Mikel Arteta: Aston La Vista To The Title?

[drippin]

What has Jesus done this season to increase his value by 30m? The list of players’ value is wrong which was the original point.

The moment he signed the contract at Arsenal, his value jumped up a lot.

You can look at the Richarlison price, which was 15 million pounds more than Jesus. He had 2 years left while Jesus had 1 year left.

How much do you think Jesus is worth after his performances this season, with 4 years in contract?

Besides, the difference isn't 30 million like you say, because he cost 45 million pounds and that number is 75 million euros, not pounds.

 

[grange]

Ok, I don't believe he has increased his value with his play on the pitch by even 20m so the point remains. If the length of contract is what you have to hang your hat on then that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the player.

Stupid clubs spending stupid money aren't good examples here. They are stocked full of stupid purchases now. Chelsea and United aren't going to buy him. He's not a prolific scorer so I'm not sure if Barca, PSG, or Real would be that interested in him at that price.

 

[CaseUteinberger]

I get tears in my eyes watching this. We can think what we want about Pep and Arteta, but Mikel is an Arsenal man! Think he will stay on for a good while. He has something to prove and accomplish!


PS. That handshake at the end is class!

 

[El Duderino]

Ok, I don't believe he has increased his value with his play on the pitch by even 20m so the point remains. If the length of contract is what you have to hang your hat on then that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the player.

Stupid clubs spending stupid money aren't good examples here. They are stocked full of stupid purchases now. Chelsea and United aren't going to buy him. He's not a prolific scorer so I'm not sure if Barca, PSG, or Real would be that interested in him at that price.

You're doing that @Trilly thing where you're trying to bring on what you think is valid/mild critiscm of a player everyone likes, but people are missing your overall point because they think you hate the player's gut.

Might as well change your forum tag to "Hates Jesus" right now and save you the trouble.

 

[grange]

You're doing that @Trilly thing where you're trying to bring on what you think is valid/mild critiscm of a player everyone likes, but people are missing your overall point because they think you hate the player's gut.

Might as well change your forum tag to "Hates Jesus" right now and save you the trouble.

I was thinking that as well that I should've preempted it all with that I love his dribbling in the final 3rd, his passing for the most part, and his relentless pressing which is something we do need. Lol

 

[drippin]

Ok, I don't believe he has increased his value with his play on the pitch by even 20m so the point remains. If the length of contract is what you have to hang your hat on then that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the player.

Stupid clubs spending stupid money aren't good examples here. They are stocked full of stupid purchases now. Chelsea and United aren't going to buy him. He's not a prolific scorer so I'm not sure if Barca, PSG, or Real would be that interested in him at that price.

Richarlison is a perfect example of the going rate for such a player with 2 years left on the contract. Very similar position, age, nationality and EPL proven.

So Jesus is clearly worth 75 million euros or more now.

No one is buying him because Arsenal won't sell him and he wants to be at Arsenal. 4 years in contract means that he will be here at least 2 more years unless someone pays much much more than 75 million.

 

[Tomb Bombadil]

Loves Leno, Bellerin, Holding, Elneny, Ceballos and Willian.

Hates Martinez, AMN, Saliba, Guendouzi, Willock and Martinelli.

He wants yes men, a squad full of them. He expects Pep esque respect without earning it. He doesn’t care about quality, he wants to be THE alpha, above anything else. I bet you he’s got Edu on a leash.

How we were all a bit more or less wrong. But I just read an article about Nick Chater that our brain makes up anything anyway.

Sorry for quoting this specific post.

 

[Goonerist]

What has Jesus done this season to increase his value by 30m? The list of players’ value is wrong which was the original point.

That’s not the point I was making.
My point was that football transfers nowadays have got nothing to do with “What has so and so done this season to warrant his value”..
Transfers are now about what a type of player a manager prefers for their system and the owners going for thaf player. It’s not about rationality anymore, thosw days ended during the Wenger era.
For example:
What did Grealish do to move from a £60 million player to a £100 million in a single season?

