Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has played down the significance of his role being changed from head coach to manager in his first year at the London club.
The Premier League have seen some huge changes in the past few days with Chelsea showing Enzo Maresca the exit on New Year’s Day while Amorim was sacked by Manchester United four days later.
Both managers were sacked by their clubs after falling out with the board, although both club denied a struggle behind the scenes was the reason.
While Maresca and Amorim failed to iron things out with the board, Arteta was appointed Arsenal “head coach” when he arrived in December 2019, but within nine months was formally promoted to the role of “manager” instead.
Ruben Amorim has been sacked as Manchester United manager. (Photo by Neal Simpson/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
Sharing his take on the status quo, Arteta said the change didn’t matter that much to him, ultimately suggesting that relationships between the various people involved are what makes a team successful or not.
“It was different at the time when they proposed to change the role and what they thought about in the areas that I could help probably more than they expected at the beginning,” he told a press conference on Wednesday, before the Gunners face Liverpool this week.
“At the end it’s about the relationships and the people, because we have formed great teams with very different qualities and some that have been more on certain things and when there is somebody that is much better than me on that, I let them do it.
“For me the title doesn’t really reflect the way we operate daily.
“I think it’s more important the people and the morale to really understand that let’s give each other the things that we can master and make us much better and the rest we just support that idea.”
Mikel Arteta manager / head coach of Arsenal during a Premier League match. (Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Asked if his confidence grew from being promoted to manager from head coach, Arteta replied that it did. But it wasn’t something he’d asked the club to do.
“Yes, [it gave a confidence boost], because I didn’t demand it,” he explained.
“I didn’t ask for it, and they believed it was the right thing to do. But again since then because we have to work with different people with the changes that we have in recent years, I think when you have a leader which is ownership, in this case it’s Stan [Kroenke] and Josh [Kroenke], and Josh is very close to that with very clear alignment to all of us what he wants to do, how he wants to achieve it and creates that space for everybody. I think it’s very easy to work like this.”
