Mikel Arteta is guaranteed to face four of the remaining few managers and clubs he has yet to beat with Arsenal. Can Barca not just appoint Chris Coleman?
Diego Simeone declared Arsenal to be “the best team we have faced this season” despite Mikel Arteta committing the sackable offence of conceding a single shot on target in a crushing 4-0 victory.
Atleti have thrashed Real Madrid 5-2 and lost to a last-minute Liverpool winner at Anfield in 2025/26 but they were swept away at the Emirates.
Arsenal are top of the Premier League and one of only three clubs with a perfect Champions League record after three games – although Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and obviously Qarabag could join the Gunners, Inter and Paris Saint-Germain in remaining flawless if they win their next matches.
Arteta might keep a close eye on a couple of those teams as they are among the precious few he has yet to beat as Arsenal manager.
With Atletico and Simeone claimed as his latest scalp in their first ever meeting, here are the managers and club Arteta is yet to add to his Infinity Gauntlet.
READ MORE: Arsenal surpass Liverpool, Real Madrid as Simeone names Gunners ‘best team’ he’s faced
Managers Mikel Arteta has never beaten
Arne Slot
Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool, October 2024, Premier League
Liverpool 2-2 Arsenal, May 2025, Premier League
Liverpool 1-0 Arsenal, August 2025, Premier League
The one true final Premier League monkey Arteta must extricate from his back is the increasingly bald reigning champion. It brings immense shame on the Gunners that in three games against Slot’s Liverpool, they have conceded an absurd five goals.
That defeat at Anfield still stings a little but it turns out their title credentials might not actually rest on winning at Anfield. Arteta would still delight in avenging that loss come January.
Fabian Hurzeler
Arsenal 1-1 Brighton, August 2024, Premier League
Brighton 1-1 Arsenal, January 2025, Premier League
Arteta has beaten every club he has faced in the Premier League, but not every manager. And the failure to properly get one over on Hurzeler must still rankle after the Declan Rice nonsense of last season.
Gian Piero Gasperini
Atalanta 0-0 Arsenal, September 2024, Champions League
It is literally impossible to forget the David Raya double-save game. Gasperini felt that “Arsenal seemed to me to want to settle for a draw”, which doesn’t sound like them at all.
Ruben Selles
Arsenal 3-3 Southampton, April 2023, Premier League
Just a really quite hilarious match that confirmed a surprise title push came slightly too early. Selles has since been sacked by Hull and Sheffield United and is currently in charge of Real Zaragoza, who are bottom of the Spanish second division, so Arsenal might not be able to right that wrong particularly soon.
Simone Inzaghi
Inter 1-0 Arsenal, November 2024, Champions League
An actual, proper shortcoming, and one which cannot even be addressed when Arsenal visit the San Siro in January as Inzaghi, who taught Arteta a lesson in last season’s Champions League league phase, packed his bags for Saudi in the summer.
Michael Carrick
Manchester United 3-2 Arsenal, December 2021, Premier League
Are the streets capable of forgetting a three-game caretaker manager stint? Carrick was sacked by Middlesbrough in the summer but what now appears to be a halcyon era for Manchester United in between the reigns of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick, he signed off with a 3-2 victory over Arsenal at Old Trafford.
Rafael Benitez
Everton 2-1 Arsenal, December 2021, Premier League
It threatened to be the most bleak of winters for Arsenal, who followed that Manchester United defeat with a loss to an Everton side which would sack Benitez 41 days later. But they stabilised with four straight wins before ultimately bottling Champions League qualification.
Benitez’s only jobs since have been with Celta Vigo and Panathinaikos, who are not quite in Arsenal’s orbit.
Clubs Mikel Arteta has never beaten
Bayern Munich
Arsenal 2-2 Bayern Munich, April 2024, Champions League quarter-final first leg Bayern Munich 1-0 Arsenal, April 2024, Champions League quarter-final second leg
It was a tie which showed how close Arsenal were to the level of competing with the continent’s best, while simultaneously underlining the fine margins they still had to engineer to their advantage.
