Artisan
Not Emery's Old Pal
https://theathletic.co.uk/2265368/2020/12/17/arsenal-fc-the-decline/
How did we get here? Arsenal are 15th in the 20-team Premier League, substantially closer to its relegation zone than the Champions League places. There is a surreal quality to their plight; a cautionary tale about the careful management of a football club. Spirits may have been raised by a dogged 1-1 draw with 10 men at home to Southampton, but the table still makes for bleak reading. As we approach the crucial Christmas period, Arsenal — one of the supposed ‘big six’ — find themselves in the bottom six.
That Arsenal will be relieved to have taken a point for the first time in five home games tells you how far they have fallen. The speed at which the optimism of the summer has evaporated is shocking, but for those familiar with the club, not altogether surprising.
Newer staff talk of the need for a fundamental change in the culture and mentality at London Colney — that if Arsenal continue to exist in a comfort zone, they will continue to slide. They feel that standards have slipped over such a long period that bad habits have become ingrained and not addressed. Sometimes it requires a fresh pair of eyes to tell you who you really are. These insiders feel that without a winning culture, without a different level of standards and expectations, Arsenal’s potential will remain unfulfilled. They feel that the training ground at Colney is a safe haven where outside noise and criticism doesn’t breach the walls when it should be an elite competitive environment.
There is a distinction to be drawn between the current crisis at Arsenal and their broader decline. While one seems to have swept in overnight, the other has been years in the making. If the responsibility for results must sit largely with the incumbent manager, blame for the wider malaise is more widely shared. This failure has many fathers.
Manager Mikel Arteta and his staff certainly have their share of culpability, something which the Arsenal manager readily admits. He is not inclined to shirk responsibility, telling the media on the eve of the Southampton game: “We have to take the bullets. We are not winning football matches and you have to put your chest there.”
Arsenal will desperately hope this point against Southampton represents a turning point — this is their worst start to a season since 1974-75 after all. After the defeat to Burnley in the previous game, Arteta was so disappointed and frustrated that he did not speak to the players after the game, preferring to address them at the training ground the next day. Behind the scenes the club’s leadership have stressed the importance of simply not losing. Arsenal and Arteta will take the spirited second half against Southampton as a sign of the players’ continuing faith.
Even if there are justifiable questions over this squad of players, they are surely better than they have shown of late. Arteta arrived just under a year ago and adopted a system and style of play that saw Arsenal achieve some impressive results during Project Restart this past summer, but his tactical grip on the team seems to have slipped. Arsenal have now won just one of their last nine Premier League games.
To his credit, Arteta has tried to tackle the culture head-on, albeit with mixed results. Consistently applying his behavioural “non-negotiables” has proved increasingly difficult, with some accusations of double standards. There was also some anger within the club when Willian was permitted to start the match against Leeds United after his unauthorised trip to Dubai. The feeling from some quarters was that other players have been more harshly punished for less serious transgressions. Indiscipline has crept in both on and off the pitch. Since Arteta took charge, no team has received more than Arsenal’s seven red cards. Some people speak of punctuality being an issue at training.
While Arteta retains strong support from the majority of the squad, some divisions have emerged — perhaps inevitable when the group is so large and many players are short of game time. An unsuccessful team is a frustrated team. The desire to turn things around has led to the atmosphere at London Colney becoming more fractious of late. The Athletic understands David Luiz was unhappy to be left out of the trip to Manchester United last month as an injury precaution. The player felt fully fit and consequently cut a frustrated figure when left behind.
Many close to Arsenal have labelled Arteta’s job title change from head coach “a mistake”; a premature commitment to a manager whose stock has suddenly fallen.
Sources believe the team is suffering primarily due to poor finishing and red cards, and that their fortunes will soon change. Technical director Edu also admitted in the Arsenal fans’ forum this week that it’s clear “a player with creativity in the middle” is needed.
The Athletic understands that Arteta’s position remains secure. The sense those familiar with the club’s executive team have is the young coach is regarded as a long-term appointment they remain utterly committed to. Despite being on a learning curve himself, Arteta is viewed internally as more of the solution than the problem.
