Mikel Arteta will bid to bring back the spark to Arsenal after being appointed head coach of the Premier League club on a three-and-a-half-year contract. (More Football News)
Arsenal sacked Unai Emery last month and took three weeks to bring in their former midfielder Mikel Arteta as his successor
Mikel Arteta will bid to bring back the spark to Arsenal after being appointed head coach of the Premier League club on a three-and-a-half-year contract. (More Football News)
Confirmation of his decision to leave Manchester City and return to the club where he ended his playing days came on Friday as Arsenal announced the widely expected move.
The Spaniard spent three and a half years as assistant to compatriot Pep Guardiola at the Etihad Stadium, and City were keen for Arteta to stay with them.
He looked primed as a strong contender to one day succeed Guardiola, but Arteta was not prepared to wait for the chance to take charge of a Premier League club.
The 37-year-old will take up his new position on Sunday, the day after Arsenal face Everton - another of his former clubs - in the Premier League.
This is a huge honour," said Arteta. "Arsenal is one of the biggest clubs in the world. We need to be competing for the top trophies in the game and that's been made very clear to me in my discussions with Stan and Josh Kroenke, and the senior people from the club.
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"We all know there is a lot of work to be done to achieve that but I am confident we'll do it. I'm realistic enough to know it won't happen overnight but the current squad has plenty of talent and there is a great pipeline of young players coming through from the academy."
Arsenal have drifted to 10th place in the Premier League after 17 games. They sit seven points shy of the Champions League places, having also missed out on a top-four finish last season.
Arteta succeeds another Spaniard, Unai Emery, who was installed in May 2018 when Arsene Wenger's 22-year reign came to an end.
Arsenal bided their time before making a play for Arteta, initially putting former Gunners midfielder Freddie Ljungberg in charge when Emery left on November 29.
The Swede struggled to make a case for keeping the job in the long term, though, with his five games in charge to date yielding just one victory, a 3-1 success at West Ham in the Premier League.
Ljungberg, who will remain at the helm for the Everton game, urged Arsenal to hurry up and make an appointment after Sunday's 3-0 blitzing by City, when Arteta had a close-at-hand view of the shortcomings at Emirates Stadium.
In the early hours of the following morning, senior officials from Arsenal were pictured leaving Arteta's home, having seemingly settled on him as their preferred choice.
City were said to be unhappy with the manner of the approach, but Guardiola made it clear he would not stand in Arteta's way.
Former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira had also been linked with the post, while Brendan Rodgers effectively ruled himself out of the running by signing a lucrative new five-and-a-half-year deal with high-flying Leicester.
The Emery era will not be fondly remembered, with the former Sevilla and Paris Saint-Germain boss brought in to refresh a flagging playing squad but proving unable to improve the team's fortunes.
A Europa League run masked some of Arsenal's failings last season, until they were thumped 4-1 by Chelsea in the final. Losing Aaron Ramsey on a free transfer to Juventus was another major blow.
Arteta inherits a squad containing plenty of attacking quality from the likes of Nicolas Pepe, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette; however, Wenger and Emery alike struggled to build a reliable spine to the team, and that will be a priority for the new boss.