Arteta The Yes-Man by Dan Smith
There is a beautiful irony that after the backlash to the Super League, the fixture list just happened to work in a way where 5 of the ‘big six’ had to play midweek, forcing each of their managers to be in the spotlight.
Thursday was the turn of Mikel Arteta, the first Arsenal representative to speak publicly since our withdrawal from the ESL.
He confirmed in his press conference what I always suggested. The only reason he was given the job as head coach was because he’s a yes-man, and so willing to land such a high-profile job that he will tolerate limitations from his employers.
That’s no slight on him.
I like Arteta and want him to succeed. He speaks well, and I believe he is well educated and has faith in his own philosophies that they will work.
It’s not his fault what criteria the recruitment team are set. Like when they claimed Unai Emery was first choice out of 50 applicants; that’s because many candidates walked away when they realised there was zero ambition at the club. Enrique and Allegri are believed to have said that off the record.
I respect no one is going to criticise their boss live on TV, but Pep Guardiola proved you can be critical of an idea without being critical of those who came up with the concept.
Arteta tried to go down the angle of ‘it’s noble to admit you are wrong’, ‘it should be admired they acknowledged mistakes’, ‘it’s takes bravery to say sorry’, etc. About 3 or 4 times he felt the need to remind the press that he works for good people who care about what’s best for the Gunners.
It’s an individual choice whether you believe Stan Kroenke’s apology. My view is that common sense suggests he has zero remorse.
After 15 years in power of one of the biggest football institutions in the UK, the idea that he didn’t realise the harm he was doing – yet saw the light inside 48 hours – is offensive.
At least Real Madrid’s president has taken ownership of his choices since Sunday.
The media were pushing for Arteta to pick a side, but his priority was to always paint those who pay his salary as the good guys.
He even lied.
Like a politician, he said he couldn’t give an opinion on the SL because he never knew all the details. Sorry?
If I know enough to give an opinion, then it’s safe to assume the manager of Arsenal does?
He knew we were going to be cherry picked, a founding member of a division with a closed door to the rest of England, with zero consequence for failure. He knows full well that the business model was Arsenal are not good enough anymore to earn things on the pitch, let’s get 350 million a year for being a brand.
How the Spaniard with a straight face claimed he worked for people who stepped up and have been there for us during tough times is an impressive skill.
There for us?
Stank Kroenke made 55 staff redundant during a world-wide Pandemic to save 2 million a year, while the whole time he had a break away League up his sleeve. Morally I can’t get my head around that.
He claimed Football had to be played in Covid because it was an escapism, a comfort to the public. In reality, he was having secret meetings to take football away from us.
He then painted a picture of greedy players refusing a pay cut knowing full well he was the greedy one.
Ozil always said he was happy to give up money, he just wanted to hear Mr Kroenkes intentions. He couldn’t say it at the time, in other words he didn’t believe a word being said to him.
Didn’t Arteta win the hearts of Gooners when he first spoke about the standards of the club and how he wouldn’t tolerate anyone not meeting those standards? Well Stan Kroenke has hardly acted ‘the Arsenal way’, yet Arteta yet again is being a puppet.
It’s moments like this where I miss Arsene Wenger.
A football man who had so much control that this wouldn’t have taken place.
Be kind in the Comments
Dan
Arteta lost all credibility with me after that news conference yesterday. His record so far is bloody awful(with exception to the FA Cup win). He is safe in his position as Josh Kronke stated yesterday they have no intention of selling. The future is bleak!
Ooof, Arteta is an employee of Stan Kroenke…Suppose your Boss also takes a step which is inherently bad, would you stand up to him and risk losing your job?
Let’s not forget, he’s not a high-profile manager like Pep or Klopp…You seriously can’t expect Arteta to stand up to his Boss
If that step will ultimately end -up harming the business and you losing your job, then yes it’s worth the risk. They are likely going to sack him anyway if we don’t win Europa league and get into Champions league.
Yes, yes I would if my boss was clearly in the wrong.
