Tag Archives: Mikel Arteta

New Manager, New Goalkeeper, Renewed Hope over The Arsenal

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Yesterday was a gay old day for Arsenal.

We awoke to the Adidas video. If this was not enough to warm the cockles of your heart ahead of the season, you might be best of sitting it out.

It is only this morning as I post the video back up that I realise it was a promotion video for the 3rd kit.

The video had its desired affect, and 98% of the fan base is now buzzing for Saturday. The less said about the 2% the better.

Then at 9pm last night, Arsenal dropped the news that Mikel Arteta had been promoted to manager.

This is a promotion of huge significance, and shows Arteta has the backing of the senior leadership team and board at Arsenal.

From head coach to manager means Arteta will now be involved in all aspects of the first team, not just the coaching. He will be more heavily involved in transfer, in building his own scouting team. Building the team in his mind. Not just coaching another mans vision.

Excellent news for those who do not like a Director of Football running the club.

At around the same time as the Arteta news was breaking, the Independent broke that Emi Martinez was set to join Aston Villa for around £15million.

The fee does feel a little light, but as it stands no other club is coming in for him.

With just 2 years on his contract to go, and Emi refusing to sign a new deal unless he had “guarantees of first team football”, Arsenal had 3 choices:

  1. Give Emi want he wants – Make him Arsenal number 1 after just 9 Premier League games. Casting aside Bernd Leno, one of our most consistent performers of the last 2 years. This would see Arsenal favour a 28-year-old keeper with just 15 top flight games under his over one with 300 games. It would be a huge risk.
  2. Risk Emi running down his contract – Tell Martinez that he will start the season as number one, but that he is not guaranteed that position. It is then a fair fight between Martinez and Leno for that number 1 shirt. This then risks Martinez dropping down to number 2, not signing a new deal and Arsenal selling for £5-6million next summer.
  3. Sell Emi – Even at £15million, Martinez is at the most valuable he has ever been at Arsenal. Last summer he was on the verge of a move back to Spain for about £3-4million. 9 league games on and Arsenal are trebling that. Sell, reinvest in someone cheaper, make Leno number one and have some cash left over.

And ultimately it is number 3 that seems to be happening.

Martinez wants first team football. He is 28-years-old now, in his peak years as a goal keeper. His 10 year career at Arsenal had giving him very little to shout about prior to this season.

A handful of games for The Arsenal and 6 loan deals taking from Oxford to Getafe, Wolverhampton, Rotherham, Sheffield and Reading.

For the first time in his career, he is in charge of his own destiny. He can choose whether to stay in London, compete for number 1 at Arsenal, or move to a club of his choosing and be undisputed number 1.

Life as a 2nd choice goal keeper is hard. You train hard, day in day out, only to sit on the bench for much of your career. Steve Harper famously went 6 seasons at Newcastle playing a total of 7 Premier League games.

In total, Harper was an unused substitute over 300 times!

Martinez wants first team football, and Arsenal should not step in his way.

Arsenal have reportedly enquired about David Raya as a replacement.

Raya is currently Brentford’s number 1, and played every game of the season in 2019/20 winning the Championship’s Golden Glove award.

Like Martinez, he is a foreign born, home-grown player; having been born in Barcelona but joining Blackburn at 17.

If Martinez leaves, Arsenal have no option but to replace him with a home grown player.

We currently have 18 non-home grown players, and with our remaining transfer targets being Ghanaian and French, that number could well become 20. We are only allowed 17.

So before even considering replacing Martinez, we already need to sell at least 3 non-home grown players to make space for 2 incoming. Signing a non-home grown 2nd choice keeper would just feel like a waste of a spot.

Once it is established that Arsenal will need a home grown keeper to replace Martinez, the list becomes a lot smaller. Tom Heaton of Aston Villa or Fraser Forster at Southampton would be two potential options. But both have suffered with injuries recently and would very much be a short term solution.

