The Spaniard inherited something of a mess in December but recent revitalisation of players and form suggests he is on the path to restoring Arsenal’s credibility
You could make your own jokes on Thursday when Mikel Arteta was forced to postpone his pre-match press conference for Sunday’s north London derby. The Arsenal manager’s wifi had apparently been playing up all day and it seemed some kind of local power outage was more of an issue, at that moment, than well-worn questions about the local balance of power. “Technical issues” was the reason given.
Arteta knows all about those, in a different sense. When he took over before Christmas it was hard to know where he should start: technically, tactically and temperamentally, Arsenal were a mess and Arteta was keenly aware. Their mentality was wrong and the biggest job, he felt, was to engage the players’ brains in a way that swept them along with him. “I want to do things my way,” he said at his unveiling. “But by convincing them it’s the right way for everybody to live better.”
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