Managerial press conferences can be an odd beast to dissect. I participate in them regularly in my capacity reporting on Arsenal Women. As a fan, I watch Mikel Arteta’s from afar. They are usually pretty perfunctory because managers, understandably, will generally try to reveal as little information as possible.
They are also such a regular part of a manager’s life (Ruben Amorim continually remarks on how dizzying he finds the media schedule as Manchester United manager) that they can have a sort of breeziness to them. All of which is to say they require some decoding sometimes.
One of the things I often look for is what a manager says unprompted because that will often reveal their subconscious. I will give you an example, after Emile Smith Rowe turned in a man of the match performance against Luton about a year ago, Arteta was asked about Smith Rowe’s performance, at a time when it was clear the player’s future lay elsewhere.
‘How physical he was today without the ball. He went into duels and won a lot of them and was thinking with that killer instinct to play forward and make things happen. When Emile is in that moment, it’s very difficult to stop him.’ Arteta wasn’t asked about Smith Rowe’s physicality, his killer instinct, his duel winning or his desire to play forward.
There was a subtext in his praise. It told you that Arteta felt these elements were too often lacking for ESR and that informed his conversations with the player. However, there are times when managers are very clear with their communication in press conferences and I think that tends to be when they are addressing the players.
I often revisit Arteta’s first press conference as Arsenal manager. Largely because of the excitement it generated at the time. Arsene Wenger was a clear communicator and it is fair to say that the players and the supporters lost that a little during Unai Emery’s reign, largely because of the language barrier. Arteta brought that sense of clarity back.
But his opening press conference was also a sort of manifesto and one that, in my view, he is delivering on. I have always been drawn to this paragraph in particular. ‘The first thing is a little bit to change the energy. Last week I was here with Manchester City and I was a little bit down after the game when I felt what was going on. So we have to try to engage everybody, I have to try and convince the players about what I want to do, how I want to do it, they have to start accepting a different process, a different way of thinking, and I want to get all the staff and everybody at the club with the same mindset.
‘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. And after that, we can talk about other things.’
I particularly liked the phrase, ‘the tree is going to shake.’ So much so that when I interviewed Arsenal Women manager Renee Slegers the day she was appointed as the permanent Head Coach, I referenced it in our conversation. A big part of the first segment of Arteta’s reign was a cleaning house job.
A few players were ostracized (not undeservedly) and shipped out, often painfully, like ripping a plaster off an open wound. Another of Arteta’s phrases was ‘on the boat.’ He wanted players who would commit totally to his vision. In other words, he wanted to transform the club’s culture.
When I look back now at his call to ‘change the energy’ around the club, I see Tuesday night’s victory over Real Madrid as the culmination of that message. It is a million miles from the scene he referenced when Manchester City took apart a limp Arsenal outfit in front of rows and rows of empty red seats. But I often look back at that phrase, ‘when the tree shakes.’
It is fair to say that the tree has shaken this season. Several players have torn their hamstrings trying to cling onto it. A few referees have taken some pleasure lobbing grenades at it. None of which is to say Arsenal are faultless, of course. The last two transfer windows could very much be viewed as opportunities lost to firm up the foundations.
But generally, I think Arteta and Arsenal have been dealt a bad hand (it happens, look at Liverpool’s league finishes over the last seven seasons, you can spot the seasons where their tree has shaken). With distance and perspective I think we will appreciate that Arteta and Arsenal have done a good job of retaining some serenity in the league table against the odds this season.
My own view is that Arsenal have the highest floor in the league but need a sprinkle of magic in attack to give them a higher ceiling. A lot of that floor is down to talent, of course. Declan Rice- even if we got him half price- cost over £100m for a reason. A lot of it is down to coaching that talent- imagine I told you in August that Arsenal would beat Real Madrid 3-0 with Lewis-Skelly at left-back and Merino upfront.
But a lot of it is down to that culture that Arteta has instilled. So I come back to his press conferences, where he has repeatedly refused to blame or cite injuries as the reason that Arsenal haven’t ascended to that next level this season (even though most intelligent people can see that is absolutely the dominant, if not sole, factor).
As Arteta contemplated four defensive injuries in one week recently, his message remained defiant, ‘It’s been a great learning experience for us and all the coaches and staff to manage that situation. At the end, the players are going to react to how we react to it. You start to feel sorry for yourself and say it’s impossible, how we’re going to do this, it will be impossible. But these boys don’t give you the reason to act like that and look where we are in April.’
Compare with the moonfaced messaging of Ange Postecoglou when Tottenham shed a huge number of league points during their own winter injury crisis. His message was defeatist, suggesting there was nothing that could be done until his main players became healthy. Arteta would have every right to point to injuries as the reason his team have not challenged as convincingly for the title as they would have liked.
I am certain that privately, he knows it too. He refuses to say it publicly for good reason and that is about not creating an excuse or victim culture at the club. A couple of seasons ago, when quizzed on the treatment meted out to Bukayo Saka by opponents, Arteta refused to complain or mollycoddle the player.
‘Well, there is contact in football and obviously for the wingers who want to take people on this is going to happen. I think he’s getting used to it.’ Arteta deliberately has a stoicism in his public messaging (and, I am sure, in his internal messaging with players) to not only create a strong mentality, but to resist a victim mentality, defined by excuses and mitigation.
Even his public messaging about the ‘title race’, which I am sure he knows well hasn’t really been a race for some time, remains unrepentant. ‘Over my dead body, if I think like this, I go home now,’ he said a couple of weeks ago when asked whether he was willing to concede the race. Quotes like this aren’t really about this season, but the future and next season and continuing to instil that steely mentality.
Another of my favourite Arsenal quotes comes from Paul Merson. When asked how Arsene Wenger had transformed the culture at Arsenal during his first season in charge, Merson described it as ‘unbelievable belief.’ The clumsiness of the phrase proved incredibly apposite.
The tree has shaken heavily this season, I know nobody wants an ‘at least you tried’ cake for (likely) finishing in second place despite tumultuous circumstances. But the culture that Arteta has instilled is the midwife to nights like Tuesday, when a team with an 18-year-old making his 30th club appearance can boss Real Madrid from left-back.
When a 29-year-old midfielder can instantly retrain as a striker and Declan Rice can score two free-kicks in quick succession to seal a famous 3-0 victory over Real Madrid. Even when the tree shakes, Arsenal retain their unbelievable belief and that is testament to how Mikel Arteta has transformed the culture, as well as the tactics and the talent, at Arsenal.