Moral, integrity, ethics > fear of losing my job
Easy for you to say sitting on the couch being a keyboard warrier…I think Arteta has clearly maintained a diplomatic approach, has aid the right things about the fans about their right to protest…You can’t seriously expect him to do anything else
Totally agree HH. Rock and hard place come to mind. Harsh to criticise any of the affected managers imo
Sorry Mac that’s tosh and you know it. This is not a whistle-blowing scenario. Its not him secretly going to the authorities to report on a wrongdoing. It is also a matter of opinion not right or wrong – apparently 20% of fans supported joining the SL. Other managers who said anything at all criticised the SL but did you notice any of them directly have a pop at the owners? No, and these are more secure, higher profile people. But you expect a Rookie to go on global tv to lay into his boss based on his own opinion? Sorry but that’s rubbish. And no, you wouldn’t do it either.
@guy
RealTalk…
And even Pep was pretty careful in his language – he had faith in the owner. Klopp was the only one who came out with both guns blaring which makes me like him even more.
Arteta wants to keep his job and he has to be careful so I can’t fault him on that.
Should he keep his job is a whole other issue and we have been around that Maypole for some time 🙂
I don’t think Guardiola and Klopp would be unemployed for too long after taking generous compensation if their contracts were terminated.
I wouldn’t be too hard on Arteta in this instance; however I have been in the position, as explained by McLovin. I left and moved on, because professional ethics and personal integrity were important to me.
Even if there is a personal cost financially, and there wasn’t in my case, it is the right action to take if the organization or the owner’s sense of ethics and morality don’t align with your own.
I understand there is a desire to put blame on our poor performances. But the fact is that despite CL football and no fans in the stadiums, Arsenal has invested decent money over the past years. We paid big money for Pepe and before that for the likes of Laca, Xhaka, Auba etc.
The foundations for today’s poor squad and results were laid over quite a few years. During which we paid good money for players who never lived up to their true potential.
This started during the Wenger years and runs all the way through to Willain and the selling of Martinez.
So in terms of not getting in the way of spending money Kroenke can not be faulted by a reasonable man IMO.
Blame him for the board composition, and for the likes of Gazidas, Raul and all the other clowns but it is much harder to convincingly blame Kroenke for our budget.
Nailed it.
Ironically, the same is even more true of Barça and Real. Two horrifically mismanaged and wasteful teams whose enormous debts, thankfully, will not be paid off by the Super League.
It just proves that Arteta knows his job is to manage/coach the team.
He knows that his Managerial career is in the balance.
This seasons success is balanced on a knife edge with CL football three games away. The league is still critical as 6/7/8 now bring European football.
So Arteta must focus on tomorrow’s game then Villareal.
Therefore a calm measured approach is necessary.
Arteta’s simply showing growing maturity.
For true supporters the people who should be trustworthy, are the worst actors possible. We supporters for most of our lives, whether old like me, or young like many here, have invested all our hopes, emotions and wishes in Arsenal. We have been betrayed by Stan Kroenke, Josh Kroenke, Vinai the Clown and Arteta brown nose. Until those 4 have gone Arsenal will never be Arsenal again. The wound is like the wound of Chiron the Centaur….unhealable. We are completely mismanaged and need a total purge. The only good thing left are our fine, innocent young players.
Arteta and the brown nose is becoming a feature. Not rating him as a coach is one thing but you are almost implicating him in the whole sorry mess. What’s he supposed to say? (or Pep, Klopp etc) The EPL hasn’t stopped this weekend and he is there to try and unify the players and the fans for tonight
It’s for us supporters to go for Kroenke!
There are some in football who remain honest. Arteta would do well to empath with the supporters. The whole group of owners and management have let us down in many different ways. Do you think Arteta has come out of this clean?
You should name them Sean
I agree with you SueP.
Totally unreasonable comments Sean. Maybe you should out the whole team, as they all found out at the same time and none of them criticised Kroenke etc directly either. Lets add in Solsjaer Teuchel, the Spurs guy, Guardiola. Sack all those spineless jellyfish. And the cleaners and staff. They must have all known. As others said, stick to criticising Arteta on football performance, not on something for which he bears no blame.
