Arsenal FC has found a successor for Unai Emery: The Premier League club has presented Mikel Arteta as a new coach. Arteta has worked for the Gunners for years as a professional, most recently as assistant coach of the top club and league rival Manchester City.
It had emerged in the past few days that Arteta would become the new Arsenal coach. The Athletic wrote on Thursday that the Spaniard had already given his farewell speech in Manchester.
From an Arsenal perspective, the commitment is a risk. The 37-year-old has no experience as head coach, since the 2016/2017 season he was the assistant of Coach Pep Guardiola. The fact that he knows Arsenal FC and is highly regarded in the club speaks for Arteta. From 2011 to 2016 he played for the Gunners and was captain at times.
Arteta faces no easy task. In the table, the ambitious club is currently in a disappointing tenth place, only five wins from the first 17 league games. The gap to fourth place, which entitles to participate in the Champions League, is seven points. Arsenal is threatening to miss the most important club competition for the fourth time in a row.
At the end of November, Arsenal parted ways with coach Unai Emery, who inherited club legend Arsène Wenger in the summer of 2018. The change had no positive effect: Even under interim coach Fredrik Ljungberg, the team won only one of five competitive games.
