By Tony Attwood

Questions such as that in the headline might seem bizarre; after all Arteta isn’t suddenly not going to be available, is he?

But the fact is one never really knows.   I absolutely hope it does not happen, but each one of us is liable to have something happen which could take us out of the picture (whatever our picture is) for a few months – or even longer.   I don’t know, of course, but I imagine most sensible football clubs know who would take over at such a moment.

With Arsenal you can probably answer the question in terms of immediately covering for Artetta: Albert Stuivenberg.  He had a long run of managing young sides (the Netherlands under 17s and then under 21s) before becoming assistant manager for two years at Manchester United.

After that it was a year as manager of KRC Genk including for part of the year in which they won the Jupiler Pro League title in Belgium.  After that it was assistant manager of Wales before joining Arsenal in the same role on Christmas Eve 2019 – just four days after Arteta was appointed Arsenal manager.   Obviously such an appointment was already discussed and arranged before Arteta took the Arsenal job.

We know about the Dutchman Albert Stuivenberg because we see him so often in consultation with Arteta during the games, as the two men stand in front of the dugout, often with hands over their mouths, debating the next move.

But there is another member of the group who fits in with the profile of being both football-obsessed, Arsenal-obsessed and above all detail-obsessed, and that is Carlos Cuesta.   Like Arteta he is Spanish and like the two men to whom he reports, he is said to be football-obsessed.

Reports also suggest that the three men get on together because they are indeed all obsessed by their work although Cuesta has never been a professional footballer.  But although still in his 20s he has already worked as a coach at Atletico Madrid, Juventus and now of course Arsenal.

It is also reported that it was Cuesta perhaps more than anyone else who worked with Granit Xhaka.   You will recall how in October 2019, Xhaka was substituted and there was an altercation with some of the crowd as he left the pitch.   The media immediately jumped in, as they always do, and insisted that Xhaka would never play for Arsenal again.  When he returned there was, of course, no apology for such a ludicrous prediction.

What is not often reported is that Xhaka and Cuesta started to work together, with Xhaka reportedly saying that he appreciated Cuesta’s  “knowledge about football. He knows what he’s doing: he knows how to speak with the players, what the players need. It was just amazing from the beginning.

“The individual meetings that we had with him were always on point, very clear to understand, and I was very grateful to learn many, many new things.”  And yes that is a Xhaka quote – not something that fits in with the ludicrous profile the media gave the player.