In terms of footballing holy grails, only Tony Bloom’s secret algorithm and Joao Felix’s agent’s black book might be more valuable and coveted but ultimately elusive than a formalised copy of Mikel Arteta’s five-step plan.
It was part of what convinced Arsenal to appoint him, and forms the structural integrity of the stick with which he has frequently been beaten in the intervening six years.
Part of its beauty lies in the indefinability. Arteta has rarely publicly even vaguely alluded to any specific details of his grand restoration project, leaving it open to conjecture and interpretation.
Perhaps he really did map everything out in 2019, down to the minutiae of pledging to repurpose one Chelsea cast-off every summer and getting ‘Set-Pieces’ and ‘Non-Negotiables’ tattooed on one arse cheek each.
Maybe the bullet points were a little looser, more based on vibes and buzzwords like ‘culture’ and ‘process’ and ‘Merino’.
It might have been a ruse all along, a motivational gimmick to imbue Arteta with more aura and authority, like Brendan Rodgers and his envelopes but less immediately transparent, laughable and entirely counter-productive.
Arteta did kindly explain what phase Arsenal were in seven months ago, describing steps “four to five” as “establishing yourself at the highest level in the Champions League. Consistently perform with a lot of unity and being very close to touching big trophies”.
And after thrashing Atletico Madrid 4-0 to retain one of only five perfect records in the Champions League so far this season, it does feel as though the tournament semi-finalists of 2024/25 and current Premier League leaders, having finished as runners-up three campaigns in a row, are agonisingly close to their defining achievement.
They are, in basic terms, just an absurdly good football team, with myriad strengths and barely any discernible weaknesses. Even the expensive failure of a floppy centre-forward they signed in the summer has scored almost twice as many goals as Arsenal have conceded in 12 games. And until IFAB proposes a widespread ban on either corners or Declan Rice, it seems fairly sensible to maximise both while boiling as much urine as possible.
There is one thing which could get in Arsenal’s way from here: Arsenal. Manchester City, too, sure. And Liverpool if they ever win a single Premier League match again. Sod it, it’s probably best to keep an eye on Bournemouth as well. But really it’s Arsenal who Arsenal need to be most wary of, because they have a degree of stability, level of intrinsic understanding and depth of quality no-one else can match.
It is one of the great many reasons that the reaction to the August defeat at Liverpool was utterly nonsensical.
The idea that “if Arsenal want to win the league they need to go to Anfield and win” was always various shades of ludicrous; it doesn’t particularly feel as though Ruben Amorim is about to use it as a platform for a title challenge this season. But really it was fundamentally wrong because their shortcomings across three consecutive seasons of second-placed finishes were never contained within a Big Six mini table they often topped.
Arsenal have seen championship pursuits collapse on the basis of Rob Holding not being William Saliba; lamentable and persistent slips against opponents they have no excuse not to beat; an injury separating them from Mikel Merino or brilliant but precocious teenager Ethan Nwaneri starting up front; and the sort of naive indiscipline which rarely augurs well when chasing trophies.
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As Arteta said at the end of last season: “There’s only one way to do it – you have to be more determined, you have to be more ambitious, you have to have a lot of courage and push every limit in everything that we have. That’s the next step.”
He has addressed each of those defects with remarkable precision to push those limits and widen the fine margins. This is a freakishly strong squad which can absorb any injury, as evidenced by how the prolonged absences of captain Martin Odegaard and top scorer Kai Havertz have been reduced to mere footnotes. Arsenal have had the third biggest improvement of any team on results from last season, with their last three Premier League victories coming in fixtures from which they accrued a single point in 2024/25. They have capable, reliable and experienced deputies in every position who would not look out of place in the starting line-up. And they are top of the Fair Play table with a mere nine yellow cards and no reds.
Beyond that, the much-vaunted striker has been secured, the midfielder to free Rice is in place and the defensive standards and set-piece efficiency can be reasonably described as the best in Europe.
By diagnosing the problems and identifying solutions which fit within a structure established meticulously over years, Arsenal have built to this point slowly, steadily and sustainably whereby the minimum requirement is a strong challenge on every trophy front.
For some, it’s a trophy, full stop. And a Premier or Champions League at that. And after finishing as England’s second-best team for three seasons while failing to win any of their last eight semi-final games and scoring a single open-play goal in the process, Arsenal and Arteta probably agree that silverware is the bar.
“If we do what we have to do, we’re going to be closer and at the end, we’ll win it,” Arteta said of the title in May. “When? I don’t know, but if we keep knocking and being that close, in the end, it will happen.”
That five-phase plan has rebuilt Arsenal from a position of complete obscurity, and deserves far more credit than it receives. But it is the rod for their back now, representative of “the next step” Arteta has long seemed to believe they were ready for, and which their form suggests has finally been taken. A team and manager comfortably good enough to win one of the two major trophies knows it must deliver on that potential.
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