Nevertheless, the speed with which crisis has enveloped Arteta feels astounding. Nobody, including the club’s executives and owners, anticipated this. Just four months ago, he was lifting the FA Cup at Wembley — a triumph that seemed to signal the start of a bold new era. Since then the pedestal on which Arteta was raised has crumbled beneath him.
This has not, however, happened overnight.
Football emergencies, like economic emergencies, seem to arrive slowly, and then all at once. As dramatic as this reversal of fortunes feels, the fault lines have been there for some time. Some at Arsenal speak of deeper cultural problems which are yet to be overcome. Plot a course of the club’s Premier League standing since their title win in 2004, and the five FA Cups won across that period begin to look like anomalous spikes along that broader trend of decline.
If Arsenal finish outside the Champions League places this year, it will mean a fifth consecutive season of failing to be among the Premier League’s end of season top four. This is, to coin a phrase appropriate for 2020, their very own new normal.
For Arsenal fans, that one question looms large: how did we get here?
Arsenal’s owners knew that the period following Arsène Wenger’s departure would be difficult. They had the good fortune to observe Manchester United wrestling with the loss of Sir Alex Ferguson and sought to learn from their mistakes.
United had been hit with a one-two punch in losing not just Ferguson but also chief executive David Gill in the same summer of 2013. Gill, who had been a senior figure at Old Trafford since 1997, left his post to take up a role on UEFA’s executive committee. Instead of working alongside an experienced CEO, Ferguson’s successor David Moyes found himself teamed with Ed Woodward, a man new to the job.
Arsenal sought to do all they could to assemble an executive team robust enough to support Wenger’s successor. In the months before Unai Emery’s appointment, then-chief executive Ivan Gazidis recruited Raul Sanllehi to be head of football relations and Sven Mislintat as head of recruitment. Contracts expert Huss Fahmy was hired to replace **** Law. The idea was to assemble a team of specialists who, under Gazidis’ direction, could steer the club forward.
Then, a bolt from the blue. Offered a post at AC Milan, Gazidis quit. Despite their best-laid plans, the club suddenly found themselves in precisely the same situation as United: losing a legendary manager and long-term CEO in the space of just a few months.
Gazidis’ departure set in motion a game of executive musical chairs that has continued at considerable pace for more than two years.
The list of executive departures since that summer of 2018 is quite something: Gazidis, Mislintat, director of high performance Darren Burgess, analytics expert Jaeson Rosenfeld, head of international scouting Francis Cagigao, Sanllehi and finally Fahmy have all moved on.
At each turn, Arsenal have sought to promote internally: Sanllehi and Vinai Venkatesham succeeded Gazidis on the outgoing CEO’s recommendation. When Sanllehi left earlier this summer, incumbent managing director Venkatesham and Edu effectively assumed his responsibilities.
While the club take pride in promoting ‘Arsenal’ people, it’s fair to query whether the net was cast sufficiently wide in the search for football expertise. Were these the best appointments, or simply the most convenient?
Arteta being unveiled by (from left) Sanllehi, Edu and Venkatesham
The latest iteration of Arsenal’s executive hierarchy has seen Arteta’s role change from the original title of head coach to ‘manager’. While some see this promotion as a natural consequence of the Spaniard’s hands-on, holistic leadership style, others close to the club have characterised it as a hasty and ultimately unnecessary move. They argue it has burdened a young coach with responsibilities he does not need.
As head coach, Arteta’s specific focus was on player management, training sessions, team preparation and opposition analysis. His sole objective was to maximise the performance potential of the first team. The club’s previous model was designed to shield Arteta from distractions and complications — Edu and Fahmy would lead any additional technical and organisation matters, Per Mertesacker would handle the academy and Sanllehi would co-ordinate the team and shield them from additional pressure. Arteta’s repositioning means he officially plays a more active role in wider club matters, such as transfers and operational matters, something he was happy to take on.
While each of their individual records is open to debate, the departure of highly experienced football people in Cagigao, Mislintat, Rosenfeld and Sanllehi has left Arsenal looking a little green. Arteta, Edu and Venkatesham are all highly regarded but are 38, 42 and 39 respectively. Arteta is a first-time manager, Venkatesham a first-time chief executive. While Edu has fulfilled similar roles with Brazilian club Corinthians and that country’s FA, his experience in European football is limited.
