“Mikel Arteta must deliver next season or his Arsenal reign will end” proclaims Jamie Carragher, a man who has never in his life managed a football club.
He continues, “time and excuses are running out for Arsenal manager, whose side need a creative spark to avoid another ‘gap’ year,” conveniently failing to define “gap year” in this context, or the massive transformation that the club has undergone in recent years.
He is also “forgetting” that around 50% of managers appointed by Premier League clubs each year have moved on again within a year because they have failed. So there is every chance that a new next managerial appointment that Carragher suggests would be more like Unai Emery whose disaster at Arsenal Arteta has repaired, and whose Aston Villa side are now seventh in the league and with a goal difference 27 worse than Arsenal’s. Indeed Emery’s win percentage at Aston Villa is even worse than his win percentage was at Arsenal,
And if that’s not enough to persuade you just ask a Tottenham or ManU fan about the validity of changing managers a lot, and where it gets the team.
Arsenal are in fact in their best run since 2005 – which journalists may care to note was 20 years ago – and yet Carragher comes up with a raging anti-Arsenal piece which continues, “Time and excuses are running out for Arsenal manager, whose side need a creative spark to avoid another ‘gap’ year.”
So what excuses might these be?
That Arsenal not only had a lot more injuries than they have had in recent years, but that they were to key players, at once time leaving Arsenal with none of their normal forward line players? That Arsenal don’t have the financial backing of an oil-rich nation who were charged with 115 offences committed between the seasons between 2009-10 and 2022-23? Great failures indeed!
Meanwhile Arsenal play in a league in which Manchester City were charged 115 times over two years ago, and we still don’t know the outcome!!! Does that sound like a reasonable situation or what the journos call a “level playing field”? No of course not.
Yes there are problems. But when Arteta came on 20 Decemhber 2019 Arsenal had won two games in their last 10 league matches. And so yes you can make the point that this time around Arsenal have won three league games in the last ten. Although on the other hand, one might also say Arsenal have lost only two in the last ten and that while going through matches up to the Champions League semifinal.
So most likely this is a situation in which the football editor says “Give us some anti-Arsenal copy” and pesky scribbler obliges, no more than that.
This is in fact exactly the sort of coverage that Arsenal got in 2019/20 and 2020/21 – and it would not be surprising if the same copy were being used with just a few dates and a couple of numbers being tweaked.
But of course, moaning about Arsenal is much more fun for journalists than moaning about Tottenham Hots or Manchester U. In fact the media is currently celebrating a Tottenham victory over Bodø/Glimt – a club with a ground capacity of 8270.
However, Arsenal are easy targets because they are not having a wonderful time in the league at the moment, as well, as going out of the Champions League. And that is often the way – the focus moves away from the league once it is clear it cannot be won and goes onto the remaining cup matches. But then if they are lost it is doom and gloom.
And it means that no one has to mention such clubs as Tottenham and ManU at all, even though for them the season has been an utter disaster. Here is the last six matches table, just to show the comparison…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Arsenal | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 11 | 7 | +4 | 9 |
| 9 | Bournemouth | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 6 | +1 | 9 |
| 10 | Nottingham Forest | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | -2 | 7 |
| 16 | Tottenham Hots | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 14 | -6 | 4 |
| 17 | Leicester City | 6 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 11 | -7 | 4 |
| 18 | West Ham Un | 6 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 3 |
| 19 | Manchester Utd | 6 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 11 | -6 | 2 |
| 20 | Southampton | 6 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 12 | -8 | 2 |
Maybe Tottenham and Manchester U are now such hopeless cases that no one wants to make much of it any more. But I would say that no matter how this season ends for Arsenal it would be catastrophic to even think about moving Arteta on.
And that is not only because of his record in the past two seasons, nor the fact that he changed the results from something that was looking like having a season along the lines that ManU are having now, but because he transformed the whole club.
The fact is that turning a club around can take time, not least becuase there are clubs out there that have been doing their own transformations, or which seem to have endless amount of money and ability to stop legal processes from reaching a conclusion.
just ask a Tottenham or ManU fan about the validity of changing managers a lot, and where it gets the team.
Champions league place for finishing just above relegation ?
The majority of pundits talk shite. Carragher talks absolute shite.
Carragher’s demented efforts to create a hostile narrative around Myles Lewis-Skelly after Myles reacted to Haaland’s classless comments with an entertaining and appropriate celebration were a poor reflection on Carragher. To follow this up by stating that Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly’s use of a different changing-room were evidence of Arteta’s poor management was completely unhinged.
The same Carragher who had issues with coin-tosses at both Highbury (2002) and Anfield (2025) doesn’t seem to have all of his fuses in one box.