The “Nearly Man“ Mikel Arteta

There are dark clouds in the sky, but it is just af­ter 7am on an East­er Sun­day morn­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Else­where in the world, such as Lon­don and North Lon­don in par­tic­u­lar, there is both an air of bit­ter­ness and sad­ness, con­sumed with yet an­oth­er dis­mal foot­balling dis­play from Ar­se­nal on an in­glo­ri­ous Sat­ur­day for all their fans world­wide.

For most Ar­se­nal fans, the de­feat stings and pulls at their heart­strings be­cause the per­for­mance was way be­low par, and that in no way should de­ny the vic­tors – Southamp­ton – their jus­ti­fied suc­cess. But the re­al­i­ty is that Ar­se­nal, yet again, was their own worst en­e­my, and to be per­fect­ly hon­est, this has been com­ing for a while, and those who fol­low signs may not be sur­prised.

On Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, the ma­jor­i­ty of the blame – and yes, blame be­cause it could and should have been dif­fer­ent – lies firm­ly with man­ag­er Mikel “Near­ly Man” Arte­ta, whose pen­chant for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and al­so abra­sive at­ti­tude per­me­ates too long both on and off the field.

Af­ter the body blow of los­ing yet again to Man­ches­ter City in the Carabao Cup fi­nal two weeks ago, every­one, whether an Ar­se­nal fan or hater, would have ex­pect­ed the strongest Ar­se­nal team to take the field on Sat­ur­day, away to Southamp­ton (who were on a great un­beat­en run of 14 match­es in the sec­ond tier, push­ing for the play­offs and a re­turn to the Pre­mier League).

But alas, that did not hap­pen, and to make mat­ters worse, that sig­nal was clear when, in an­oth­er cocky press con­fer­ence, Arte­ta joked about who the goal­keep­er would have been even af­ter Kepa’s er­rors in the loss to Man­ches­ter City in the Cup.

So when the team was an­nounced and Kepa Ar­riz­a­bal­a­ga re­turned, it was as if Arte­ta, the stub­born man that he can be, even with a wry smile, was say­ing, “This is my team, and I am do­ing it my way, and who vex­es lorse?” And that to me was the first sign that a sig­nal was sent to the op­po­nents (Southamp­ton) that Ar­se­nal did not take them se­ri­ous­ly, and that roils had raised their col­lec­tive de­sire to “show them (Ar­se­nal) that we (Southamp­ton) could play”, which ex­plained the use of the long ball and flight­ed pass.

“Near­ly Man” Arte­ta al­so pre­sum­ably in all his ram­blings with the me­dia and friend­ly ban­ter may have for­got­ten it was al­so an his­toric fifty an­niver­sary of a fa­mous win by Southamp­ton over Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, so there was a lot of en­er­gy and spir­it in the day and match, which any thought­ful proces­sor of cir­cum­stances would have catered for but not the “Near­ly Man”.

All of the above em­phat­i­cal­ly de­mand you start with your best team and try to win the match ear­ly and give play­ers a rest in the sec­ond half so they can get ready for the up­com­ing Cham­pi­ons League en­counter against Sport­ing Lis­bon in Por­tu­gal.

In­stead, what hap­pens is Ar­se­nal con­cedes a soft goal and is forced to bring on rest­ed play­ers for the last half hour (who should have start­ed). Vik­tor Gyok­eres (who was on a high af­ter scor­ing a hat­trick and the win­ning goal for Swe­den in their World Cup win), the dan­ger­ous Noni Madueke, the flam­boy­ant Ri­car­do Calafiori and then lat­er on the ir­re­place­able Mar­tin Zu­bi­men­di.

How could this make sense? There was no Ju­r­rien Tim­ber, De­clan Rice or Bukayo Sa­ka on the sub­sti­tutes’ bench, so one pre­sumes they were not fit to play on Sat­ur­day, and in ret­ro­spect, these are three “core” mem­bers of the team, and if you add David Raya (goal­keep­er) and the oth­er two sub­sti­tutes such as Zu­bi­men­di and William Sal­i­ba. Then that is six of Ar­se­nal’s nor­mal start­ing eleven miss­ing.

As stat­ed ear­li­er, when one ex­am­ines the ner­vous per­for­mances this year in the cup match­es, from the penal­ty shootout with Crys­tal Palace and then nervy starts away from home against Portsmouth and Mans­field Town, where the class and skill of Eberechi Eze shone through, there was writ­ing on the wall for those with clever eyes but ob­vi­ous­ly not the “near­ly man” Arte­ta.

His­to­ry will show that over the last four years I have writ­ten con­sis­tent­ly that I be­lieve that Mikel “Near­ly Man” Arte­ta is not the right fit for Ar­se­nal, as he does not know what to do in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, and that his in­tran­si­gence at times in­flu­ences both the se­lec­tion of the team and the pat­tern of play, which ad­verse­ly af­fects the out­come.

I be­lieve that go­ing for­ward he has to go if Ar­se­nal are to pros­per be­cause as it stands Ar­se­nal may win the Pre­mier League this sea­son, but if so, the re­al­i­ty is that they should have won it be­fore as well, and so his reign has been bit­ter more than sweet, and while the club fi­nan­cial­ly is in a much bet­ter place than most, there are a lot of tro­phies that may have evap­o­rat­ed be­cause of his bull­ish be­hav­iour.

I have a sense, though, that many who were sec­ond-guess­ing what I have been say­ing in the past may now be hav­ing trau­mat­ic sec­ond thoughts. In the end, in the best in­ter­est of this club and its very loy­al fans, Mikel “Near­ly Man” Arte­ta’s hubris must not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue to fes­ter and be­come part of the men­tal­i­ty of the club, so he must be re­moved.

I can­not see a bright and pros­per­ous time in the fu­ture with an in­di­vid­ual whose en­tire dis­po­si­tion is so weak that he can­not take strong de­ci­sions on some mat­ters but oth­ers, such as the re­moval of oth­ers like Pierre Em­er­ick-Aubameyang (who in­ci­den­tal­ly won him his on­ly ti­tle, the FA Cup, with goals against both Man­ches­ter City and Chelsea in the 2020 FA Cup se­mi-fi­nals and fi­nal), and what of for­mer cap­tain Grant Xha­ka, who left and got im­me­di­ate suc­cess in Ger­many with Bay­er Lev­erkusen but what was “too hot” for Arte­ta to han­dle but is now lead­ing a pro­mot­ed Sun­der­land in­to the top 10 in the Pre­mier League?

Arte­ta does not like op­po­si­tion and strong play­ers, and that lack of lead­er­ship on the field of play is part of the prob­lem. Mar­tin Øde­gaard is a weak and timid leader with no voice, and his lack of form and fit­ness has made a poor ex­cuse for a cap­tain. That area can on­ly be cor­rect­ed if there is a man­ag­er who is not afraid to ac­cept ques­tions not on­ly from the me­dia but al­so from oth­ers, and “Near­ly Man” Arte­ta is not the man for that job, no mat­ter what hap­pens in the next few weeks.

Time to say good­bye to Mikel Arte­ta.