Arsenal have been a club with greet history and many of the club culture were instilled by Arsene Wenger when he first joined in 1996. This transformed the club to a greater height which has brought about so much success. From the kind of food they eat, to the training regime and match day practices.
Those culture were getting fizzled out due to improve options or technology advancement. Arsenal have however been stuck in some aspect of their detvelopment because things haven’t improved around the club.
When Wenger departed at the end of 2018 season, Unai Emery was seen as an experienced manager that could spice things up and improve the atmosphere around the club but that never happened, it even got worse.
Losing a game came with little consequences and many players were just finding it difficult to relate to the message of the manage, partly due to his not so fluent communication in English. With the arrival of Mikel Arteta, things seem to have gotten a direction.
Arteta is an Arsenal man that have learnt from the best managers in the world. From playing under Wenger and starting his coaching career at Arsenal, moving to Manchester City to work under Pep Guardiola has been a very boast to his coaching knowledge.
This is now being seen at Arsenal from his first day on the job. He kept on hammering on “non-negotiables” from the first interview and this has become part of his disciplinary watch words. For a football team to excel for a long period of time like Manchester City and other top teams, some things are put in place to make the players know this is the standard here.
He is bringing the same to Arsenal. Playing for the club has to be a privilege and the players are getting to live with that fact now. Getting to training early is now a must and for no excuse must a player be late.
In extreme cases, the player has to find a way to apologize to the team either by paying a fine or some other ways of punishment. Those things seem little but they go a long way in getting a team to conform to the values the club want to instill.
A classic case is that of Matteo Guendouzi. The player seems not ready to buy into the manager’s ideology and hasn’t made the match day squad since the Brighton game. He hasn’t trained with the first team since then either. It has to be known to every player, young or experienced, for the club to truly progress, the way things are done have to change.
Another culture that Arteta is working on is trying to ensure the team can give consistent performance that translate to the ability of the squad and not a one off thing. Wins against Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City this season have come under Arteta but have also lost games like that of Aston Villa, Brighton and Tottenham when the team had a real chance of getting maximum points.
When a team can drop consistent 8/10 performance, rather than a 9/10 in a match then do 5/10 in others, then the team can challenge for the title. New signings need to be made this Premier League summer transfers but if the current players don’t key into those things yet, in a matter of time, everyone regardless how good they are will drop below excellent performance when they can definitely do better.
To achieve all of this, he needs to be backed by the club owner to make signings that fit into his style and bring players that can see things the way he wants them to see it. He has done a good job with the resources he has but will only take the club to the next level when he is back and players that don’t conform to what he wants can be asked to go when there are others that can play there.
When this is done, Arsenal can be sure to be on the top stage challenging for the top silverware in three years with the kind of project Arteta is building. The question is how well is Arsenal as a club ready to key into all that Arteta wants?