Arsenal: ‘Complete control’ Mikel Arteta defeats the purpose

Arsenal seem to be inching closer to announcing Mikel Arteta, but recent reports may bring that to a screeching halt. We don’t need another dictator.

Like it or not, Arsenal looks to be set to hand over the club to Mikel Arteta. He’s a man who has never managed a club before in his life, but he has learned from Arsene Wenger and Pep Guardiola, which has to count for something.

However, nothing can ever be easy, not even when appointing someone that the majority of fans don’t want, so the tabloids are out there trying to stir up trouble. Whether it’s true or not, who knows, but let’s hope not.

The report, as quoted by the Daily Star, is that Mikel Arteta is ‘playing hardball’ and wants to have the power to veto transfers. Now, we don’t know how valid this report is, but as we often do, let’s suspend our disbelief and talk big picture consequences from such a decision.

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This would mean that he would be the ultimate power in the transfer market, and that the brain trust that had seemingly taken over control from Arsene Wenger (Sven Mislintat and company, with the newest, February addition of Raul Sanllehi) would be nothing more than an advising board to the main man, Mikel Arteta.

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This is awful.

There is no other way around it. I have to imagine that, if Wenger had his ongoing power to the end, we wouldn’t have Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang right now.

Mislintat, Sanllehi and company have to be the power behind the transfer market. The point of letting Wenger go was to transition into a new era of Arsenal Football Club. An era that involved more than one brain running the show.

And sure, these other brains would still be there, giving Arteta ideas, but I trust Mislintat’s ability to snag another Konstantinos Mavropanos more than I trust Arteta’s ability to accept it. Mainly because Mislintat is a proven commodity and Arteta is still a hypothetical.

None of this sounds good. Not at all. Wenger had so much trouble managing everything in his latter years. I still remember the summer he was refereeing a charity event in Italy all summer and, as such, was incapable of dealing with transfers. We needed a striker so badly, but because no one else had the power, nothing happened.

We got Danny Welbeck at the buzzer and called it a summer.

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This is the future we would be building for ourselves. Only, with Wenger, you could say that he earned the right to be an overlord after years of working with David Dein. If we given Arteta the ultimate power right off the bat, then this move is getting worse and worse.