Just how good is Mikel Arteta as a manager? And does it help to change managers?

 

 

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By Tony Attwood

Today’s headline is a question that arose once again in a discussion after the appointment of the new England manager and the display of some (rather minimal) statistics concerning his previous work.

So we thought we would take a look at Mikel Arteta in the last couple of seasons, comparing Arsenal with other clubs along the way.  And what we found was that last season Arteta’s points per game total was 2.23, up fractionally from 2.21 the season before.

This compares with 1.95 points per game for the new England manager (a Mr Tuchel) at Bayern Munich, and prior to that 2.08 points per game at Chelsea (measuring from January 2021 to September 2022.)

At PSG where of course there really isn’t any league opposition of note at all, he reached his highest point with 2.35 points per game, while prior to that across two years at Borussia Dortmund he knocked in 2.12 points per game.

But it was last season at Bayern Munich that he raised the most interest.  Of course he was hampered by having bought a centre forward from Tottenham (something which history tells us is often not a wise choice), but even so, coming third some 18 points behind Bevern Leverkusen and Stuggart really wasn’t that good.  Although good enough for England.

As for Arteta at Arsenal this season there has been a bit of moaning about Arsenal being third after seven games…

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	7	6	0	1	13	2	11	18
2	Manchester City	7	5	2	0	17	8	9	17
3	Arsenal	7	5	2	0	15	6	9	17

 

But as we have noted before there is not really too much difference from this time a year ago…

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Manchester City	7	6	0	1	17	5	12	18
2	Tottenham Hotspur	7	5	2	0	17	8	9	17
3	Arsenal	7	5	2	0	15	6	9	17

 

… in fact rather astonishingly for Arsenal it is exactly the same in every measure including goals scored and goals conceded. 

Interestingly the bottom of the league looks fairly similar as well.  This is the foot of the table as it stands today

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
16	Everton	7	1	2	4	7	15	-8	5
17	Ipswich Town	7	0	4	3	6	14	-8	4
18	Crystal Palace	7	0	3	4	5	10	-5	3
19	Southampton	7	0	1	6	4	15	-11	1
20	Wolverhampton Wanderers	7	0	1	6	9	21	-12	1

 

and one year ago

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
16	Everton	7	1	1	5	6	12	-6	4
17	Luton Town	7	1	1	5	6	14	-8	4
18	Burnley	7	1	1	5	6	16	-10	4
19	AFC Bournemouth	7	0	3	4	5	15	-10	3
20	Sheffield United	7	0	1	6	5	19	-14	1

 

All of which seems to suggest that although some clubs improve or decline the current bottom four (Ipswich, Crystal Palace, Southampton and Wolverhampton) is likely to contain two if not all three of the clubs that will go down at the end of the season.

This leads to the rather depressing thought that it is actually possible to predict where clubs are going to end up after just seven matches.   Such a prediction thankfully is not going to be completely right, but there is a fair chance that some of the clubs included in the list will be there at the end.

But aside from this notion that the league table these days generally stays fairly consistent throughout the season, I think one can have a lot of confidence about Arsenal this campaign not least because the club has brought in a fair number of new players who seem to have settled down quickly, have once again one or two youngsters who are breaking into the first team at an incredibly young age, and have the stability of management.  (Only the injuries might undo the club’s progress).

This summer five clubs (ie 25% of last season’s Premier League) have changed their managers in the close season.  Liverpool, Burnley, West Ham, Chelsea and Brighton & Hove.

During the course of last season, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace and Sheffield United changed their manager.  That makes a total of eight clubs – 40% of the league.  We could also include Wolverhampton who changed their manager in August 2023 to bring it up to 45%.

Now of all these clubs changing their managers, the only ones that can be said to have come out of the change quite well are Liverpool and (one might argue) Chelsea – although Chelsa are in effect only one point above where they were at this stage in both 2021, and 2022.    But their attack has certainly improved this season.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
4	Chelsea 2024	7	4	2	1	16	8	8	14
11	Chelsea 2023	7	2	2	3	7	6	1	8
5	Chelsea 2022	7	4	1	2	10	10	0	13
5	Chelsea 2021	7	4	1	2	10	10	0	13

 

Comparative tables like this are virtually never seen in football analyses and I think that is both a shame (in that they do show us if there is any progress being made) and inevitable (in that football journalism is all about opinion and emotion, two topics that facts that can in the way of.)