Joe Hart could have been in there, but he has joined Tottenham.

We are not going to spend big on someone like Nick Pope or Jack Butland, and neither would probably want to leave their current clubs to sit on the bench for Arsenal.

In Raya, Arsenal would be signing a 25-year-old keeper that is home grown, previously worked with Arsenal goal keeping coach Inaki Cana and set-piece specialist Andreas Georgson at Brentford and has played over 280 games in England.

Raya ticks a lot of boxes, and would cost significantly less than what we would receive for Martinez. That in turns raises funds to continue improving elsewhere on the pitch.

For those who might say “he is only 6ft”, Brentford had the best record in defending set pieces last year. You do not do that if you do not have a goal keeper who can not command his box.

A final thought of the day: If you are sitting moaning about Arsenal’s transfer activity this summer, labelling the club unambitious, go through your own Tweets first. Wanting to sell Aubameyang and sign Ryan Fraser is onot exactly showing ambition.

Have a good Friday. The Arsenal return tomorrow.

PS: Just wish Adidas would learn it is “The Arsenal”.

Keenos

Arteta’s debut full season starts today

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Today is the first day of the 2020/21 season, with the traditional Community Shield season opener

This season will be a defining one for Mikel Arteta. It is the young Manger’s first time taking charge for an entire season.

Everything we have seen from Arteta so far displays clarity of thought and decisive execution of plans. This is how he made us effective in the FA Cup run, ending with a trophy after just 7 months as a manager. Impressive stuff, which means we can assume that despite the unique lack of preseason, Mikel will have a clear plan on how he wants the season to go for is. Whatever happens, I think this means we can be extremely excited for the upcoming season.

It appears Arsenal have every intention of giving the Manager the tools that he needs to get back into the Champions League. Of course we’ve all been burned before and know, you can’t be sure with Arsenal until the transfer window is closed. With Gabriel’s arrival, the Brazilian CB from Lille, to be imminently announced, Arteta is after specific pieces to fit his jigsaw.

With Gabriel, Saliba and Mari(when back from injury), Arteta will have added height, power, passing range, and speed in the middle of defence. This should provide him with the flexibility to move between having three CBs or two.

The midfield is definitely the area where we have the most question marks about what Arteta wants us to look like in the new season. It’s no secret Arsenal are on the hunt for additions in the midfield. The stats for last season show the lack of creativity from the middle of the park.

The eye test has also told us for years that we lack stature, bite, control and aggression in our central midfield. For Arsenal to get back into the top for and challenge the best teams in England, this needs to be addressed.

For now, we still have yet to make space available and get cash in by selling. It remains to be seen the exact midfield specialists Arteta will have to pick from this season, but it is vital they give us the stability and balance to play the way Arteta wants to play.

With the likes of Elneny, Torreira and Guendouzi potential departing the club, will we be replenishing the midfield with the right profile of player.

Will Arteta still see Granit Xhaka as a nailed on starter?

Xhaka was relied upon by Arteta last season, its clear there is a lot of trust there.

Arteta is an intelligent man, he’ll be well aware of Xhaka’s glaring weaknesses. This makes it interesting to see how he plans to use Xhaka, the fans won’t accept his lack of mobility and handsy nature taking centre stage in the new season.

We’ve all seen it too many times and now we’re pinning are hopes on Arteta to really address these problems, tactically and with brave selections.

Another engaging element of Artetas first full season, is that he gets to hopefully benefit from Pepe having got his debut year in England out the way.

Arsenals record signing ended the season with a great performance in the FA Cup Final and will no doubt be anxious to kick on and fulfill his undoubted potential. It is Arteta’s job to make sure our best players are given a platform to thrive.

It seems Pepe has bought into the project and can be motivated to do the hard work in addition to proving quality in the final third. Now the fans want to see it consistently. Arteta appears to be a man with a plan, and intense and motivating figure.

