Arsenal’s ten greatest triumphs under Mikel Arteta, ranked

By Tony Attwood

One of the predictions that we made as the extraordinary tactical revolution constructed by Mikel Arteta was revealed last season, was that not only would the media refuse to recognise it, they would go to any lengths to hide the truth of the revolution going on at Arsenal. And would continue to do so.

So it was no surprise to see the article from 90min.com “Arsenal’s worst defeats under Mikel Arteta (so far)” turn up recently.

It’s a bit like that notorious piece in the Times after the fourth match of the Unbeaten Season in which their idiot reporter stated that the match against Man City contained “the worst 45 minutes [by Arsenal] that any of their fans could remember”.

But as we have been constantly showing, the story of Arsenal’s decline has been a media invention, created to fit a pre-ordained agenda and thus allowing lazy journalists and bloggers to write tales by considering individual games rather than the extraordinary overall pattern of results, with a deliberate ignoring of, or an actual ignorance of, the tactical transformations that the players were having to learn. And the results that came thereafter.

Perhaps the greatest hilarity comes with the inclusion of this week’s game against Hibs in the “Worst defeats” list, forgetting (or being ignorant of) another interesting pre-season of change – in the summer of 2003 which opened with…

11 July 2003: Peterborough 1 Arsenal 0
19 July 2003: Barnet 0 Arsenal 0
22 July 2003: SC Ritzing 2 Arsenal 2

You might recall what happened in that campaign. But no, inevitably, the silly, sarcastic, dumbo, childish, snide comment is made, “Trust the process though guys, ey?”

So what has Mr Arteta actually done? You’ll know I’m sure, but here’s a quick summary anyway…

1. Winning FA Cup was a pretty good achievement first time around. Of course it wasn’t hampered by a complete transformation of style, so it was easier, but still not the sort of thing all teams can do, nor all managers.

2. Winning Community Shield – it’s only one game of course, but it gave the players a feel-good as the total turn around of tactics was being introduced.

3. Realising this was not enough was in itself another triumph for Mr Arteta, because he could easily have sat on those two victories and said, let’s have some more of that. But just like Mr Wenger in 2003, he didn’t, for both men studied the statistics to find a way for further improvement and each time they revealed something extraordinary.

4. So extraordinary, it even took us a while to digest it. For the figures clearly show that PGMO were selecting referees in a very singular way. I suspect the information carried in “How four clubs commit fouls with impunity, while others constantly get punished” is widely known among the more enquiring football managers, but the review of the 2019/20 refereeing situation showed exactly how the manipulation was being achieved. And I must stress, it doesn’t tell us why, but how. (We’ve dealt with the possible “why” situations elsewhere, but let’s just stay with the facts).

The whole story with the data (of course, this is Untold and we deal in data) was published here. In essence it shows how referees for Arsenal games are chosen, and how this affects results.

5. Now Mr Arteta could have left it at that, shrugged and said, “I can’t do anything about referees”. But he was taught management and tactics at Manchester City, and he was part of the team there that takes referees into account when planning games.

Just to think he could do that at Arsenal was audacious enough, and I’m sure Mr Arteta realised that publications from 90 min to the national press and TV stations would hammer him during the attempt to get it going, but he held his nerve. And holding his nerve as he implemented the new tactical approach in the games before Christmas 2020 was essential. The results were awful, we sank to 15th.

Can you imagine what the defence replied when he first said, “Stop tackling”. But that’s what he did and that’s what Arsenal did. The article “How Arteta gave us a hint of what he was about to do” takes us through that situation.

6. Stop tackling. Simple eh? Of course commentators still never mention it, but it was brilliant because what it did was cut out the one thing that was destroying Arsenal season by season: the yellow cards (see point 4 if you missed that bit). By cutting tackling the manager cut the yellow cards against us by almost half, and kept players playing with freedom rather than fear.

7. From Christmas day through the last two thirds of the season Arsenal were a top two club. Of course we have occasionally had a correspondent saying this was all a myth. That Arsenal only did well after Xmas because the fixtures were much easier. Read the article if you believe that.

8. So players got their confidence and abilities back. As a result Figures from Football Observatory at the end of the season showed Arsenal players dominating the positive statistics.

9. This revolution took nerve and determination in the face of articles without evidence from the media at large, and for that Mr Arteta needs the strongest of thanks from all Arsenal supporters. He won’t get it from the media of course, but at least we can show him we’ve noticed.

10. And we had the second best defence in the league during that final two thirds of the season, and indeed the third best defence in the league through the whole season – despite cutting the tackling. Another un-celebrated turnaround.

Of course many fans have been taken by the assertions of Arsenal being awful. But for those who watch the tactics, will have realised. It was a stunning and successful change of direction last season.

Don’t be put off by media gibberish. The transformation was and is real.

3 Replies to “Arsenal’s ten greatest triumphs under Mikel Arteta, ranked”

Bernard says:

15 July 2021 at 8:10 AM

I clicked on that site, not to read its contents but to leave a simple “fuck off” message. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have a facility for comments.
Les Williams says:

15 July 2021 at 12:01 PM

I am not an Arsenal fan but I come here because this is about the only place where the sport is discussed rationally.

I may be old but the amount of flak I have glimpsed for Arsenal losing a pre-season friendly is quite amazing to behold. Only one report added that the team had only 4 training sessions.

Like this site I do not take most of the “football” sites seriously. I did notice the 90min story on my phone regarding Arsenals worst defeats.

If this is the quality of “sports journalism” in this country then we are in parallel universe where analysis is banned and you can print any old rubb… wait that already happens…
Brickfields Gunners says:

16 July 2021 at 7:08 AM

Am already looking forward to our non tackling style in the new season. Hopefully it will also work for us in getting decisions against the serial divers . A couple of sendings off of opponent players will help us .
No more Lucas vs Eboue backing in type penalties . Nor Rooney vs Campbell (2004-05) dives. Rather more getting them culprits sent off .

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