Am sorry but I didn’t hear klop nor pep criticize the owner of their respective clubs for the wrong step taking, yes the spoke against the super league but not against the people that hire and pay them.
In as much tradition of each club, league, fan support and love has been abused by this greedy owners we fans also should take part of the blame, we sold ourselves to win by all means by employing our team to always buy and buy players every transfer we demand huge investment, new players even when the ones will bought by July as not yet picked we want them replaced by new players by January. All these demands money and to keep up most teams lures in wealthy business men to our various clubs and wherever a business man goes he only sees profit 80% of them has no loyalty to sport, nor tradition or history just the money they get from it.
Arsenal Fc have apologized for there actions we call all debate this for years to come that they shouldn’t have taken the steps in the first place but truth be told they have taken responsibility for the mistake and apologized whether it was genuine or born out of fans rage they owned it by apologizing, we should all take it to heart even when we don’t trust them again and definitely WANT THEM OUT OF OUR CLUB( WISH I DO) Arsenal Fc well being should always comes first.
We have a big week ahead of us and I Wana believe that the super league debacle should not stop us from supporting the team
Well said about what the other managers have done. All of them were in a no win situation
👍👍
Hey peeps
Not expecting him to be critical of the owner but maybe don’t lie either ?
IMO he didn’t lie Dan. Firstly, a lot of the details have never been made public yet. Do YOU have any information beyond the one-page overview? He also understandably, for that few hours, had a lot of other stuff to deal with. He was put on the spot without all of the information. You have time to consider which questions you ask. You have time to research your answers, which incidentally are not beamed live into millions of households. So what would you say?
HEe lied when he said he didn’t know the details
He lied when he said owners are always there for us and care
I don’t think it was a lie. Most of what people discussed were rumours. We knew that 10 teams would have exclusive access to the league with 5 having the right to earn places. MA clearly stated that a competition without merit is not a competition. Aside from that, the announcement was a train wreck for the precise reason that they never bothered to flesh out the details in any meaningful way.
Arteta has to walk the line between the club’s executives and the fans. It’s incredibly naive to expect him to just say whatever he wants. No manager, even those with de facto tenure, have explicitly criticised their chiefs. I think Arteta’s responses made clear his views without being critical of anyone involved.
Has everyone forgot that even the great Wenger would skirt around questions on Kroenke, and give vague political style answers, and even worse, when directly addressing the fans at AGMs?
Yes Arteta could have gone in hard, but then that’s him done at Arsenal. He would have burnt his bridges with Kroenke.
Why bring Wenger into buddy ?
This is the now ,not the past .
You really do have a raging boner for Wenger
The guy has an insane obsession he cannot go a week without bringing the man’s name and always to bash him !
I am not having a go at Wenger, I just using him as an excellent example in defence of Arteta. If a highly respected legend like Wenger would tow the line, then of course a more lowly manager like Arteta is going to.
As always, you see the word Wenger, and immediately go on the attack, even if he isn’t being criticised. Because of your IQ, you obviously you need this one spelling out for you – I understand with what Wenger had to do and the same with Arteta.
@Dan kit
TMJW, I agree with you, that Arsene Wenger was used and abused by Kroenke and KS&E, to run interference for them.
Then as the pressure grew they cast him adrift.
Good one TwYDFA 👍
Given the last paragraph in the article I can see why the reference to Wenger was relevant. I suspect Wenger would have been able to be more forceful on his words given his credibility (similar to Pep) but that he still would have diplomatically skirted the issue as much as he could have.