We can eagerly await to see Arteta’s Arsenal revolution in full effect this season

Myles

Board back the Edu / Arteta partnership as they sack Sanllehi

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When I wrote yesterday’s blog about the board taking the lead on an overhaul of Arsenal’s structure, we were not expecting things to happen so quickly.

We had heard rumours that Arsenal were playing a management restructure at the top, but we thought this might occur after the new season restarts so as not to disrupt this summers transfer business. Instead Raul Sanllehi left the club with immediate effect.

Why did Raul leave?

Well we really don’t know.

There are plenty of accusations on twitter, including that he profited from the Nicolas Pepe deal. There is no evidence that this is true.

But what is clear that since Arsene Wenger left, the club has been dysfunctional at the top.

Wenger ran everything at the club. Fingers in every pies. It was his overlord way of running the club that saw it successful.

But it was also the power he wielded that saw the club enter a downward spiral, as he became accountable to no one.

Arsenal needed refreshing. We needed a reboot. And the club decided to go down the root completely opposite to Wenger and bring in multiple people to run things.

Firstly we had Ivan Gazidis as CEO.

Under Wenger, Gazidis had very little to do with the footballing side of the club. He was mainly dealing with the commercial side.

With Wenger gone, Arsenal firstly bought in Raul Sanllehi as Head of Football Relations and Sven Mislintat as Head of Recruitment.

This left Gazidis in charge of the commercial side, Sanllehi in charge of the football side and Mislintat in charge of the recruitment. The Head Coach (ie Unai Emery) only had to focus on coaching and picking the team.

When Gazidis left, Sanllehi was promoted as was Vinai Venkatesham. The long time Arsenal employee taking over Gazidis’s role over seeing the commercial side of the club.

Then the battle of egos began as Arsenal transfer decisions went from a committee of 3 to a committee of two. What happens when they disagree?

Well when Sanllehi and Mislintat disagrees, Sanllehi establishes his seniority and Mislintat left.

Recently Mislintat labelled the clubs recruitment department “bloated”. He also said that the clubs structure was “dysfunctional”.

The actions taken by the board – making many scouts redundant and saying goodbye to Sanllehi would indicate that they agree.

When Mislintat left, Arsenal added Edu to the clubs upper structure as Technical Director.

I as it just a case of too many cooks?

We had Sanllehi, Edu and an outspoken manager in Mikel Arteta who wanted to “do things his way”.

Arteta is a strong minded character. He knows what he wants to do. How he wants to manage. The players he needs.

Was there a conflict between Arteta and Sanllehi in the same way Emery and Sanllehi disagrees over players?

Sanllehi reportedly over ruled Emery a few times on players, and the result was Emery didn’t have the squad he wanted and got sacked. The board backed Sanllehi.

But this time it felt different.

Arteta got his way with David Luiz’s new contract and the signing of Willian. The board backed Arteta above Sanllehi.

It fees like the board want to put Arteta front and centre of Arsenal Football Club. That Lord Harris of Peckham, Ken Friar and Tim Lewis see him as a long term manager.

Once the decision is made that Arteta is the most important man at the club, you then need other employees to work alongside him, not work against him.

Arteta and Edu have a very good relationship. Both former Arsenal players. Both central midfielders. Same mentality on how to ply a game. They seem to work well together.

That left Sanllehi as the odd man out.

He is the one that doesn’t have a history with Arsenal, that works in a different way to Arsenal. He wasn’t really an Arsenal man.

The promotion of Vinai is also something that should be shouted about.

The British born Indian is well respected throughout football, and at just 39 (yes, he had a hard paper round), Arsenal have a very youthful looking management team.

There could be more Senior back office Arsenal employees to leave in the coming weeks.

After years of criticism of the board, asking if they care, it is good to see them take action.

The decision on Sanllehi was made by Lord Harris of Peckham, Ken Friar and Tim Lewis.

They are going all in on the Edu / Arteta partnership.

Keenos