In the week that Arsenal players started returning for pre-season, all of them feeling excited in the way that only new champions can, they found their manager wasn’t always as effusive. It actually depended on the day. One morning, Mikel Arteta would be beaming. The next, he would be ultra-serious. He would always be intense, however, like treating the Community Shield as if it was a major trophy that absolutely had to be won.
Some of that mood was inevitably influenced by the way transfer business was going, and Arteta wants Arsenal to be very active in the final two weeks of what has been an erratic window so far. He is still insistent on that right-sided defender and a left-sided forward, with one significant sale expected.
Most of his mood, however, is influenced by what that transfer business is for; that desire to keep going, to do more, to seize an opportunity, to win repeat titles like one of English football’s managerial grandees.
In May, Arteta may have been relieved that Arsenal finally got there, but they’re still not exactly where the manager wants.
The Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain only emphasised that. And for all that Arteta’s grand ambition is for Arsenal to finally become European champions, he knows the club have an enticing opportunity to become back-to-back English champions for the first time since 1935; maybe even to define a new Premier League era with a dynasty.
You only have to look across the predictions for this season. So many expect Arsenal to win the title again.
An element of that is because the previous season’s champions are almost always seen as carrying on as the best team, with all of that sharpened right now by how Arsenal are one of the few known quantities in a Premier League season with arguably more unknowns than ever before.
There is uncertainty or unpredictability about all of their rivals, above all Manchester City without Pep Guardiola.
Many at Arsenal similarly know how superficial such perceptions can be. Just compare to April, when many people expected them to finish second yet again.
There is a real relish within the club at how they proved so many wrong, if also an awareness not all of the criticism was completely misplaced.
Arsenal’s response to April’s 2-1 defeat to Manchester City could yet become one of those great sliding doors moments.
Had they further buckled, and Guardiola beat them to another title, it wasn’t inconceivable to see all of this unravelling; maybe one of those vintage collapses similar challengers like Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool endured.
The team had been playing with such an intensity under so much pressure for so long, without the release of victory. That angst had manifested in a series of wins by the lowest of margins last season, as their entire run-in became defined by the mere desire to just get over the line.
Injuries only worsened this, and fed into a summer of upheaval behind the scenes as so many staff have been replaced.
That points to how some of those issues do remain, but almost everything else has been transformed by triumph. The tension has been released into the air with so much title glitter. There’s a new assurance.
While this obviously isn’t to say that Arteta will go on and replicate Sir Alex Ferguson, there are potential parallels with Manchester United’s 1993 champions rather than, say, Liverpool 2009 or 2014.
The great Scot spoke of how the club went from the “misery” of fearing another “disintegration” to the “new authority” that came from being “liberated from the pressures that a quarter of a century without a title had imposed”.
Arsenal’s players are enjoying similar now. That’s why it feels all the more psychologically significant that they beat City last season, that they didn’t have to wait for Guardiola to depart.
And if there’s still a belief that the champions might be constrained by Arteta’s own mindset, that is so shaped by control, there is a new optimism there.
Staff are all too keen to point out that the title was won with the first-choice attack not just barely playing together but not playing that much at all. It wasn’t until April that Arteta had Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz on the pitch together again. They had been the trio whose understanding delivered 91 goals in 38 league games in 2023-24. Odegaard is inspiring a particular excitement, for reasons that could be seen in that Community Shield goal against City. There’s a sense that he’s been further freed from the success of his country’s best ever World Cup, as Norway reached the quarter-finals. He’s in better physical shape, and could even be the star in a Premier League season suddenly devoid of such sparkle.
It’s why there wasn’t overt disappointment at losing out on Vinicius Junior, despite many at the club being convinced he was coming on the day before Real Madrid surprisingly increased their offer.
The negotiations with Arsenal had been going on for months. It wasn’t a case of quick flirting.
Arteta does still badly want a left forward but there is a mind to wait. Arsenal didn’t ultimately move for Morgan Rogers or – as yet – Bradley Barcola because they don’t feel they were quite worth the £110m-plus prices quoted. The value is viewed as that crucial difference between a player that will bolster you and one that will really elevate you.
Arsenal’s internal analytics show that Gabriel Martinelli is as effective as many of the targets in the £80-100m bracket. They would probably move for Bournemouth’s Jan Kroupi had he not been injured, which is why waiting could make more sense. Barcola could still appeal depending on the price.
Either way, Max Dowman is also expected to go up a level.
Some even feel a far greater need is getting in that right-sided defender due to William Saliba’s injury, and how another would leave them completely exposed. That explains the extent of the pursuits for Jarrel Quansah and Ezri Konsa, with the latter currently seen as likelier.
Jurrien Timber is at least expected to return in September, reflecting a squad that is otherwise in fine shape.
No squad in the Premier League are as stable, or as deep. That is set to ensure further outgoings, and one big one, but virtually everyone is denying that Myles Lewis-Skelly will go. He’s too valuable, his energy complementing that of Bruno Guimaraes. The Brazilian is another reason for optimism, having altered the chemistry of midfield. Real Madrid are meanwhile thinking of moving for Martin Zubimendi, and that could be considered.
Sporting director Andrea Berta is set to have a busy month, with Arteta fully immersed.
The title has consolidated a position of “almost complete control”, where the Basque now also stands out in the Premier League of young coaches as having the power of the “big beasts” of old; the Fergusons, the Wengers.
He is now determined to emulate them, and perhaps even surpass his great predecessor at Arsenal by actually retaining the title.
So many around the club know they’ll never have a better chance.
Arteta’s mood was certainly clear after the Community Shield. He was said to be “buzzing”, the team putting in the performance… of champions.
They now just have to do it again. And again. And maybe again.