Last season, Arsenal’s board proposed the addition of club legend David O’Leary to provide some football-oriented oversight. The suggestion was dismissed, but would perhaps gain more traction now.
Arsenal argue their new structure makes them more efficient; their detractors believe they may simply be too light on expertise. Much of the recent reshuffle has been attributed to new board appointment Tim Lewis. Although an avid Arsenal fan, his background is in law rather than football. Arsenal have confirmed they intend to replace Fahmy as contract negotiator, but with the January transfer window two weeks away, there has as yet been no addition.
It is difficult to decipher whether Arsenal landed on this current structure by accident or design. The owners could do nothing about Gazidis’ departure, but did his blueprint for the future have to be torn up? Some within the hierarchy feel they now have a more clear, dynamic way of working but until results follow, those assertions will be challenged.
US owners Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) acted decisively to remove Sanllehi, but should he have been more directly replaced? Certainly some sources close to the club feel there is a lack of direction from on high now and that that instability is seeping through to the squad. Others, who have worked for KSE at Arsenal, speak gratefully of the autonomy they have been granted, but have the owners been guilty of showing too much trust?
One of the consequences of the executive churn at Arsenal has been a disjointed transfer strategy.
Their management team has a youthful look, which would seemingly suggest a club adopting a long-term approach. That has been undercut by several short-term decisions: as recently as this summer, Arsenal handed lucrative contracts to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Willian and David Luiz — three players already over 30. They also spent £45 million on Thomas Partey, who at 27 offers no guarantee of retaining resale value.
This is not new.
Since January 2018, Arsenal have signed several players already in or beyond their late 20s: Henrikh Mkhitaryan (29 on arrival), Aubameyang (28), Stephan Lichtsteiner (34), Sokratis (30), Luiz (32), Cedric Soares (28), Willian (32) and Partey. As well as that, they gave a club-record £350,000 per week contract to a 29-year-old Mesut Özil. So far, Arsenal have not recouped a penny on any of those deals. In most cases, it’s unlikely they ever will.
It’s possible to mount a credible case for each of those decisions in isolation: Willian (below) brings huge Premier League experience, for example; Cedric offers depth and versatility; Luiz is a leader.
Placed alongside each other, however, they begin to tell a story of a club making costly and arguably rash outlays in the hope of securing an immediate return to the Champions League. It is difficult to argue for the success of that strategy: consider the money sunk into these contracts with little hope of return.
If Chelsea, who knew Willian’s qualities intimately from his seven seasons with them, only considered him worthy of a two-year deal, how did Arsenal justify offering him three years?
Arsenal have adopted a ‘win now’ policy with a manager and executive team who are still developing. It does not appear to add up.
The tension between the short-term and long-term defines Arsenal’s predicament. There are those among the club’s leadership who believe they won’t be truly competitive until after 2022, when their young players have sufficiently developed and many of the current squad will have moved on, taking some of the club’s old culture with them. While some are content with that timeline, others worry that’s too long to wait, and that the club must find a faster route back to the top.
In the case of Aubameyang, Arsenal granted him a three-year contract this summer at the age of 31. While the decision was largely welcomed by the fans, some close to the club wondered if it was necessary. As The Athletic exclusively revealed in July, the attacker’s original contract from January 2018 granted the club a purchase option on an additional year. Triggering that would have forcibly extended Aubameyang’s contract until 2022. Ultimately both Arsenal and the player’s camp chose to disregard the clause.
Arsenal do spend money. Since the summer of 2016 — an ultimately disappointing window in which the club acquired Shkodran Mustafi, Granit Xhaka and Lucas Perez for the best part of £100 million — The Athletic estimates the club have spent almost £500 million in the transfer market, as well as the significant compensation outlay for dismissing Wenger, Emery and their staffs. The constant change in coaching and executive positions, however, has meant the strategy behind this transfer expenditure has never appeared particularly coherent.
After signing Xhaka, Wenger described him that September as a “box-to-box midfielder”. By the November, he had changed his tune entirely, telling reporters this Swiss “is more a deep playmaker I think than a box-to-box player”.
