The appropriate way to assess Mikel Arteta’s season is to conceive what might have happened had Arsenal finished second for a fourth straight season. How could his players ever truly believe him again? Another lead, chance, season all gone. The bridesmaid may have hung on, for a while, but the doubts would be too deafening.
That is the right starting point because it contextualises everything else and because for a while it was our mistaken assumption. It lifts Arteta higher because of the sheer risk involved. Too often we are guilty of melodramatising the fine margins between success and perceived failure. Here there was no other conclusion to draw.
There were doubts, within the fanbase and within the media because Arsenal, and their manager, had become the personification of just-not-quite. And then they went top of the Premier League in early October and never went anywhere else.
The Brent-ian elements of Arteta’s managerial persona have certainly become a bit much at times – the lightbulb, the whiteboard drawings, the actual fire. Don’t get me wrong, Eddie Nketiah is a lovely bloke but should he be working here? We’ve all winced at a few press conferences and it has lost Arteta many supporters amongst those who would previously have considered themselves broadly neutral.
