Arsenal: Clowns becoming key vindicates Mikel Arteta

Arsenal have improved under new head coach Mikel Arteta. But what vindicates his coaching the most is the players that have played a crucial part. The clowns have become key.

Good coaches improve the players they work with. Liverpool are such a formidable team because their recruitment is excellent and Jurgen Klopp is a brilliant coach, which thereby makes the recruitment excellent by improving the players that he is given.

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The Liverpool team is stocked full of middling Premier League players who showed promise for lesser teams but have collectively developed their games under the tutelage of Klopp. Wijnaldum arrived from Newcastle United, Sadio Mane and Virgil van Dijk came from Southampton, Jordan Henderson from Sunderland and Andy Robertson from the then-relegated Hull City.

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Since Klopp took over at Liverpool, almost every single player has improved. Certainly, every single individual who is now playing a key role in the team, which is arguably the greatest in English history, has been developed by Klopp’s coaching and input. This is what good coaches do, and the improvement of the players that work with them is an illustration of their coaching qualities.

While Klopp has had years to fine-tune his players, harnessing their strengths and working on their weaknesses, Mikel Arteta is a long way down the line. The Arsenal head coach has been at the club a little more than a month and is still bedding himself into his first-ever senior managerial role. To expect Klopp-like results would be silly. However, even in these early stages, there are signs — players improving under Arteta — that the Spaniard is a very capable coach.

Arsenal’s improvement under Arteta has been driven by the revitalisation of previously misunderstood, misused and underperforming stars. Perhaps most notably, the pair of £35 million transfers from the 2016 summer window that have long been a major issue that managers have been unable to solve or overcome are now becoming crucial parts of Arteta’s puzzle.

Granit Xhaka is playing a unique role that only he has the ability to perform. Operating as a left-sided central midfielder who slides over to left-back when the team is in safe possession, Arteta has crafted a position that exploits his strengths — his passing range, his excellent left foot, his ability to dictate the tempo of the game when given time and space on the ball — and minimises his weaknesses — his immobility, his reliance on his left foot, his struggles to receive the ball when under pressure. Putting players in positions to succeed is a basic tenet of good coaching, and that is precisely what Arteta is doing with Xhaka.

Similarly, even Shkodran Mustafi is beginning to flourish at centre-back. Admittedly, he made a quintessentially harrowing error against Chelsea that led to David Luiz’s sending off, but he was excellent for the remaining hour of that match, turned into prime Franz Beckenbauer a week later against Bournemouth in which his distribution from deep was phenomenal, which was timely given David Luiz’s absence through suspension, and was Arsenal’s best player in Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Burnley, defending stoutly as he won seven aerial duels, the most of the match, made seven clearances, the joint-highest, and completed two interceptions and one tackle.

Whether Xhaka and Mustafi will be long-term solutions at their respective positions remains to be seen, but for now, Arteta is relying on them to deliver and helping them to do so. As Sarah Winterburn in Football365 writes, the clowns are becoming key, and it is because of Arteta.