Mikel Arteta is preparing for today’s massive North London Derby and he obviously faced questions about the fact that Tottenham are now consistently above Arsenal in the League, and how the Spaniard is going to close the gap and get back above our noisy neighbours.
He says there is no big secret to success, but it will take some time and planning to emulate the success of the top teams. “You know the successful teams in this country in the last five to 10 years, what they’ve done to become successful. It’s no secret.” Arteta told the Mirror.
“There is not someone who has done something unprecedented, apart from what happened with Leicester a particular year.
“But we have to find a way to do it. If it’s not that way, we have to find another way.
“This isn’t the time to find excuses.
“The way we are going to evolve this squad is not being done in this window.
“It’s going to be a constant thing and it has to be a constant thing.
“It’s not going to stop, so that we’re in the position that after you have to do a massive rebuild, like what we had to do in the last two transfer windows.
“Hopefully, when you are able to do the opposite thing and adjust little things you are going to bring the biggest ability and then just add good quality, any player that comes here has big quality, because that is what the squad demands.”
That sounds like Arteta is fully expecting Stan Kroenke to back him in the transfer market, because we all know that “big quality” players don’t come cheap, but he also expects it to take time.
Some may point out that he has already had 15 months of rebuilding, but considering the extraordinary circumstances of his first year in charge, his plans have been very hard to implement. He said: “In the time I’ve been in the job, the conditions we had of two-and-a-half months in normal circumstances and then a period when you are completely away from the team and then you have very difficult circumstances, it’s not the same as having a year, the same period, in normal circumstances.
“When you talk about the transfer windows, it’s very difficult to explain as well about these transfer windows and how they were dealt with.
“The progression of the team and when we are able to do that?
“I don’t know. If I would know, I would give you a date.
“What I know is that tomorrow it has to be a better team than today.”
“My whole focus is towards that.
“So, looking at that, make the right decision for the next day to be better.
“And then, how we can be as competitive as we have to be in the shortest possible time, making the right decisions?”
So, many fans on here think that he should not be given much more time to bring the club success, but from Arteta’s words, it sounds like he is looking at a much longer project than most of us would like.
The only way we can judge if there is improvement is if he does persuade the management to only buy the “big quality” players that he needs to do his job.
Only time will tell…