Arsenal: Shkodran Mustafi rebirth offers future hope

Shkodran Mustafi has looked reborn under new head coach Mikel Arteta. While he will not be Arsenal’s long-term solution at centre-back, his individual improvement offers hope that Arteta can inspire the same change in others.

The role of a coach is to build a team. This takes hold in many different ways. It might be managing the characters in the dressing room, motivating them, disciplining them, inspiring them. It might be implementing new tactics and advantageous approaches to put the players in better positions to succeed. It might even be teaching the players fundamental elements of their individual games, improving their technical skill or athleticism or decision-making.

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Mastering all of these processes — and many more — comprise a good coach. Jurgen Klopp has built a brilliant Liverpool team by brilliantly handling the characters he is the manager of, implementing a superb tactical system that the entire club buys into, and improving the technical, physical and mental abilities of the players he is given.

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This is a very simplified way of detailing the work of a good manager, of course, but it provides a peek into the overarching results that come from having a productive and positive head coach as the leader of the team.

Arsenal currently have one of these productive head coaches. Even though Mikel Arteta is in his first senior management role and only retired from playing a little over three years ago, the Spaniard, in his first two months at the Emirates helm, has displayed his coaching qualities time and again.

Perhaps no player emblemises Arteta’s work better than Shkodran Mustafi. The German, renowned for critical errors and dumbfounding decision-making, was only in the squad because Arsenal could not find a buyer. He slid down the pecking order under Unai Emery, was later banished from the squad as a slew of equally underperforming centre-halves played in his stead, and was seemingly set for a very hasty and underhanded summer exit, likely for far less than the £35 million that he cost to bring to north London.

But with Calum Chambers suffering a season-ending injury, Rob Holding failing to prove his match fitness, and Dinos Mavropanos sent out on loan to gain some regular playing time, Arteta was forced to start Mustafi. However, thanks to the coaching that Mustafi has received from Arteta, the greater discipline of the system that he was inserted into, and the confidence that he received from his improved form, Mustafi’s starting has been more than just serviceable. It has been a blessing.

The German made his customary, glaring error in a 2-2 draw with Chelsea, under-hitting a backpass that left Bernd Leno stranded and David Luiz with no choice but to haul down Tammy Abraham in the penalty area, conceding both the penalty and a red card. Arsenal would battle back in that match, and Mustafi would proceed to play a stupendous hour following the red card to repel the Chelsea attacks, anchoring what was a superb defensive performance with ten men.

He has since produced excellent displays against Bournemouth in the FA Cup, when his passing range came to the fore, Burnley before the winter break, his aerial dominance shining, and against Newcastle on Sunday, a match in which his concentration remained steadfast and his defending aggressive, helping to implement a suffocating high press.

However shocking it is to say, Mustafi has been an invaluable piece of the Arsenal team in recent weeks. That does not mean that he is going to be the long-term starter at centre-back. It is still expected that he will be moved on in the summer. But his substantial improvements in such a short period display the quality of coaching that he has received under Arteta, and that is a very hopeful development.

That Arsenal now have a coach who can coax out the very best in his players is extremely encouraging. There is a system and a managerial structure at the club that can be relied upon to maximise talent, not waste it.

Arteta is a brilliant coach. His resurrection of Mustafi, among many other things, proves as much. And it inspires terrific hope for the future of the team.