Mikel Arteta says Arsenal have overcome challenges posed by insiders who were “trying to hurt” the club earlier in the season and that maintaining cohesion within the ranks has been his biggest success of 2020-21.
Arsenal can still salvage a Europa Conference League place from a fraught campaign but Arteta believes the most significant prize has come in avoiding fractures when some individuals, internally and externally, did not have their best interests at heart.
“The best thing has been to keep a team, a staff, employees and everybody together,” the manager said. “In those circumstances when you are not winning and when there are so many people, some inside and some outside, that are trying to hurt [you]. And to keep them together and block that and be so strong, I think that is some achievement. As normally when that happens [makes a cracking sound], that cracks and everything falls, and it didn’t.”
Asked whether the “some inside” were still at Arsenal, Arteta simply replied: “No.”
Arteta did not name the people in question. Players who left Arsenal in the winter transfer window included Mesut Özil, Shkodran Mustafi and Sead Kolasinac, the last of those on loan to Schalke, but Arteta did not indicate that he was referring to any of them.
Arsenal were hailed for reducing the size of their squad midway through the season. Arteta is, however, keen to avoid repeating a situation that saw unwanted players consigned to the sidelines after the campaign began.
“It would be ideal to do everything as early as possible and have all the players who know they will continue here on the first day of pre-season but it’s not going to happen,” he said. “We have the Euros and everything is going to be delayed. There are many things to be done that will take time. But we know how key it will be and what we don’t want is what happened last year.”
Arsenal finish their season at home to Brighton. Should they win a fifth consecutive top-flight game, and Spurs and Everton fail to win at Leicester and Manchester City respectively, they will finish seventh and enter Europe’s new third-tier competition. “Extraordinarily challenging, but incredibly stimulating,” was how Arteta described the past season. “Then I would say three dots and a big opportunity coming up.”