Both sides have evolved and improved in the time since, as should be evident when Vincent Kompany, Harry Kane and friends visit the Emirates in league phase action in November.
Villarreal
Villarreal 2-1 Arsenal, April 2021, Europa League semi-final first leg
Arsenal 0-0 Villarreal, May 2021, Europa League semi-final second leg
One does not simply beat Unai Emery in the Europa League.
Inter
Inter 1-0 Arsenal, November 2024, Champions League
A reminder of the starting XI which dominated possession, failed to score from 13 shots and was beaten after conceding the only shot on target they faced: Raya; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Timber; Havertz, Partey, Merino; Saka, Trossard, Martinelli.
An awful lot has changed in less than a year.
Atalanta
Atalanta 0-0 Arsenal, September 2024, Champions League
This side had Gabriel Jesus up front! With Jorginho and Raheem actual Sterling coming off the bench!
MORE ON AWESOME ARSENAL
🔴 Arsenal are ‘boring’ and rely on set-pieces? Nope, they’re just really, really good
🔴 Players rejecting Real Madrid for Arsenal underlines Mikel Arteta’s outstanding revolution
🔴 Gyokeres promises ‘a lot of goals’ after Arsenal brace as Arteta feels ‘debate’ is ending
Best managers Mikel Arteta has never faced
Simeone was the 91st different manager Arteta has faced, and the 84th he has beaten.
The empires Arteta still has to conquer to complete his personal set have already been covered, but what about the best managers he has yet to face?
Ranking every manager to have been in charge of at least 100 Premier League matches by their career points-per-game record – and ruling out your Fergusons, Wengers and others who either essentially or officially retired before Arteta took charge in December 2019 – there are only six in the top 50 he has yet to face.
Here they are, with their position in that points-per-game ranking, as well as their jobs in the time Arteta has been Arsenal manager, in brackets:
Roberto Mancini (4, Italy and Saudi Arabia)
Manuel Pellegrini (12, Real Betis)
Ronald Koeman (22, Netherlands, Barcelona and Netherlands)
Mark Hughes (40, Bradford and Carlisle)
Alan Pardew (48, ADO Den Haag, CSKA Sofia and Aris)
Chris Coleman (50, Atromitos, AEL Limassol, OH Leuven and Asteras Tripolis)
Ranking every manager to have been in charge of at least 50 Champions League matches by their career points-per-game record – and ruling out your Heynckes, Van Gaals and others who either essentially or officially retired before Arteta took charge in December 2019 – there are only nine he has yet to face.
Here they are, with their position in that points-per-game ranking, as well as their jobs in the time Arteta has been Arsenal manager, in brackets:
Zinedine Zidane (4, Real Madrid)
Hector Cuper (20, DR Congo and Syria)
Massimiliano Allegri (26, Juventus and AC Milan)
Guus Hiddink (30, Curacao)
Manuel Pellegrini (31, Real Betis)
Luciano Spalletti (32, Napoli and Italy)
Roberto Mancini (33, Italy and Saudi Arabia)
Ronald Koeman (36, Netherlands, Barcelona and Netherlands)
Mircea Lucescu (38, Dynamo Kyiv and Romania)
Fatih Terim (40, Galatasaray, Panathinaikos and Al-Shabab)
Best clubs Mikel Arteta has never faced
Using UEFA’s own ten-season club coefficient ranking, it is possible to identify the best teams Arteta’s Arsenal has yet to face. They are:
Barcelona (5)
Borussia Dortmund (10)
Juventus (12)
Roma (13)
Bayer Leverkusen (16)
Ajax (20)
They could yet face Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Bayer Leverkusen or Ajax in the Champions League knockout phase.
So sod trophies and all that nonsense: to complete football, Arteta needs to beat Arne Slot and hope Inter appoint Alan Pardew before the turn of the year.
READ NEXT: Mikel Arteta only third in Premier League manager rankings for 25/26