Mikel Arteta turns 42 today, celebrating his fifth birthday since being appointed head coach of Arsenal at the end of 2019.
The Spaniard has taken the Gunners from 11th in the Premier League table when he took over to back-to-back title challenges, an FA Cup trophy, two Community Shield victories and a quarter-final of the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 14 years.
He remains one of the youngest managers in the league with only Vincent Kompany (37) Gary O’Neil (40) Rob Edwards (41) and Andoni Iraola (41) younger than him.
Despite that, only Thomas Frank, Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have been at their respective clubs longer than him.
He has built up a wealth of experience in an incredibly short amount of time with the club and has almost used his own situation as a template to build his squad.
Retiring from playing with Arsenal in 2016, he joined Pep Guardiola’s coaching staff and would go on to learn and develop his knowledge of this side of the game whilst winning the Premier League twice, an FA Cup and two League Cups as part of his compatriot’s team.
Moving to Arsenal, a cornerstone of his squad-building method was to go for young players who already had huge amounts of experience.
He made Martin Odegaard his captain, a player who joined Real Madrid at 16 and had been playing at the elite senior level for the past half-decade with a weight of expectation on his shoulders.
He was patient with William Saliba, sending the Frenchman out on two loan moves back to France to build up the requisite level of knowledge before being thrust into the first team at the start of last season.
Gabriel Magalhaes has become a key figure for the Brazilian national side and was Arteta’s first major investment as manager.
He signed Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus from former club City, with a wealth of trophies and experience their input helped the club qualify for the Champions League and challenge their old team for the title – hoping to go one step further this season.
Leandro Trossard and Jorginho arrived in January of last year as two seasoned Premier League veterans with the latter winning the Champions League with Chelsea and the European Championship with Italy.
Then, last summer, Declan Rice who had more than 200 Premier League appearances with West Ham United and 40 caps for England arrived for a huge fee.
Kai Havertz, scorer of the winning goal in Chelsea’s Champions League final victory and three years of Premier League experience joined along with David Raya, another English football veteran.
It is obvious from how the squad has transformed under Arteta that despite being a relatively young squad, the individuals who make up the overall team contain characteristics synonymous with a side wanting to win at the highest level.
Combine that with the Gunners manager’s style, philosophy and principles and it should be little surprise how this team has grown under his tutelage.
