By his own admission it took Mikel Arteta some time to make friends with the face that stared back at him as he raked over last season’s title race. The first few weeks of summer were a period of intense self-scrutiny and, ever the perfectionist, he required complete certainty that he liked what he saw.
“The first thing you have to do is look in the mirror and understand: ‘OK, is there something you should have done better, done differently?’ And if that’s the case learn from it,” he said. “And then judge yourself: are you the right person to drive the club, the team, forward in the way you want and do you have that energy and belief that you want to do it?”
They sound extraordinary questions for a manager on such an indubitable upward curve to pose. But they speak of the pressure Arteta feels to correct Arsenal’s barren run, which will amount to two decades without achieving domestic supremacy if they cannot top the pile this time. It took “a big reflection”, he said, before he settled upon the definitive “yes”. He feels ready to go again and the clearest image yet of his tweaked lineup will be visible at Wembley on Sunday.
No one would dream of reading much into the outcome of a Community Shield: only one of the showpiece’s past 12 winners has become champions nine months later. As framings for the new season go, though, this particular occasion feels apt. It continues the face-off that dominated 2022-23 and it is hardly bad territory for Arsenal to find themselves nestled in. The stage might traditionally be intended for a showdown between title holders and FA Cup winners but this year’s edition immediately marks two teams out as the sides to beat.
Arteta tends to be fastidiously set on removing the sting from games against fellow contenders; he detests being inserted into the story and has a near-pathological fear of making headlines. It was telling, then, that he briefly allowed his guard to slip when asked whether there was a dash of added motivation this time around. City have won nine of 10 meetings against an Arteta side, only losing the first of them, in the 2020 FA Cup semi-final, and that stings even before the Pep Guardiola factor is inserted.
“Yes, time to do it,” he exclaimed. So eyes will naturally be drawn to whether Arsenal can. Until Gabriel Jesus sustained a knee injury that will rule him out for several weeks this had been the most serene of buildups, £200m of business being completed while some of their peers were still jotting down transfer priorities. Arsenal’s clarity is enviable and their vision may become even more defined if they can lay down an early marker.
Perhaps a win would engender the major intangible Arteta felt Arsenal lacked during the spring, when legs came to appear heavy and defensive injuries led to previously unthinkable lapses. Momentum, he believes, simply eluded them at the death. “In the key moments, when it should have gone one way it didn’t go for us,” he said. “It was one, two, three and then we lost momentum. [City] took momentum. That shifted very much. Then you are talking about a team that has the capacity to win 25 games in a row, so the last thing they need is momentum and belief. We gave them that.”
There are no points on offer this weekend but striking even the smallest of blows at this early stage could hardly be a negative. Arteta rejected the notion that City are reaching the end of a cycle, the exits of Ilkay Gündogan and Riyad Mahrez seemingly compromising Guardiola’s hand while other key players grow older, by pointing out he has heard that one plenty of times before.
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He knows, too, that Arsenal are amid a recalibration of their own. Few who know Declan Rice’s character would doubt that he can handle a £105m price tag but the loss of Granit Xhaka, in particular the version that improved dramatically over the past two years, demands a restructuring in the engine room. Rice may be afforded more opportunities to bomb forward than in a largely cautious West Ham side but there is no guarantee that such a fundamental area of the team will click instantly.
The drive Rice brings is designed to give Arsenal the steel and dynamism they ultimately lacked. Kai Havertz, signed as an attacking midfielder, is expected to bring cutting edge where Xhaka’s radar sometimes wavered. “It was in our hands,” Arteta noted of their April tailspin. “There were key moments when we weren’t ruthless or clinical enough, we didn’t have the luck, or we made certain mistakes.”
Those factors must all be corrected if a five-point gap to City can be overhauled this time around and, indeed, if reawakened rivals are to be kept at bay. Showing a Wembley crowd that lessons have been learned may intensify the fire in a few sets of eyes around north London. “We all need that to be better; that moment when you feel ‘I failed’ or ‘I didn’t achieve what I wanted’,” Arteta said. “You still have the hunger and desire to go again.” Arsenal feel ready for their next step.