What did Isak do from this season for Newcastle to be willing to pay £65 million for him? He had been worse this season as compared to last season. But that did not stop Howe from being willing to pay.

What exactly did RICHARLISON do to be a £60 million last season?

Lets talk about Mudryk. What exactly changed this season for his price to go from £38 million last summer and November to £80 million in January this year?

What has Caicedo done this season to go from a £40 million type of player to £80 million and Brighton not even willing to sell for that amount.

Look at Perro at Spuds, average and done fck all this season but because he is RWB that Conte wants he made Spuds buy him for £45 million.

Again, football transfers are not rational. They are all about what the buyer is willing to pay. If that is the type of player that a manager believes fits in his system then it does not matter about that player has done lately.

If we put Jesus up for sale in the summer, don’t you think PSG, Newcastle, Chelsea, Man United etc would be ready to pay £65-£70 million for him?

 

[2Smokeyy]

How we were all a bit more or less wrong. But I just read an article about Nick Chater that our brain makes up anything anyway.

Sorry for quoting this specific post.

That post you quoted is from 30th April 2021 whereby we were sitting in mid table mediocrity below scrubs like Leeds, Everton etc.



Maaaaaaan this international break is really taking a toll on some.

 

[Riou]

 

[Riou]

Conte got sacked on Arteta's birthday

 

[A_G]

Spoiler: PART 1

“What was I thinking?,” Leon Osman asks himself, pausing for a few seconds. The former Everton midfielder is reflecting on his first impression of his team-mate Mikel Arteta after the Spaniard signed on deadline day in the January 2005 transfer window.

“We had just lost Thomas Gravesen, our main creator, to Real Madrid. My first thought was that he (Arteta) looks as slight as me — oh, and, ‘How the hell are we going to replace Thomas?’

“But Mikel took his place and hardly missed a beat. He arrived a good player and left as a fantastic player.”

Gravesen, who had been at Everton since 2000, left before his contract was going to expire that summer. Manager David Moyes, desperate to maintain his side’s push for Champions Leaguefootball, turned to the 22-year-old Real Sociedadmidfielder Arteta.

By signing for Real Sociedad the previous summer after two years at Rangers, Arteta had returned home to the Basque Country. He was met by a familiar face in manager Jose Mari Amorrortu, who had been at local rivals Athletic Bilbao when Arteta had a trial there as a teenager, but after starting the first three games of the season he was restricted to 11 substitute appearances.

Moyes’ fellow Scot and assistant manager Alan Irvine knew Arteta from his time in Glasgow and championed a loan deal until the end of the season.

“David always had the final decision but I was very keen on bringing in the likes of Mikel, Steven Pienaar and Leighton Baines,” Irvine tells The Athletic.

“None of them were blessed physically but I love clever players who are intelligent and know what’s happening before the ball comes. David didn’t want too many small players in the team but me and coach Jimmy (Lumsden) pushed for them, probably because we were small, technical players ourselves.”

When Moyes had taken over in March 2002, Everton were in danger of relegation from the top flight for the first time since the 1950s. He managed to steer the club to safety but, as his team moved up the table in subsequent seasons, the make-up of the side began to evolve.

The squad Arteta joined had 17 English native speakers, with 15 of those British or Irish. It was not like the cosmopolitan squads you see at every club in the Premier League now.

“The challenge was that we had a very hard-working group of players, so we were trying to add quality while not losing the team ethic. That’s why Mikel played off the right side to start with. He probably needed that period of time before moving into the chaos,” says Irvine.

Osman played over 100 games in midfield with Arteta and in his first couple of years the Spaniard played a more advanced role in midfield and tailored his natural game to fit into the more direct style Everton used at the time.

“Even Leighton (Baines, a future England international) took a while to get into the team, as we were slight and needed to physically get used to the role demanded of us. Once we showed David (Moyes) that we could do that, we would then play football,” says Osman.

“At that point, Mikel needed to be as close to the opposition goal as possible (due to his impressive) through balls and range of passing, but people forget his crossing was fantastic.

