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Mikel Arteta is delusional. It’s an essential for a football manager.
Arsene Wenger never saw a bad Arsenal foul in 12 years in the same job... gloriously and successfully colour-blind. Arsene is now offering himself to be the arbiter on ‘daylight’ in tight offside decisions. He couldn’t see two feet in front of his own nose when it suited him. Blurred vision is fine when you’re winning.
The great managers don’t have any need for more than one eye. If Arteta’s single peeper hasn’t spied any better team in the Champions League than Arsenal, that’s ok. Seeing is believing and the manager is the keeper of belief at every club.
There is probably a world in which Arsenal are heading to Munich to face and beat Inter Milan but, sadly for Arteta, it’s the same world in which he signed a top-line goal scorer last summer.
Arsenal could have beaten PSG, Barcelona should have beaten Inter, Athletic Bilbao might even have put out Manchester United... but coulds, shoulds and mights are not the currency of sport. They are the hiding places that managers – all managers - retreat to in their media conferences… a refuge where they find their own consolation and comfort. It’s a virtual world of ifs and buts and make beliefs.
The problem for Arteta is that he is working in the real world where – in his own words – ‘winning trophies is about being in the right moment in the right place’.
And he’s dead right. Timing is everything. His outburst was decidedly ill-timed.
When PSG played at Arsenal in October, Gianluigi Donnarumma was going through a difficult time. Just one of those bad patches that prove we are human. Arsenal got him at the right time and Donnarumma was culpable for both of their goals. To claim that his renaissance was the only reason PSG won the semi-final is not evidence of bad luck, but just good goal keeping. It was Donnarumma’s time. Accept it, applaud it.
Donnarumma’s flying finger-tips, Francesco Acerbi’s equaliser, Harry Maguire’s Lamine Yamal impersonation… they were all as defining as they were exceptional. The moments that make football memorable. The trouble is football managers are not programmed to deal with the exceptional. Their job is to control and counter the exceptional. They need a scientific explanation for the final result in order to justify their existence.
Watching Arteta and Luis Enrique restlessly patrolling their touchline on Wednesday was like watching two puppeteers trying to direct their manikins without strings. Arms waving, fingers pointing as if they were signing a manic running commentary for the deaf. Simone Inzaghi ruined an expensive Armani suit doing the same thing in the Milan rain the night before. Psychotically trying to convince everyone that they were the ones producing this show.
Arteta and Enrique shared that same touchline but saw two completely different games. They can’t both be right, or can they?
Ruben Amorim and Ange Postecoglu have been watching different games to the rest of us at times this season but they have both found themselves in the right competition at the right time. Enzo Maresca too. Maybe even Arne Slot. Perfect storms are still storms but all of them have clung on to the rigging for long enough to sail into port. They’ve got to try to persuade us (and themselves) that they always had their hand on the tiller, that they knew exactly where they were heading.
It’s a results business. Where you finish, not how you got there. United were not ahead on any ringside judge’s card in the second leg against Bilbao and yet came off the ropes to land four knockouts in 20 minutes. When you lose 4-1, it’s delusional to ask ‘how’?
Except that for the good coach like Arteta, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ are the essence of the job. Their profession is actually about performance ahead of outcome. Arsenal can take a lot of encouragement from their performance at Parc des Princes. And if Bukayo Saka had added his name to that list of memory-makers, Arteta’s hazy mirage might just have come into view.
The thing is that when you set yourself up as a ‘philosophy’ coach like Arteta, Amorim or Postecoglu, you have got to find signs of progress in order to justify the doctrine you are preaching. It’s got to add up. Articles of faith only last so long in football. You really need to display some measure of upward trajectory. Convince us, not yourself.
Once the fans start singing ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’, your time is up.
As watchers of sport, time is on our side. We can wait until the fat lady has sung her last note before sharing our bloated opinions as to the ‘how’ and ‘why’. Murder mysteries are easy to solve once you’ve seen the ending. Managers and coaches have got to crack the case before Ted Hastings calls them in to tell them they’re off it.
No prosecutor worth their wig would ever call a football manager as a reliable witness. Arteta’s defence in Paris was no more paranoid than testimony we’ve heard from Fergie, Jose or Pep down the years. If there’s a problem with the contention that his Arsenal are as good as anyone else in Europe, it’s that he’s given himself a little bit more to prove now.
It’s nearly as reckless as saying you always win something in your second season in charge.
The part of Arteta’s defence I’d take issue with is the rather catty, petty observation that Arsenal’s points total last season would have won this season’s Premier League title. Not only was it unnecessarily provocative in the week of an Anfield visit but it might also prove to be wrong - and, by the way, Liverpool’s own points total last season would already have won this season’s title.
The white smoke went up on Liverpool’s crowning a fortnight ago. You can’t bitch away a 15-point gap. The table doesn’t lie. The most reliable measure of visible progress for the Arsenal or any other manager is not a Parisian heartbreak or even a knees-up in Bilbao or Wroclaw, it’s where you finish in the league.
Arteta’s most pressing need is to get a smile on his face and finish 2nd in this season’s league. Then he can talk.