For crying out loud afc has apologise, why r we still acting unforgiving with our thoughts, arteta did the right thing for not talking about we joining ESL n KSE didn’t put us in 9th position, our bad investment did, we r always looking for whom to blame let blame our bad investment, imagine under performing Pepe, williams, aubu, those r bad investment, the Champions leauge n Super League are both greedy only the fans are not, the control uefa don’t want from the super league is the same control uefa is controlling us n the champions league, the only difference is that the super league wants to give control n power to the club rather than the fans Because they feel without fans money, they own the sport if they can fund it them self n that betray, the other 14 epl teams r backlashing the dirty half dozen but let me say this, it’s easy to backlash if u r not a big club ur self, they will do the same if they were in their shoes but they r not n they will never be cus that’s destiny fulfilled, we dont see things the way investors sees them, even in our little lives we always ask for pay rise n wish for it at our work place wen u no u don’t truly deserve it, if u can judge ur self what will u call that, its all greed, I think the ESL r looking for a way to survive the game in the future wen they r no fans on ground but they made a mistake for not wanting to religating the dirty dozen, thats so bias cus u r taking passion from team struggling to fight for a place in europe, why will dy be winning games if they knew no matter how they challenge they r not going anywhere with it, the main reason why am strongly against ESL is that it will be a dectator league, it will be so boring to watch cus of the numbers of teams involved n it will be competitively boring too because it will look like a fixed match when only the big teams playing in the finals n the semi finals against each other for a very long time, that’s fantasy football.
Dan, just as TMJW has this ongoing sore with Arsene Wenger, it seems that you are starting to have the same problem with Mikel Arteta.
First of all, how do you know how many people were interviewed?
As far as I am aware, the club have never spoken on this subject… so it’s a red herring, inserted to strengthen your argument/opinion.
On to the SL and MA’s response.
Tell me Dan, how has he differed in any way to any of the other managers involved?
Have the five other clubs had a fan’s discussion session, where the owner’s son answered every question put to him… whether we liked the answers is a different subject of course.
Has any other club actually done what our club has?
Rung round every other PL club and apologised?
Like all the other managers, MA was put in a no win situation and, I for one, praise him for the way he has gone about repairing our damaged image, caused not by him, but by our owner.
He loves his job, he has a vision and he is working to achieve his goals.
The fact that I have criticised him, doesn’t mean I have to do so at every opportunity.
I believe MA is a honest, decent, principled man, whether that is enough for him to succeed is another question – let’s just focus on the only culprit in this saga – STANLEY KRONKIE.
Ken1945, the Wenger fan, not the Arsenal fan! Read my response to baby Dan kit. It wasn’t criticism, it was an example, and I was actually in agreement with Wenger and Arteta.
🙋🏻♂️ Over here TYRDSWQ
THIRDMANJW, forgive me,but , were we not all wenger fans in our time ?> i dont understand your comment pointed at KEN1945 , the wenger fan. can you point out one arsenal fan who was not a wenger fan please. i think that is a very bitter comment, and i would expect much more from you than that sort of rub.
No need to kowtow to these Wengerite blowhards, as anyone who has the unmitigated gall to suggest that Arteta is the brown-noser in this equation yet continually defend our former manager who was clearly the Pied Piper who enabled our landlord to perpetrate the great Emirates ruse…never once did he come forward and dispel the notion that if we towed the line and paid through the nose we would be rewarded in the end…without using his relationship to the fans to quell potential concerns this could never have transpired…of course, I too thought Wenger was brilliant until Dein left the building, but since that time Wenger’s role as chief enabler is the real reason why we are who we are presently…how could anybody ascribe such cerebral qualities to our former micro-manager yet actually believe he was functionally oblivious to what was really going on behind the scenes…you just can’t have it both ways
And what has that to do with the article?
“Arteta yet again is being a puppet.
It’s moments like this where I miss Arsene Wenger.”
Ken, this is what it has to do with the above article…to have the nerve to accuse Arteta of being a brown-noser, when those same Wenger apologists have continually refused to accept the fact that their former overlord was not only a Kroenke puppet, for well over a decade, he was likewise a willing accomplice in the very ruse that has led to our organizational devolution…it simply doesn’t happen without Wenger at the helm
The article was about the way Arteta handled the situation that he was confronted with, due to the failed due diligence that the owner of the club created.
It has nothing to do with anyone who was previously employed by the club, be it David Dein, Arsene Wenger, Unai Emery, Gunnersaures, Herbert Chapman or you and I.
So spare me the verbal diarrhoea about what went on three years ago and try to concentrate on today.
