Until he actually appeared at Arsenal yesterday for his official unveiling, some Arsenal fans had feared that the appointment of Mikel Arteta as the club’s new head coach might never actually happen. They worried that either the club itself would somehow find a way to reject him again, having decided at the last minute in 2018 to appoint Unai Emery rather than Arteta as Arsene Wenger’s successor, or because Arteta himself, having been rejected by Arsenal 18 months ago, might just turn around and say, ‘Ha! Now it is my turn to reject you!’ Fortunately, none of these two scenarios came to pass and Arsenal finally, belatedly, have a new man in charge.
It is worth remembering how Arsenal initially rejected Arteta for their top job because that would have been the easiest reason in the world for Arteta to give for not accepting, or even pursuing, the job this time. However, the fact that he has decided to leave probably the best assistant’s job in the world, alongside Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, where he would surely have been among the front-runners to replace his fellow Spaniard when Pep almost certainly moves on in the next season or two, is probably the single biggest reason why he should finally have been given the Arsenal job.
Put simply, Arteta obviously wants the Arsenal job in a way that no other possible contender – from Max Allegri, who repeatedly made it clear that he did not want to take a job mid-season, to Brendan Rodgers, who seemingly used Arsenal’s interest in him to leverage a new contract at Leicester City – ever did. That alone should be pleasing to Arsenal fans, because much as they want hungry players, who actually want to play for the club, it is arguably even more important to have a hungry – even ravenous – manager who wants to lead it.
Arsenal Are Right to Gamble on Mikel Arteta
Mikel Arteta is Giving Up a Lot to Join Arsenal
Arteta is giving up a lot to join Arsenal, not least the possibility of succeeding Guardiola at City, the current dominant force in English football, at least until Liverpool win the league this season and thereby prevent them from making it three Premier League titles in a row. That is certainly in sharp contrast to the other leading contender in recent weeks, Carlo Ancelotti, who has just been fired by Napoli and so was not making any kind of sacrifice or commitment in joining Arsenal, Everton or anyone else.
That is just one of many contrasts between Arteta and Ancelotti. In one important sense, of course, Ancelotti is streets ahead of Arteta, which is in the age-old football game of ‘show us your medals’. Ancelotti has been a manager for more than 20 years, in the process winning three Champions Leagues (two with AC Milan and one with Real Madrid), alongside several domestic titles and numerous domestic cups. In addition, he has already triumphed in England, having led Chelsea to the league and cup double in 2009/10, which surprisingly, given Chelsea’s own dominance of English football until the rise of Manchester City, is the only time that they have managed that impressive achievement.
Ancelotti a Short-Term Appointment
However, probably the most important difference between Ancelotti and Arteta is that Ancelotti is definitely a short-term appointment (notwithstanding the four-year contract that he is apparently about to sign at Everton) whereas Arteta will hopefully prove to be a long-term one. Other than at Milan, where he was in charge for nearly eight years between November 2001 and summer 2009, Ancelotti has only ever managed a club for a maximum of two seasons. In effect, he has been the ultimate impact manager, coming into an already successful club, such as Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain or Real Madrid, and then using his undoubted man-management skills (he has always appeared to be the most affable of fellows) to lead that club to even greater success, most notably at Real where he led a hugely talented squad, including Ronaldo, to La Decima (a tenth European Cup/Champions League victory).
That, of course, is not at all what is required at Arsenal right now or for the foreseeable future – in fact, quite the opposite. In the 15 years since Arsenal last won the Premier League, the club has undeniably been in decline: first a gradual decline under Arsene Wenger, which gathered pace in his final few seasons in charge; and then, in the last few months under Unai Emery, a spectacularly rapid decline, whereby they currently look more likely to be involved in a battle to avoid being in the Premier League’s bottom three than in a fight to reach its top four.
That, ultimately, is why Arsenal have gone for Arteta rather than Ancelotti. Yes, Arteta is utterly unproven as a manager, having only been an assistant coach and then a number two to Guardiola since he retired as a player in 2016, but equally, Ancelotti is utterly unproven as a manager who can turn a club around, especially one that has been in long-term decline. Intriguingly, that is exactly the challenge that Ancelotti faces at Everton, who of course have been in decline for far longer than Arsenal, having last won a trophy of any kind more than a quarter of a century ago (the 1995 FA Cup) and last won a top-flight title more than 30 years ago (when they won the 1986/87 First Division title).
In that respect, Arteta and Ancelotti are both major gambles for their new clubs. Neither man has experience of arresting long-term decline, with all the inevitable effects that such a decline has on a club’s culture, identity, DNA, or whatever else you want to call the core qualities of a club that once won things but has now not done so for a very long time.
Arteta is a Bigger Gamble Than Ancelotti…
Given his complete lack of managerial experience, especially in comparison with the huge managerial experience of Ancelotti, Arteta is undoubtedly the bigger gamble of the two. However, that can also be turned around to say that the possible gains or winnings with Arteta might also be much bigger than with Ancelotti. Everything in Ancelotti’s track record suggests that he is an elite-level manager, but also one who is only used to working at the elite level, which Everton are clearly not operating at currently. By contrast, although Arteta is utterly unproven as a manager, there is at least the possibility, unlike with Ancelotti, that he will stay at Arsenal long enough to affect the complete and radical rebuild that is required at The Emirates.
There is, however, one extremely important caveat to all this. Ancelotti’s undoubted status as an established and previously successful manager almost certainly means that he would never have agreed to take over at Everton without securing some kind of financial guarantee from its majority owner, Farhad Moshiri, who at one time, of course, was an investor at Arsenal and only moved to Everton when his attempt to gain more control at Arsenal failed under the Kroenkes. It remains to be seen whether Arteta, a completely unproven manager, has been able to secure similar guarantees from the Kroenkes, and without substantial investment, beginning in the January transfer window (which opens in just over 10 days’ time), even Arteta’s apparently superb coaching skills will be unable to effect a major improvement to the current Arsenal squad, especially in defence.
However, assuming that Arteta has gained some kind of assurance, if not a cast-iron guarantee, that he will be able to spend substantially to improve Arsenal (and, frankly, he would have been an absolute fool to take the job without gaining that kind of assurance), then it is likely that he will have a much greater chance than Ancelotti of effecting the kind of long-term and total transformation of Arsenal that is so desperately needed.
…But Bet Big and You Might Win Big
The most famous and celebrated bet in human history is Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher, famously said that belief in God was the ultimate gamble: “If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing”. Arsenal betting the house on Arteta, as they have now done, is not quite a gamble of that absolutist, even existential, nature. Nevertheless, the hope is that by betting on Arteta rather than on Ancelotti, they can ultimately win bigger with Arteta than they ever could have done under Ancelotti. That means not just qualifying for the Champions League (which is probably Ancelotti’s target at Everton) but getting back to challenging for the Premier League and even, in time, for the Champions League. That may take many years, but at least with Arteta, unlike Ancelotti, there is a chance that he will be there for that long.
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