5 Arsenal players you completely forgot Mikel Arteta iced out

On Wednesday afternoon, it was officially confirmed that Mikel Arteta has signed a new long-term contract to remain Arsenal manager until 2030. With the Gunners now Premier League champions again, this announcement has presented a great opportunity to look back.

To date, 89 players have made a competitive appearance under Arteta, many of whom have been fundamental to the success he has enjoyed. Meantime, during his almost seven years at the helm, plenty of the biggest decisions Arteta has made has been casting players aside, so we look at five times this happened.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

When Arteta arrived, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was the undisputed star of this football club. He scored 31 goals in the 2018/19 season, and his contract renewal in the summer of 2020, following a brace in the FA Cup Final, brought about universal celebration.

However, 18 months later, following a clash of personalities between the captain and manager, Aubameyang was frozen out and shipped off to Barcelona. At the time, with Arsenal going on to miss out on the top four, this looked like a disastrous decision, but Arteta was vindicated in the long term.

Mesut Özil

Around the same time, it was a similar story for Mesut Özil. After Alexis Sánchez departed for Manchester United, the German was handed a bumper new contract in the summer of 2019, becoming the club's highest earner. When Arteta arrived a few months later, his 4-2-3-1 shape seemed designed to get the best out of Özil.

However, it turned out that on 7 March 2020, the club's final fixture before lockdown, it would be his 254th and final outing in an Arsenal shirt. Özil spent all of project restart on the sidelines, famously sat casually under an umbrella on a scorching hot day at St Mary's. Subsequently excluded from Arsenal's Premier League squad for the start of the 2020/21 campaign, he ultimately departed for Fenerbahçe the following January, an acrimonious separation, but one that was needed.

Mattéo Guendouzi

Whenever there is a managerial change, some players massively benefit while others fall by the wayside, and Mattéo Guendouzi certainly falls into the latter category. Unai Emery very much believed in the Frenchman's talent, but Arteta not so much.

Following a 2-1 defeat at Brighton in lockdown, the pair famously had a spat in the dressing room, and the then 21 year old never played for the club again. Arteta was not accepting players with bad attitudes, identifying Guendouzi pretty early on as someone who had to be removed.

Oleksandr Zinchenko

Many Arsenal fans remember Oleksandr Zinchenko as a complete flop signing, but if anyone tells you that, they are wrong. When the Ukrainian first arrived in the summer of 2023, he changed our world. We had never seen a left-back quite like it, and Zinchenko walked so Riccardo Calafiori could run.

For the first two-thirds of Arsenal's surprise title challenge, opposition teams had no idea how to deal with Zinchenko; in time, they did figure it out, and his weaknesses were exposed. Thus, having been an integral starter for two years, the Ukrainian was in the XI for only five Premier League matches in 2024/25, before departing to join Ajax.

Emile Smith Rowe

Lastly, this is certainly the saddest of all the players on this list. When Emile Smith Rowe was handed the number ten shirt, he and Bukayo Saka felt like the future of this club. The Hale End boy scored ten Premier League goals in 2021/22 but, partially due to injuries, was never able to hit those heights again.

Smith Rowe was slowly faded out across his final two seasons in North London, before being sold to Fulham, and it can't have been easy for Arteta to let such a beloved figure go, but again, the time was right.

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