If Not For Mikel… A Tribute to Arsenal’s Greatest Asset

‘If not for Mikel’

A tribute to the main reason 

I’ve spent numerous days planning how to frame this piece.

This is my attempt at finding the reason for the return of glory to Arsenal. The main reason.

After thinking and overthinking, I couldn’t get away from the fact that Arsenal winning the Premier League and coming within a kick of winning the Champions League would not have happened if not for Mikel Arteta.

He isn’t alone when handing out the flowers, but if you subtract any other one person from this glorious time in our Arsenal lives, there is a fair chance that we still become winners.

This hasn’t really been the same with other winners. As a direct comparison, Liverpool most certainly would have not won the Premier League last season without Mo Salah. City wouldn’t have won a handful of their trophies without Haaland. Their contribution was just too impactful and good for them. Arsenal went about it a different way. As much as we would love to have a player capable of scoring 40% of our goals, we are healthier than that.

Declan Rice was a huge piece and his defensive qualities are somewhat unique. Saliba and Gabriel have proven to be the same and this season people are starting to realize that David Raya is in the same conversation. The thing is though, City and Liverpool have won trophies without these players. So I suppose it’s possible to win the Premier League without William Saliba, for example.

You cannot say the same about Mikel, though.

He has the greatest say at Arsenal Football Club and also the broadest and deepest set of skills.

He was the reason that David Raya came to Arsenal when Aaron Ramsdale was doing fine. The same vision that very few others agreed with at the time saw him create the Rolls-Royce in William Saliba, by insisting that he learn his trade whilst on loan.

He was the one that purchased Gabriel who was a good centre back, but is now seen by many as being the best.

Mikel had the vision and understanding to create a more physical defensive unit with four centre backs where half of them had to be retrained in a new position. The same vision changed our style from being cute and pretty to being robust, disciplined and bloody hard to play against because the league suggested that teams need to do this. Others didn’t do it because they don’t have the talents that Mikel has. They have one way of playing and either don’t care to cast their vision or don’t feel like they will have time to put it in place.

Mikel did not choose superstars in the transfer market. He didn’t purchase the latest player in form. As crazy as it sounds, he didn’t buy players without thinking fully how he was going to use them and what the knock on effect would be for others. I say all of this because this is how other clubs operate. They sign players to appease fans. They buy big players because they want to come and that flatters them, much like Liverpool did last summer. They strengthen in areas that are already strong when other areas are weak.

We didn’t really know Califiori, Mosquera, and Gabriel and weren’t impressed initially with the acquisition of players like Merino and Trossard. We’ve probably forgotten, but the purchase of Havertz and Madueke was cleverly planned based on top statistical and analytics and the needs of the team. We were too busy looking at the fact that they came from Chelsea and cringing.

Not only has he created such a wonderful squad of players, but unlike most every other big club, our squad and first team always includes Hale End players. In order to create arguably the strongest squad in world football it would be hard for any top club to include players that have just come from playing in front of 50 people to playing in front of 59,950 more.

Where others mock Mikel for playing boring football and scoring too many set play goals, others see the intelligence in Arsenal controlling games and utilizing every part of the game to score. They not only see the value in Mikel’s decision, but hold up the trophy with a big middle finger behind it.

The fact that Martinelli will likely leave this summer is probably a backhanded compliment to Mikel. He has tried and succeeded in improving every single player at Arsenal apart from Martinelli. The definition of a coach speaks to the importance of improving what you have as one of your top three most important qualities. Again, other coaches just prepare their team for the next game and ignore the individual.

For as much as opponents mock Mikel’s choice to put high value on the soft factors, anyone that has coached a nine month season multiplied by the next season and the next one, that seems to come five minutes later, realises that having a creative way to impart your message is vital.

I’d say, if you privately asked the majority of elite footballers at what point they switched off from listening to their coaches’ speeches, they would say that it happened sooner than their first nine months with him. Just pretend that you are listening.

Finding creative ways of making training and motivational speeches interesting isn’t a good idea for most coaches. They don’t have the personality or respect from the squad to pull it off. Much like Joe Willock being the catalyst for Unai Emery being mocked, it doesn’t work for everybody. We are fortunate that we have a coach whose skill set doesn’t stop at what they learned during their pro license course.

This bunch of flowers for Mikel is getting rather large, but probably doubles in size solely when recognizing his powers of persuasion.

They say that the most important quality of a leader is recruitment. If you get the wrong person and then it doesn’t matter how broad your skillset is because you have picked up the wrong tool.

The building of this squad and the subtraction needed in moving those not good enough for this project onto another club might just be Mikel’s most impressive quality. This is evidenced repeatedly when you see a rumor in the press. I knew that Declan Rice was coming to Arsenal, even though Pep Guardiola tried to change his mind. VG dumped his girlfriend and went on strike as Arsenal was the only destination for him. Zubimendi was encouraged to wait for his transfer for a full 12 months at the last minute as he was about to go to Liverpool.

I look at the list of clubs that apparently want Morgan Rogers. City even have a buyback clause on him. My bet is that he comes to Arsenal, regardless of what all the other clubs tell him. Again, that is because of the energy that Mikel transmits and the respect he now has in the game because he follows through with his promises, unlike most others.

I’d also hedge my bets that even though Julian Alvarez, who came to Manchester and never learned the language and wanted to go home, signs for Arsenal. Simply because of the pull of the club and the persuasive powers of Mikel.

You watch. Mikel will have him speaking in cockney rhyming slang in one year.

Over half of our first team have been persuaded to sign new contracts. No other club in world football has their players so securely attached to their club.

It seems that Mikel was the main driver in persuading the Kroenke family to become more invested. I don’t think Josh Kroenke is faking it but the difference in his passion for the club now is very different to the Josh Kroenke of a few years ago.

Some say that Mikel was lucky to get the time that he was given. I disagree entirely. Any of us are only given time by our employer if we are worthy of their trust. Mikel showed that he had the respect of everybody at the club and wasn’t afraid to make big changes even though he was a young coach.

The most important decision that Mikel made was to rebuild the club and the team from chapter 1, rather than jumping to chapter 15. This is so very underrated and not spoken of, but needs to be the headline. By far the huge majority of talented coaches go into a club and flip to chapter 15 because they don’t trust themselves to start at chapter 1 and keep their job. Others jump to chapter 15 because they don’t have the skillset to be able to create a new culture, rip the team up, accept bumps and losses, and believe that they will still have a job.

Again, I think it is worth repeating that the best decision that Mikel ever made was starting from chapter 1.

Having made a few big decisions myself over my coaching career and gone back on them before I realized the importance of having to stick to whatever rules you put in place, I see the value in being a player like Auba. Knowing that he was extremely popular with the dressing room and fan base both. Mikel gets the respect of everybody at the club because he doesn’t make rules and then break them. The moment that a coach does that or even bends slightly then they cannot reel that respect back.

Mikel had a plan coming into Arsenal. It was very difficult, very expensive and it took six years to produce real fruit. We believed in him, he believed in himself, and so the players believed in him too.

A big percentage of the fanbase acting the way that they have over the last two weeks can be rewound to Mikel. His careful messaging to the fans has created a situation where we lost the biggest game in the history of the club and yet the very next day we had 1.5 million people celebrating on the streets of N5.

Most football fans are spoiled and would rather shout at you with their thumbs or their videos for what you didn’t do than appreciate what you have done.

If not for Mikel.