It has become the laziest comparison in modern football punditry: “Manager X just needs the time and patience that Mikel Arteta was given at Arsenal.”
This narrative simplifies a complex, brutal, and profoundly expensive rebuild into a feel-good story about trusting a process. While the results—a young, elite Arsenal side—are undeniable, the discourse fundamentally ignores the unique privileges that enabled Arteta to survive his lean years.
The reality is that Arteta’s ‘Process’ was successful because the club’s ownership provided two things almost no other manager is afforded: absolute political immunity and the right to rack up a staggering cost of failure. Without this unprecedented backing, his project would have ended long before the team ever challenged for a title.
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The political immunity: Exiling the elite
The true measure of the support Arteta received can be seen in the players he was empowered to dismiss. The common managerial purge usually involves fringe players and loan army members. Arteta’s purges involved club captains and the two highest earners—decisions that would have instantly derailed or sacked an unprotected manager.
Case Study 1: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Exiling a club captain and guaranteed goalscorer in the middle of a season is a career-defining risk. Aubameyang was not just a player; he was the face of the club, on a reported £350k-a-week contract that was only halfway through.
Arteta, a rookie manager, stripped him of the captaincy and allowed him to walk away for free—a massive financial write-off of the transfer value and future wages. Reports indicate Arsenal paid alump sum of around £7 million just to terminate his contract early and facilitate his move to Barcelona. This was the cost of enforcing a ‘non-negotiable’ and the club’s signal of absolute institutional backing for the manager over the player.
Case Study 2: Mesut Özil and Willian
The sidelining and eventual contract termination of Mesut Özil, another £350k-a-week earner, further demonstrated this power. When the German left, reports suggest Arsenal paid around £7.38 million to cover 90% of his remaining wages. Even the early departure of Willian, though reportedly amicable and without a direct pay-off, saved the club a staggering £20.5 million in future wages, confirming the immense scale of financial errors that the club willingly absorbed to keep the manager in place.
The club shouldered a combined pay-off cost for high-profile exits (Özil, Aubameyang, Sokratis, Mustafi, etc.) that easily exceeded £20 million just in termination costs and settlements—a colossal cost of failure that never fell at Arteta’s feet.
The financial backing: Paying for mistakes
The financial outlay of the Process is often discussed in terms of what was spent on new signings like Ben White, Aaron Ramsdale, and Declan Rice. Less scrutinised is what was spent to undo past and early mistakes.
The big write-off: Nicolas Pépé
The club-record signing of Nicolas Pépé for£72 million was an enormous financial anchor. Though inherited, the manager was empowered to loan him out and then eventually terminate his contract in September 2023, allowing him to leave for a free transfer. To write off a £72 million asset (whose total cost, including wages, was reportedly significantly more than £100 million) simply to clear the deck and reset the culture, is a privilege reserved only for the most politically insulated managers.
Comparative net spend—Buying the right to fail
The argument isn’t that Arsenal spent the most overall, but that they spent aggressively during a period of gross under performance (two 8th place finishes). Looking at the period from 2019/20 to 2023/24, Arsenal’s overall net spend of over £450 million has been greater than that of Manchester City (approx. £320 million) in the same period.
Crucially, in the key rebuilding seasons where Arteta’s job was arguably on the line:
2021/22: Arsenal’s net spend was -£116.25 million (compared to City’s -£38.55 million).
2022/23: Arsenal’s net spend was -£144.08 million (while City posted a positive net spend of +£9.97 million).
This data confirms that the club provided the cash to absorb the failure and correct course—not once, but for multiple years—while title-winning rivals like City were merely fine-tuning.
The time disparity: Why Amorim is the flawed mirror
This brings us back to the lazy managerial comparisons. Take Rúben Amorim at Sporting CP, often cited for his early success.
Amorim achieved his league title at Sporting CP by maximising severely constrained resources and successfully developing and selling young talent for profit—the antithesis of Arsenal’s operation. He had to deliver early, verifiable success before he could demand any major transfer capital or political power.
He was not given a £500m war chest and the carte blanche to terminate the contracts of high-earning players without a consequence. The club structure and financial reality at Sporting would never have absorbed the colossal cost of an Aubameyang or Özil write-off while sitting 8th in the league.
The Crux is clear: Arteta was given the time because of the money and political backing; managers like Amorim have to earn their time through immediate, trophy-winning success on a budget.
Conclusion: A Success, but not a blueprint
Mikel Arteta’s transformation of Arsenal is a spectacular success story and a testament to his clear vision and tactical acumen. But for the sake of honest football analysis, we must stop pretending that this was merely the reward for “patience.”
The true cost of the process was the unparalleled political immunity granted to a rookie manager and the hundreds of millions spent not just on new talent, but on systematically clearing the financial and cultural wreckage of the past.
The lesson of the Arteta Process is not merely “be patient.” It is, unequivocally: Be patient, and be prepared to grant your manager absolute political control while spending hundreds of millions to enforce that culture, even if it means absorbing the financial ruin of past and present mistakes.
This level of commitment is what differentiates Arsenal’s rebuild from almost all others, making it less of a blueprint for the average club and more a testament to the KSE/Board’s singular, unwavering, and immensely costly faith.