Mikel Arteta has been on a Course | OneFootball

Back when I had a proper job, I’d be sent on courses that were designed to improve my coaching, negotiating skills, critical thinking and so on. Some of it resonated and stuck, some of it was forgotten as soon as I got back in my car, and some I could probably recall if I really put my mind to it.

I get the impression that Mikel Arteta has been on a hundred such courses and taken copious notes.

Either that or he gathers armfuls of business-related books every time he goes through an airport. You know the sort of thing: ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’, ‘How to Get People to Believe You’re a Genius’, and so on.

That’s the only reason I can come up with for the Arsenal manager’s increasingly bizarre public utterances.

He seems to subscribe to a mantra of positive thinking that forbids the praising of any opposition, and means you must always find three positive things to say about your own team, even when they are rubbish.

If I understand Arteta and his maths correctly, Arsenal would have won the league in the last two seasons if Man City and Liverpool had played fewer games than the Gunners, and therefore they are the rightful champions. Flawless reasoning.

I’d be taller than Dan Burn if he’d stopped growing when he was 11 years old. And I’d be faster than Anthony Gordon if he wore stilettos.

In the same week, LEGO-head let the world know that Arsenal were the best team in the Champions League, by virtue of losing two semi-finals to PSG. Again, following his logic, they were also the best team in the Carabao Cup, where they lost two semi-finals to the inferior, eventual winners, Newcastle United. He’ll say anything rather than admit his team were beaten by a side that were better on the day.

What he doesn’t seem to have grasped is that these courses, self-help manuals and business tomes are for internal purposes only. If he wants to tell his players they are the best in Europe, or are the rightful champions of England, fair enough. It may give his squad a boost. But for goodness sake, you never spout this drivel in public. You make yourself a laughing stock. Even your own fans groan in embarrassment when they hear it. And of course, opposition fans just love to give it back to Mikel Arteta. Liverpool fans were joyfully questioning whether Arsenal really were the best team in Europe, and when he blamed the ball for their Carabao Cup woes, the black and white army let him know that he must have been correct.

Arteta 2.0 is – he believes – an upgrade on the previous version, which used to spend 90 minutes per match complaining about various injustices. You will recall the game at St James’ Park last season where he ranted to various journalists that ‘it was a disgrace’, without ever specifying what the ‘it’ was.

It’s obvious that one of the courses he has been on dealt with anger management. You can see how close to exploding he is every time he is interviewed about a game that didn’t quite go his way.