There is one thing that is certain from Arsene Wenger’s time at Arsenal, and that was that we played free-flowing attacking, entertaining football, and everyone knew exactly the environment they were coming into if they made it into his squad.
It looked under Unai Emery that nobody even knew what their jobs were or how they were supposed to interact with their team-mates. But, now with Arteta in charge, it looks like things are starting to knit back together, and the Spaniard explained that this is all due to having a solid identity again. “Without an identity, you cannot plan and you cannot convince a player to do what you want,” he told Sky.
“How do you recruit a player if you don’t really know what it is that you are trying to do? How do you convince a player of the way you want to play if you don’t have clarity yourself over why you want to do it?
“That is the first thing, I think. You have to say, ‘This is the direction and this is what we want to do.’ Then you have to convince the players and get them on board with what you are doing, and after that you can start to build. But the identity is the foundation for everything.”
But the Boss was also at pains to make it clear there is still a long way to go and a lot of work needed before we can go back to expecting to win every week, but at least he has a plan. “It has to be a long-term project,” he added. “In the short-term we cannot achieve all the things that this club needs. It wants to fight now with the top teams in this country and in Europe, but it is not possible. We are very far behind at the moment and everything shows how far behind we are.
“We need to make that gap shorter and shorter. But it’s going to take a lot of right decisions and a great amount of energy and commitment.”
The message is clear, Arsenal fans. Arteta knows his exact vision that he sees for Arsenal, but he is very well aware that we have a very long way to go to realise those visions.
So let us be patient and leave him to do his job shall we?