To be a fantastic manager , he has to be winning major titles, so far he's in the decent category.
How ever, if he wins the title or champions league, my perception of him will change, but I doubt his ability to be elite.
See this is where you and others like you are spectacularly wrong and expose the fact that you lack context
Allow me to explain. I’m confident it will go over your head but I can at least try.
You need to understand that you cannot go from point A (where Arsenal were in Dec 2019) to point B (Arsenal winning the league) directly because Arsenal were in extremely bad shape when he took over.
It was a team that played average football, produced average results, had lazy players on fat contracts and the overall culture of the club & the connection with the fan base was very toxic.
Amidst all of this, it was not surprising that Arsenal were a team struggling to finish in the top 6 and whoever was going to replace Emery was going to have to do a monumental task to lift the team.
Fast forward to 2024 and Arsenal are a million miles away from where they were when Arteta took over. The team has come leaps & bounds in each and every aspect: football on the pitch, results, the players, the culture & atmosphere.
Piece by piece, window by window, Arteta has rebuild the club and put Arsenal in a position where the fans are now dreaming of winning the league again and anything less than a title win will be viewed as disappointing.
Arteta is the reason why the expectations have surged. He has made Arsenal fans dream again.
Let’s not forget that Arsenal’s standards had deteriorated so much that the club celebrated finishing fourth like winning a trophy and the club completely forget what it takes to build a high performance culture and challenge for the title.
The hunger and the ambition had completely vanished. For the first time in 20 years, Arsenal has managed to fight for the title in back to back seasons.
You don’t have to look beyond the fact that the level of defending that you are seeing from Arsenal these days is a level that even the Invincibles could not reach. Even they were more open than this Arsenal team.
This is the most defensively solid Arsenal team since the days of Seaman, Adams, Keown, Winterburn and Dixon.
When was the last time Arsenal dominated the defensive stats in the league?
People severely understimate the level of challenge that Arteta had when he took over and what he was competing against with a dysfunctional team that required a complete surgery.
He was up against Pep’s City and Klopp’s Liverpool at the peak of their powers. He was up again Chelsea and United who were not in the best of shapes but had a lot more financial muscle and a Spurs team that had the UCL final the previous season and had several players that would have walked into the Arsenal team.
Arteta did a job that a lot of managers, including big name, experienced managers, would have failed to do and it his first crack at coaching. That alone sums up his brilliance and how high his ceiling is.
Yes he has spent big money but in this era, you can’t build a strong side without spending big money.
However, as Arsenal manager, he has spent less money than City has in this period and they already had a champion team when took over as Arsenal manager. He has also spent less money than Chelsea and United and look where they are now.
Arteta is the only reason Arsenal is ahead of United and Chelsea. They have 5 different managers collectively in this period, spent more than him and they are not better off now.
Winning the title is the end goal, I agree. Eventually, he has to win the league for Arsenal but there is absolutely no reason to doubt him if he will get Arsenal over the line or not based on the work that he has done at this point.
If he took Arsenal from where they were to where they are now, he will also take them from where they are now to eventual league champions.
It is impossible to not be super impressed with his work so far and you doubt if he is elite, but you also doubted if he would take Arsenal to where they are today.
If I had asked you two years ago if you foresee Arsenal fighting for the title under Arteta, you would have said no. People like you thought fighting for a top four was his ceiling and Arsenal was never going to compete for the title under him.
The funny thing is Arteta has already proved people like you wrong because he has already done better that what you expected him to do, but since you don’t want to admit that you were wrong and you underestimated him, you have shifted the goalposts and redefined the parameters.
I can guarantee that when he wins the league, whether it is this season or the next or whenever, people won’t accept that they were wrong about him. They will then redefine the parameters again and claim that he needs to win multiple times to prove that he is elite.
Arteta is a top manager and his critics and haters have been egged in the face and they don’t have the courage to admit that they were wrong. Beautiful.
