The second half of the Premier League season is brimming with stories and subplots. Hundreds of players are hoping to secure places in their national team squads ahead of the World Cup; Sunderland and Leeds are trying to buck the trend for promoted teams to head straight back to the Championship; Manchester United’s permacrisis has entered its next phase; and BlueCo’s financial revolution at Chelsea has moved into a new gear with the appointment of one of their own as coach – Liam Rosenior, from also-BlueCo-owned Strasbourg. More than anyone else, however, the next six months matter to the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta. After seven years in the job and three consecutive second-place finishes, the time has come to land a big prize. With a handsome lead heading into the run-in, can Arteta hold it together?
So far, the arc of Arteta’s managerial career has been consistently upward. A cerebral midfielder, he was quickly offered a coaching job at Manchester City by Pep Guardiola on his retirement. Following three years of hot-housing at the Etihad, he was given the Arsenal job, a major coup for someone who had never led a first team before.
The first year was a grind. Arteta narrowly avoided the sack in late 2020 when the club was in the bottom half of the Premier League. To the club’s credit, it stuck by him and supported his desire to completely overhaul the squad. By 2022 they were back in Europe and a big leap forward in 2023 saw them lead the Premier League with ten games to go, before they wilted under the pressure and were caught by Manchester City. Expectations were higher in 2023/24 but a crucial defeat in the run-in saw City nip in again. Manchester City’s bewildering autumnal collapse in 2024/25 should have been the perfect opening for Arsenal, but instead Liverpool proved the more durable and Arsenal were runners up again.
So far this season, the cards have fallen favourably for Arteta. Liverpool’s title defence has misfired and Manchester City have been unusually inconsistent amid high levels of player turnover. But Arteta also correctly identified a lack of squad depth as Arsenal’s biggest issue and recruited a group of able reserves last summer. The football has often been conservative, but it has also been enough. With 17 games to go, Arsenal are six points clear in the Premier League and are the only club with a perfect record in the Champions League.
Arteta’s quest for a big trophy appears closer than ever, but he will need to hold his nerve under immense pressure. Arsenal have not won a Premier League title since 2003, when Bukayo Saka was still in nappies. The denizens of N5, who birthed the riotous and excoriating ArsenalFanTV during the drift of the late Wenger era, are among the most restless supporters in the league.
Arteta is an intense personality. His attention to detail can occasionally invite ridicule, as evidenced by the response to his hiring of a pickpocket during a team dinner in 2024 to lift items from his unassuming players. He intended it to be a lesson to keep them alert to danger. It sounded unhinged. In 2023 he bought a labrador to the club who stays over at players’ houses with their families. Inevitably, the dog was named ‘Win’. During a low moment in 2020, Arteta was asked whether playing or managing was more tiring. He answered: ‘The simple answer is managing. Because you have a lot of people around you that you have to take care of. I always say you have 70 hearts in the training ground and the stadium that you have to look after every day. Every decision you make has an impact on their lives, their mood and next day.’ Living under this type of pressure, interpreted in this way, sounds unbearable. He has gone on to do it for another five years.
This is why the next six months are crucial for Arteta; it feels like win or bust. If Arsenal fail to win the Premier League or the Champions League this year, despite appearing the strongest team in both competitions, it will get harder for Arteta to pick his players up from the floor and try again. His detail-driven coaching requires players to buy into it whole-heartedly. Would the long-stayers – Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Odegaard – be willing to hope for fifth time lucky?
It is unlikely to be a coincidence that no club in English football history has ever finished second in four consecutive seasons. Teams break apart, players need fresh voices. However, the previous side to finish second three times in a row, in 1998-98, 1999-2000 and 2000-01, went on to win the title the following year. That team? Arsenal.
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