vinai etc, but the players themselves, because without that he was toast. No two ways about it.
Since then they scrapped out wins over Norwich and Burnley, he freshened up the team via the transfer market and via his selections, he talked up the connection between the team and the fans and there’s no doubt that has been a significant positive factor since early September, and results and performances are going in the right direction. You can see by the way they play, by the way they act during games and after games, that this is a group of players who are on board with each other, the manager, and what they’re being asked to do. So, unity.
Of course it’s still early days. As pleasing as these last couple of months have been, there’s a lot more to do, hence Arteta’s comments after the win over Leicester:
We need to carry on. We haven’t done anything. We won a couple of matches. We are not where we want to be still. There are a lot of things to improve. Let’s keep humble, working hard and go game-by-game.
I can’t say with any certainty whether Arteta is going to have another 100 games in charge, or another 100 after that, and there is still plenty of prove, but I do feel cautiously optimistic about our direction now. Much more so than I did previously. We still need to see how this team deals with certain things – some adversity; a game where early dominance doesn’t bring the goals we’ve seen of late; decisions which make life difficult; even how we react to a defeat (something I hope we don’t see for a while, obviously); but I hope that we can take three points from this 100th game, take stock during the Interlull, and then get ready to go again when we return.
Right, let’s leave it there for now. As I mentioned, there’s a Watford preview podcast available now for Patreon members, and I’ll be back tomorrow to look ahead to the game here.
Have a great Saturday.
