Saturday, December 20 marks the six-year anniversary of Mikel Arteta’s appointment as our manager.
The occasion will see him take us on our first ever trip to Hill Dickinson Stadium to face one of his former sides in Everton.
In his pre-match press conference at the Sobha Realty Training Centre on Friday, Mikel was asked all about his first six years in charge of the club.
"It’s gone fast, a lot happened but it’s been an incredible journey and I enjoyed every minute of it," he said.
"One man cannot really change anything, especially when you talk about the size and the history of this football club. You need a lot of good people, very committed people around you with the same vision, the same work ethic, the same passion and I’m very lucky because I had some of that.
"Then at the end you need a lot of support, starting from upstairs with everybody that makes decisions alongside you, but the most important ones are the players. I think the players have to buy into what you say and what you do, and I feel very lucky because those players, they give you 100% in the direction that you want every single day."
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Changing the culture of the club has been cited as one of Mikel's biggest achievements in the last six years, and we're now regularly competing for major trophies every season.
"It was the first foundation that we had to see, and I think that was done pretty rapidly," he added. "Maintaining it is something that is very, very difficult, and you need a lot of good people and very aligned people to achieve that.
"I think we have that in a really strong and solid way, but all the things, socially, the transformation has been around the club in terms of the size, in terms of revenues, in terms of the squad that we built, the value of it, the sporting success that we had, even though we haven’t won any major trophies yet, I think it’s very, very consistent, so we’re in the right place."
Asked if he thought back in 2019 that he’d still be in the position six years on from his appointment, Mikel said: “How much would I bet, you mean? I don't know. If I say, OK, I never coached at the highest level, I come to a club that is in a difficult stage of history, and the recent past of the previous managers, I don't know.
“But you have to take this job day by day. I do the same on day one, do your best, do what you feel, make sure that people are on board with you and what you do, and that's it. And then at the end, in my job, at the end, it's about winning football matches, that's it.”
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