Morning all.
There’s only one place to start today and that’s confirmation of Mikel Arteta’s contract extension. The manager signed a new deal which will keep him at the club until June 2030, and I don’t think there’s any way to frame this other than great news.
It’s a deserved renewal, not just for the fact he led us to the Premier League title last season after 22 long years of waiting, but for the job he’s done since he arrived in 2019. Looking back it was a brave appointment, but one we absolutely needed to make, after the disastrous way the club handled the decision to replace Arsene Wenger.
At the time, concerns about the ownership being too hands off and too distant were fully justified. They gave Raul Sanllehi the top job because Ivan Gazidis said he was all right, and they green-lit Unai Emery’s appointment because they believed Sanllehi when he told them he was the right man. Without wanting to re-litigate all of that stuff, it was not the right way to do things, there was no real process to trust or not, and on and off the pitch that was borne out.
At the same time though, there’s an inherent risk in giving a job of the size of head coach at Arsenal to a 37 year old who had never had the top job anywhere before. He had his time alongside Pep Guardiola at Man City, but there are many great assistant coaches who just don’t have what it takes to be the main man. I suppose you have to also acknowledge that the state of Arsenal at that time lent itself to taking that risk. How much worse could it get?
That was 2019, and if there were some eyebrows raised back then, in 2026 it’s probably quite easy for us to think about how Arteta convinced the ownership and the executive of Arsenal that he was the right man for the job. He is a thoroughly convincing speaker, with a great ability to impart his message with clarity and reason. His very first interview with the club, one I reference often, was – even if you were someone who had some doubts about the appointment – reassuring in his messaging, because he made it clear he knew what was wrong:
> We have to build a culture that has to sustain the rest. If you don’t have the right culture, in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake, so my job is to convince everybody that this is how we are going to live, and if you are going to be part of this organisation it has to be in these terms and in this way.
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> And after that, we can talk about other things. Obviously now we need an immediate impact, we need to start winning games, we need to start to raise the level of confidence of the players, and finally we need the fans.
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> We need to engage them, we need to be able to transmit with our behaviours, our intentions, what we want to bring to this football club.
The question was never really about what he wanted to do, it was about whether he’d be able to do it, because there was no frame of reference for him as this was literally his first top job. It wasn’t always easy, there were so many challenges, and so many obstacles. Rebuilding a culture at a big organisation is not easy on its own, but dealing with difficult players and agents and having to make very hard decisions in some cases; issues at board level – especially in recruitment; the challenge of convincing fans when the team is inconsistent as you try and mould it into something better; the surreal nature of a deadly worldwide pandemic which came just three months into his tenure and affected the world, not just football; and the vagaries and pressures of the game itself which demands results along the way regardless of how well you lay out your vision for the future; it was a hell of a lot for anyone, let alone a novice head coach.
Was everything perfect and linear? Of course not. There were tricky times. There were probably times when a different club might have got the jitters and decided a more experience man was required, but Arsenal deserve credit for sticking with Arteta, and Arteta deserves credit for navigating those choppy waters. Here we are in 2026, champions again at last, and with 220 wins from 361 games, his win rate of 61% gives him the best record of any Arsenal manager in that sense (see [here](https://www.arsenal.com/news/where-arteta-ranks-among-our-most-successful-managers-abtzA1J5rZlQ)).
Speaking to the official site, [Arteta said](https://www.arsenal.com/news/mikel-arteta-signs-new-arsenal-contract-aLati7c3wQmF):
> It’s a privilege to commit my future to the club and to continue to work with exceptional people who want the best for Arsenal. This club is unique, its character and the way it makes you feel, and I have a great sense of privilege that our journey together will continue.
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> We have already built a special bond and created memories that will last a lifetime, and what is so exciting is that this is only the beginning of what we can achieve together.
We know this is a man who is hugely ambitious and incredibly driven. Bringing the title back after such a long time became something of a white whale, for him and for us as fans, but he achieved that last season. By committing his future for the next three and a half years (and a bit), you can be sure his goal is to cement his legacy. Not just as someone who did a good job, someone who kept trying to make things better, but in silverware too. He wants those trophies as much as we do, and we know that streak of relentlessness that runs through him, almost like a lust for success, will be part of this journey until then.
I’ve seen people talk about his salary, but I’ll be quite honest, I couldn’t care less. Just look around at how it plays out at other clubs. We could pay twice as much and end with someone not even half as good. He’s earned it, he’s brought us back to the top, and I’m fully convinced that he is the man to take us further.
“VAMOS!”, as he might say.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We’ll discuss the Arteta contract and more besides in an Arsecast which we’ll have for you a bit later on this morning. Until then, have a good one folks.