Arsenal is falling short in their hunt for glory this season when they missed the Premier League title and reached two cups of semi-finals and now Mikel Arteta is ready to take a review about what went wrong
Mikel Arteta is ready to have candid conversations with his staff to ensure that Arsenal hit the ground next season. And as part of his honest and open review after the season, Arteta admitted that he will even look at himself and where he can improve.
Arsenal is intended for a third consecutive campaign as Premier League-Tweede for the last game of today in Southampton. Their Champions League run ended with semi-final Hartzeer and Arteta that it is now of vital importance that the Gunners continue to scale new heights to ensure that they can go better.
The Arsenal -Baas said: “I will do that (my own review) and I will not tell you what it is, but I will certainly do that and I hope they do the same.
“Our performance assessment actually goes every two months. We will have one next week with everyone who is involved. I will take it all and go to Spain, very quiet somewhere and start to go through with some ideas that I already have.
“It is about placing in a plan, in a vision that you can immediately, immediately and as quickly as possible, start to go into all the staff. Then everyone is aligned and ready when they walk through that door to follow the objectives we have.”
It is a summer that Arsenal cannot afford to get wrong with the planning for the next term that has already started among the new sports director Andrea Berta.
A new midfielder is planned with Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad (below) hoping to be the first arrival. But it is in an attack where at least one new striker remains a priority – and a debrief will not need that to know that.
Arteta said: “We all talk – above (in the boardroom), with the players and that is very transparent. That is the culture we have created. Do it, but do it in a respectful way.
“You give arguments, make sure that the context you say it is not for your own benefit, but for all. Then bring solutions, not the problem.
“If you bring a problem, bring solutions to that problem, because if not we just work in problems. Work that too, look for it and look for a solution immediately and we can share it and we can then make the right decision.”
The players of Arsenal – apart from next month's world cup qualifications – have the luxury of a rare summer free. It offers the chance for their walking wounds to get fit and shooting and for Arteta to charge his own batteries with a number of much needed R&R.
He added: “I enjoy it (the summer) because I know that I have given my best or very close to my best and I made every hour, efforts.
“I think we all deserve to charge, to think about other things, to give time to our families, our friends and to disconnect a little from this world. But there is always that connection constant because there are many things in a football club that you have to pay attention to.”