Mikel Arteta has turned potential weakness into Arsenal's biggest Premier League title strength
Mikel Arteta turns 42 today, celebrating his fifth birthday since being appointed head coach of Arsenal at the end of 2019. The Spaniard has taken the Gunners from 11th in the Premier League table when he took over to back-to-back title challenges, an FA Cup trophy, two Community Shield victories and a quarter-final of the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 14 years.
He remains one of the youngest managers in the league with only Vincent Kompany (37) Gary O’Neil (40) Rob Edwards (41) and Andoni Iraola (41) younger than him. Despite that, only Thomas Frank, Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have been at their respective clubs longer than him.
He has built up a wealth of experience in an incredibly short amount of time with the club and has almost used his own situation as a template to build his squad. Retiring from playing with Arsenal in 2016, he joined Pep Guardiola’s coaching staff and would go on to learn and develop his knowledge of this side of the game whilst winning the Premier League twice, an FA Cup and two League Cups as part of his compatriot’s team.
Moving to Arsenal, a cornerstone of his squad-building method was to go for young players who already had huge amounts of experience. He made Martin Odegaard his captain, a player who joined Real Madrid at 16 and had been playing at the elite senior level for the past half-decade with a weight of expectation on his shoulders.
He was patient with William Saliba, sending the Frenchman out on two loan moves back to France to build up the requisite level of knowledge before being thrust into the first team at the start of last season. Gabriel Magalhaes has become a key figure for the Brazilian national side and was Arteta’s first major investment as manager.
He
Read on football.london
