Arteta signs new three-year deal – now he needs to prove he can win silverware with Arsenal

​

Done Deal 

Mikel Arteta has committed his future to Arsenal, after signing a new three-year deal with the Premier League club. The contract extension now means that should the Spaniard see out his new deal in north London, Arteta’s time as Arsenal manager will span to eight years. Which would likely make him the seventh longest-serving manager in Arsenal’s history. “I feel extremely proud, very excited and am looking forward to what is coming next,” said Arteta on the club’s website. “I’m proud to be where I am and have the relationships that I have with everyone at the club. I feel extremely lucky to work every single day with good people and the ambition we have here. I feel very inspired, I feel challenged, I feel supported and I want to do much more than what we’ve already done together.”

There’s little doubt that while Arteta’s extension was hardly a surprise, fans of the club will be delighted that their manager is staying put and continuing the good work he’s done at the Emirates over the course of the last five seasons. After taking over for Unai Emery in late 2019, Arteta has taken Arsenal from the depths of eighth place in the English top-flight to two second-place finishes, narrowly finishing behind Premier League champions Manchester City by just two points last season and with a final points total that was the club’s second best ever return in the Premier League era. However, while the club’s rise under Arteta is without question, his new contract should also underline the work that is still to be done and the added pressure that comes with a renewed expectation to finally marry progress and money spent in the transfer window with some much-needed silverware. 

Indeed, while Arteta can point to more points on the board as Arsenal manager, the Spaniard has so far managed to win just one trophy during his time at the club, which came in his first season when he won the FA Cup. The additional pressure on Arteta to now turn success into silverware can be seen when we consider the club’s clear decision to back their young manager in the transfer window. Since the start of the 2019/20 season, only two clubs have a higher net spend on transfers than the London club, whose total stands at €664 million. A few things to bear in mind here are that their main domestic rivals, Man City, naturally spent more money prior to this season when Pep Guardiola was building his initial title-winning squad. And since Arteta only joined Arsenal after the 2019 summer window – in which Arsenal’s net spend in the transfer window was a hefty €107m – we can’t ask the Spanish tactician to explain the entirety of his club’s spending in that period. But, with all that in mind, there’s little doubt that few clubs have invested in new players quite as heavily as Arsenal since Arteta arrived at the Emirates. And considering that the two clubs above Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, are convenient cautionary tales in how to spend a lot of money with little success to show for it, there’s no doubt that Arteta will need to start making the most of his star-studded squad. 

So how likely is Arteta to win some major silverware in the next three years? When we take a look at Arteta’s record in the Premier League there’s little doubt that he has now established Arsenal as the second best team in the English top-flight. As we can see in the graphic above, the north London club spent much of the last 10 seasons well off the pace of the first-placed team in the Premier League, falling as far behind as 43 points in Arteta’s debut season as Arsenal manager. But since then the club have managed to chip away at Man City’s dominance of the Premier League and now stand on a more or less equal footing with Guardiola’s serial champions. The only question that remains is whether Arteta can guide his team to get past that final hurdle and leapfrog Man City into first place. Should Arsenal achieve such a feat this season, it will be the club’s first league title in 21 years and would undoubtedly cement Arteta’s reputation among the fans as a legendary manager, alongside his achievements as a player. 

However, while Arteta is making progress in the league, there is plenty of room for improvement in the cup competitions. After the aforementioned FA Cup success in his first season at the club, Arteta has watched his teams get knocked out of the competition in the third and fourth rounds twice. In some instances they have been in tight clashes against the likes of Man City and Liverpool, but defeats to Nottingham Forest and Southampton also point to opportunities missed by the Spaniard. The same could be said for Europa League woes against lesser teams like Olympiacos, Villarreal and Sporting, while defeat to a poor Bayern Munich side in last season’s Champions League certainly suggests that while Arteta seems to know what he’s doing in the Premier League, he still has much to learn about the art of knock-out football. And with it the prospect of winning some much-needed silverware for Arsenal over the course of the next three years.