Mikel Arteta handled the situation in a very professional way, despite having no knowledge of what was happening (the same goes for those mentioned above) and, in my opinion, Dan is wrong and so is anyone else who tries to compare what others might have done.
This was a unique situation and should be treated as such – well done Mikel Arteta.
I think you failed to comprehend that we were actually on the same page regarding how Arteta handled the situation…I was just quoting what Dan had said in his article, which is why I wrote the things I did…it wasn’t an attack on you or your opinion on the matter…as you know full-well I relish the back-and-forth whenever it’s warranted, but that wasn’t the case here as I was simply responding to the question you posed regarding my earlier post, which wasn’t directed at you anyways
I like Arteta and am sorry if that’s not coming out
I will admit it’s hard to write Too much positive things about this season
Why would I need to strengthen argument ,it’s a factual statement that we are not doing very well
Annual reports show he’s on less then Wenger
The club said that they had 50 applicants
I do say it was only reported but if true Enrique and Alegri both said they were interested but we’re not happy with transfer budget well
No right or wrong
Just my opinion
The super league fiasco was down to kronk and his kronies, they are all lower than a snake arse and are systematically ruining Arsenal football club. Arteta had nothing to do with it, he is the playing side of Arsenal and he is not doing a very good job of that either. Either next season will be run by exactly the same people getting exactly the same problems or we can hope for seismic change.🙏
Lmao … Wait I don’t know what you guys were expect him to say.
What manager knew about the ESL before the announcement? What manager criticized their clubs? So what lies did Arteta put up when he gave smart answers without trying to cause more drama?
Does it always have to be more drama and us vs them for you people?
Like Ken said, Dan your obsession with Arteta is growing towards that of TMJW and Wenger.
Let it go mate.. He avoided making statements or comments that’ll incite more anger and drama.
I hope you know we have an important week ahead of us and we don’t need all this shít
An excellent response TAOT which sums up so well my feelings .
That made me laugh mate lol
‘ We have an important week we don’t need this ?
I don’t think my opinion has any bearing on how our week goes
I just think he elaborated too much, instead of making it short and sweet – ” The club have admitted it was a mistake and have apologised to the fans I just want to put this behind us and get on with my job.”
What I see is that, you’re only bitter about how Ozil was sent packing from the club.
You kept mentioning how he was right and how 55 were made redundant.
Those people who were made redundant has moved on and continue a new chapter, even Ozil has.
So I think you need to move on like them too.
I might want Arteta out but I won’t ignore facts.
Show me which manager has criticise his owner about ESL.
Even Pep has to choose his words.
Klopp didn’t, only criticise ESL and even go as far as firing back at Gary Neville for been an hypocrite.
So stop picking on Arteta at any given opportunity.
And please, enough of mentioning 55 redundant and Ozil on every article of yours, it makes it look like reading same article.
I always read your article cos you’re a good writer and I understand most of your words(jealous of you, Fire, Fox and Ken writing skills anyway)
Name me another article where I picked on Arteta that you disagree with
Again we are 9th so I can’t write he’s doing a great job
I don’t agree with him when he says owners are there when we need them
Isn’t their a protest tonight ?
And when asked for his views , he said he didn’t know the details .It’s been in the news since Sunday
So tonight will be An example
How am I meant to review that game and not be critical
A fan writing we will.win the title or pretending they have transfer sources doesn’t mean I’m any less of a fan just because I can admit we have been terrible in the Premiership
Reporting on the match in which Arteta selected the team, chose the tactics, made the substitutions, is completely different to the scenario he was confronted with regarding the SL.
Judge him on what he’s responsible for, not something he has no control over… but had to face the media and try to protect the clubs reputation.
I just felt he tried to play the angle too much of ‘ it takes courage to say sorry ‘
The most important thing AFC has to do is get rid of the Kroenkes and get an owner in who is passionate for the Club and what it stands for, cares about getting the right players in to do the job and who can perform on the pitch with passion, and cares about the fans who, let’s face it, are the heart & soul of the Club. Kroenkes Get Out!! !! You are not wanted and I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire!!!!