Mikel Arteta’s tenure in North London couldn’t have begun on a much better note.
The former Arsenal captain was hired as the club’s manager in December 2019 after a string of poor performances left Unai Emery sacked. What immediately followed was promising. The Gunners won half of their remaining Premier League games, including an eight-week unbeaten stretch that ran from late December to the June restart. They climbed from 12th in the table up to a substandard-but-hopeful eighth. His first half-season in charge was then capped with an FA Cup title. Not bad for a first-time manager running an underperforming team during a global pandemic.
Six months after lifting the trophy, Arsenal is back in the middle of the table with just an outside shot at participating in European competition next season. So where have Arteta and his club gone wrong?
We’ll start with those things out of the Spaniard’s control. Injuries have plagued the Gunners since the start of the season. Kieran Tierney, one of their few bright spots this season, has missed six games already and will likely miss more due to an injury suffered nearly a month ago. Thomas Partey, the club’s biggest transfer of the 2020 summer window ($58 million), has made just nine league starts (and played 90 minutes just three times) as he’s battled through a litany of knocks.
It’s not that Arsenal is alone in that regard. Many other squads, namely Liverpool and Manchester City, have been hit with a laundry list of injuries following the condensed offseason. But without the depth of some of England’s top teams, Arsenal has been left without some of its most important players or comparable replacements.
