Arsenal has fallen far from the top, but here’s how they can get back
All is not as lost as it seems for Arsenal, but the road back to the top of the league is not an easy one.
It was around this time last year that Mikel Arteta was identified as Arsenal’s top pick to be their new manager. Unai Emery was fired at the end of November 2019 and while Arteta wasn’t appointed as his replacement until four days before Christmas, the Spaniard very quickly rose to the top of their shortlist.
Arteta was widely regarded as one of soccer’s next great managers in waiting having served as Pep Guardiola’s assistant for a number of years at Manchester City. The former midfielder’s link to the North London club, as a former Arsenal player, was secondary. The Gunners wanted Arteta for his sharp mind and burgeoning reputation in the game.
Almost one year on, though, and Arsenal have stood still under Arteta. In fact, by some measures they have actually regressed. The Gunners were eighth in the Premier League table at the time of Emery’s departure. Now, at the time of writing, they are slumped in 14th place with just four wins from their opening 10 league fixtures this season. Emery’s win percentage in the Premier League stood at 49% while Arteta’s currently reads 43%.
It’s too easy to blame the manager, though. Arsenal have been stuck in the same tedious cycle for years, dating back to the latter stages of the Arsene Wenger era when many fans felt the Frenchman’s exit would instantly spark a recovery for the club. Such sentiment, which was widely held at the time, has been made to look grossly misguided in the time since.
As a club, Arsenal need much more than just a good manager and some new signings to return to the top of the sport. This is an organisation that has been allowed to stagnate, both in the sporting and executive sense, under the ownership of Stan Kroenke. Once a soccer superpower, Arsenal are now just another club. That has happened under Kroenke’s watch.
The structure of the club compromises every manager and head coach that sits in the Emirates Stadium dugout. Recruitment is largely handled by a committee of figures above Arteta, but this committee generally acts as a buffer between the high expectations of the manager and the low ambitions of the ownership.
Even when Arsenal have hired the right people, they are denied the chance to succeed. Sven Mislintat proves the perfect case study in this, lured to North London having earned himself a reputation as something of a transfers guru at Borussia Dortmund. He lasted just over a year as Arsenal’s Head of Scouting after growing frustrated at not being afforded the freedom he required to do his job.
Arsenal give the impression of having a structure appropriate for a modern game at the elite level, but it’s an illusion. The Emirates Stadium is occupied by numerous ghost figures doing ghost jobs. They have a ghost owner in Kroenke who has not been publicly seen at an Arsenal home game for over a year.
There is a contradiction in the way Kroenke, through Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE), runs Arsenal. Forbes estimates the 73-year-old is worth $10 billion, but when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Arsenal made a number of staff, including scouting staff and the club’s ‘Gunnersaurus’ mascot, redundant. Then KSE paid for the £50 million signing of Thomas Partey on transfer deadline, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang signed to a new £350,000-a-week contract shortly thereafter.
Arsenal deal in the currency of illusion, doing just enough to paint a picture of progress, but not doing enough to make that picture worth anything. Pressure is mounting on Arteta and with the January transfer window just around the corner speculation is swirling over potential new signings. This, however, is the discourse that allows Arsenal to repeat the same old cycle without any real change ever taking place.