Arsenal plans to fix Mikel Arteta’s biggest regret since landing at Arsenal.

Arsenal plans to fix Mikel Arteta’s biggest regret since landing at Arsenal.

With the shock of COVID-19, the 2020/21 season has apparently been the most severe period in living memory.

The footballing fixture list has been contracted to bizarre extremes and as a result, most players are tired at the end of it.

Managers are no unconventional and after his first full campaign in charge of Arsenal Mikel Arteta is currently enjoying some downtime with his wife, his three sons and his much-beloved dogs.

But when the Spaniard ultimately returns to London Colney for the start of the forthcoming season he will do so with the opportunity to embark upon something he has still not had the fortune to do since he took over as Arsenal manager in December 2019.

From the very start of his time at the Emirates, Arteta has been very transparent that his team is tactically not where he wants it to be.

His resolution to this is to have a decent pre-season that up until now has alluded him in his career as a manager where he can work with his players to fully inculcate them into his footballing philosophy.

“I have spent a lot of time and effort identifying critical points to change and then how those changes are going to be made,” he told the press when questioned about how he intended to turn things around after an underwhelming first campaign in charge with the Gunners.

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“In which timeframe we could do them and I want to spend time building, creating and with all the foundations that we have in place now, evolving the club and everything in the way that we want to do.

“I want a preseason where we can work with the players and create. I’m a really creative person, I really want to create and evolve and a lot of the time since I’ve come here, I’ve been determined to make some very, very difficult decisions that I have to do.

“But I want to start doing more and more and more, because the capacity that we have to do it is incredible. I am so excited about that and I see that moment of a lot of change as a big opportunity for our future.”

The fixtures for Arsenal’s pre-season campaign have already been concluded with the Gunners kicking off their 2021/22 preparations with a trip north of the border to play Scottish sides Hibernian and Rangers.
They will then travel to America to take on Inter Milan and one of Everton and Colombian side Millonarios in the Flordia Cup.

The games however, will faint in importance to the great ambitions Arteta has with his team on the training ground.

Only four of Arsenal’s members have been called up to the Euros and with Granit Xhaka expected set to depart to join Roma almost soon that will drop down to just three.

Brazilian pair Gabriel and Gabriel Martinelli will likely be away on international duty at the Olympics with Brazil, but for the most part, Arteta will have a full team to work with.

He intends to use that time to make key resolutions on the futures of young players like William Saliba, while ideally, he would like to able to also use it to combine some new signings into his group.

Above all though the Spaniard prepares to help his team take the next step forward in his plan as Arsenal manager that he thinks they are still some way off.

“Very far. Very, very far,” he said when asked how close this Gunners side was to being what he wanted.

“There’s still a lot to improve, a lot of quality to add. [We need to be] much more efficient in decision-making, much quicker to open situations up when advantages are there, many more situations to feel when advantages are obtained.

“More control of games, more defensive actions in the opponent’s half, fewer giveaways in our own half, more clean sheets. There’s a lot to do – more goals to score, more creativity. A lot to do.

“When you look at the league table it is not acceptable. We are Arsenal Football Club and we should be nowhere near here. If somebody is happy with that he is in the wrong place.”

With the early FA Cup and Community Shield triumph alongside the totally unknown territory of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arteta built up excess of good will from fans to buy him some much-needed time to achieve his project.

After a collapse to qualify for European football for the first time in 25 years though the Spaniard knows that the huge majority of that has already been used up among the fanbase.

Now he has got the one thing he regrets never having in terms of a pre-season to work with the players he would like to keep, he knows the demand is well and truly on.

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Arsenal plans to fix Mikel Arteta’s biggest regret since landing at Arsenal.