Arsenal then broke their transfer record twice in the space of six months to sign Alexandre Lacazette and then Aubameyang, seemingly without a clear plan of how the two centre-forwards might play together. Promising centre-half William Saliba was acquired fully 17 months ago, but is yet to play a competitive game for the club — and now the recruitment department are considering adding another right-sided centre-half. Arsenal smashed their transfer record again to sign Nicolas Pepe for £72 million in summer 2019, but have yet to successfully integrate him.
While clubs such as Liverpool buy players to fit within a defined system, Arsenal have sometimes seemed to be simply making the best of what they’ve got.
There are indications that may be changing and the hierarchy do recognise that the squad has major issues in terms of technical quality, tactical understanding and mentality. The signing of Partey was predicated on a tactical vision for this team, presented by Edu to the club’s ownership. However, that vision is yet to be realised. Arteta recently told DAZN in Spain that the club are “five or six positions” short of what he requires. Is it realistic to fill those gaps before the likes of Willian and Aubameyang enter steep decline?
There have been bright spots in Arsenal’s recruitment. When they have bought young, it has tended to work for them. Kieran Tierney and Gabriel Martinelli appear excellent additions, and 22-year-old centre-half Gabriel has started strongly. With an exciting generation of academy players, Arsenal should arguably be leaning into this young talent.
The last summer transfer window, capped by the addition of Partey, was largely greeted as a success. Arsenal failed, however, to make the sales needed to balance the books. In what was admittedly a difficult market, only Emi Martinez left for a transfer fee. Arsenal’s approximate spend of £500 million since the summer of 2016 is set against estimated sales of just £198 million.
It is safe to assume that, come the end of the season, Özil will join the likes of Aaron Ramsey, Alexis Sanchez, Mkhitaryan and Danny Welbeck in leaving the club for no transfer fee. There have been tens and tens of millions left on the table.
While much of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of people who have now left the club themselves, the current management should also consider whether assets have been appropriately managed. Did the complete exclusion of Matteo Guendouzi, for example, help his value in the transfer market?
Arsenal will need to sell better to fund the next phase of their evolution. The substantial outlay on older players is indicative of a club attempting to postpone a rebuild; gambling on experienced names in the hope they’ll secure immediate passage back to the promised lands of the Champions League.
As technical director, Edu is the man charged with laying out a squad-building strategy for the next three to five years. Supporters will feel entitled to ask, “What is the plan?”
This has been a period of tumultuous change for Arsenal.
A club which under Wenger and Gazidis set the standard for stability has been plunged into perpetual transition. Since 2018 began, they have had three managers (four, if you count interim head coach Freddie Ljungberg’s brief spell before Arteta succeeded Emery), and as many senior executives at the helm. It is difficult to adopt a clear strategy when the decision-makers at the top of the club are constantly changing.
The owners, of course, remain the same. Stan Kroenke’s KSE only took sole control in late 2018 but have been the majority shareholders since 2011. While the club’s split ownership enforced a period of paralysis, this competitive drift has happened on their watch. They believe the club now have the right structure and set-up to bring success, although there is an acceptance that current results are far from satisfactory.
There are two problems at Arsenal: the short-term and the long-term; the crisis and the decline. One can be fixed quickly with results, the other will require much more work behind the scenes.
As head coach, Arteta would only have been responsible for the former. As manager, he must tackle both. It is a huge task for someone in the top job for the first time. Stopping the rot would be challenging enough; turning the club around is another matter entirely.
The title of ‘manager’ is arguably a poisoned chalice at the Emirates.
There were times during Wenger’s reign when the whole club seemed to hide behind the iconic Frenchman.
To place the inexperienced Arteta in that role would be reckless and unfair. He may be willing to “take the bullets”, but is that right? Clearly, he should be held accountable for the team’s poor performance. Step back, however, and it is clear that the mess at Arsenal is not entirely of this coach’s making.
Yeah and how do they figure the young player will sufficiently develop under a manager that doesn't play youth players? Good to know Areta cultists are only the second most deluded people associated with the club.
