Pep Guardiola seemingly smiled through a barrier of pain as he answered questions on Mikel Arteta’s future on Tuesday, vowing, “I will still beat him.” In the midst of this joke was a clearly dejected Guardiola, someone losing their right-hand man, a beautiful footballing friendship finally parting ways.
But not only has the time come but also the right job has. Arteta’s audition as a top coach is over and with little to suggest he will become Guardiola’s apprentice in the coming years, this was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Arteta has the opportunity to begin his managerial career at a club he spent five years. He has a huge chance to build his own reputation, not known as Pep’s lieutenant, by setting this faltering machine back on the rails.
There is intrigue in this appointment, of Arteta trying to work out the shifting paradigms, the meandering paths of uncertainty. He has, in all fairness, been learning his trade and plotting his visions in management for years now, smoking and juddering on Pep’s launch pad before his own planned ascent into the clouds. There is the element of a trapped wasp under a glass about it – obvious signs of a great coach with Guardiola, Wenger and Pocchetino all routing for him to reach the very top, and he has finally been set free.
He’s undoubtedly being thrown in at the deep end. The weekly grind of the Christmas schedule awaits, with eight games in one month, the fixtures lined up like a city-centre taxi rank at midnight, lights on, engine running, ready and waiting.
18 months ago, the club decided that the best way to conceal the inevitable post-Wenger symptoms was to hire an experienced, proven and fashionable Spanish tactician. For obvious reasons this didn’t work out. And so the obvious replacement for Emery is a fashionable Spanish tactician. Just without the other bit. This is top class Premier League content.
He will have to deal with Mesut Ozil. The embodiment of the drift and decay at this ghost ship of a sporting giant. He must select his captain. None of this pulling straws business Emery opted for. Arteta must be ruthless. He will have to make the most of the Sokratis-Luiz-Chambers conundrum, until January at least, and find a way to stop conceding so many goals. They have conceded 27 goals in the league already this season. In recent weeks this team has looked unorganised and ill-disciplined, no cranial buzz, running around like a spaniel getting its first experience of the beach after a 100-mile car journey, tail wagging, turning somersaults, digging holes, paws pounding the sand.
And despite the glamour of this appointment, not too far beneath the surface there are other motives. There is debate to be had as to whether the owners are simply playing the game. Simply pleasing the customers. On 28 November The Emirates was tantalisingly close to a record-low attendance – with no way near the 49,149 tickets sold in attendance, for their match against Eintracht Frankfurt. This once regal meringue of a football club is plummeting, and the owners are reacting.
Two years after Wenger’s departure and there is still a strange electricity to The Emirates. Wenger still feels like a physical component of that gleaming glass and steel super-stadium. Inevitably the turnstiles will soon get going again, no sooner than Arteta’s first home game against Chelsea next Sunday.
Above all, though, it’s going to take more than Arteta’s tactics to wean Arsenal from these accident-laden performances. Saturday will come as a new chapter, a fresh page, and hopefully some flickering future-visions of how the Spaniards team will play.
Alex's Sports Column 