“We generally played with a striker who wanted crosses and a Tim Cahill or, in later years, Marouane Fellaini who wanted to get in the box late (from midfield), so it actually suited him.”

Arteta was recovering from an injury when he joined but he became a regular from March until the end of the season as Everton broke the glass ceiling to record their first top-four finish in the Premier League era. He made enough of an impression for the loan to be made permanent that summer for £2.8million ($3.4m).

Victor Anichebe was a 17-year-old striker training with the first team at that point.

“I felt Mikel carried himself a little differently. Footballers can be rugged but he was always a little calmer and thought about things more.”

That was off the pitch but it was the same on the pitch too, most memorably for Anichebe in a UEFA Cup group-stage victory away to Nuremberg in November 2007. Everton were drawing 0-0 with the Germans with 15 minutes to go and as Anichebe readied himself to come on, Arteta had a message for him.

“He came up to me to tell me where he wanted me to stand and where he was going to play it every time he got the ball,” Anichebe says.

“He wanted to play it to the right side, so I could get my body in and roll the defender. The first time he did it, I turned him and we won a penalty. He always understood how I wanted the ball and when I went to West Brom (in 2013) that was the big difference I noticed.

“People will think that’s obvious but a lot of players don’t think about those small details in the heat of the moment.”

Irvine describes Arteta as “low maintenance” but that he also possessed the seeds of an analytical brain that would take him to the elite of the coaching world:

“I loved having conversations with Mikel. It would often start with, ‘Did you see the game last night?’, which might sound an obvious question to get a yes to from a footballer but the number of players who don’t watch any games is astonishing.

“They were conversations, not a monologue of me saying this happened and that happened and him nodding. It would be two-way, where he would say, ‘I really liked this, did you see how this happened?’. It was never just about the goals, it was always wider than that.”

In his first full season, Arteta was voted Everton’s player of the year. He had won over his team-mates and become a bigger presence in the dressing room compared to the quiet and unassuming character who entered it 16 months earlier, which Anichebe attributes to his friendship with Cahill, who was best man at Arteta’s wedding, and vice versa.

While Anichebe found their closeness surprising on paper, he believes the Australian’s more extroverted nature helped bring out more of Arteta’s personality.

“He really changed over time. He always had a temper, as he would complain to the refs and used to dive a lot at the start in training to try and win, but that soon stopped.

“One day before a Merseyside derby, he got into a bit of a fight with (Eveerton full-back) Tony Hibbert. Hibbo is from Liverpool so it was a big game and we were in Europe and hadn’t beaten Liverpool much. Mikel wouldn’t take training lightly but that day he wasn’t training to the best of his ability and Hibbo said something like, ‘We’ve got a ****ing game tomorrow, this means so much to the fans’, and Mikel told him to do one.

“They ended up being pulled apart but there was just passion on both sides as Mikel really bought into the rivalry. We say he became Scouse in the end as he would say ‘****ing hell, man’ all the time.”

Osman recalls someone who hated losing and struggled to get over it, while ex-Everton striker James Beattie says Arteta was able to combine a coolness on the ball with fire in his belly that could subtly see him leave one on an opponent.

Irvine left to take his first managerial post at Preston North End in November 2007, but within that two and a half years he had observed Arteta’s stature within the squad grow.

“He became someone a lot of the foreign lads would gravitate towards. I remember once on the training pitch he spoke in five languages in the same conversation — English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French.

“It was a smaller group of foreign lads to start with but it gradually changed and he was switching from one to the other. He became the hub of the team as his ability had already won over the British lads.”

Anichebe even recalls Arteta being a tour guide for new signings in later years, when he had become vice-captain:

“The manager always asked Mikel to help them embed into the team and take them out for the afternoon. I was always around the foreign-speaking guys so I saw that and he even translated for them when they first came.

“(Argentinian forward) Denis Stracqualursi didn’t speak any English and during team talks and the video before the game he (Arteta) would be explaining what had been said.

“He became a leader and someone we all looked up to. Above all, if you had the ball, you just gave it to Mikel — it made life a lot easier.”

That applied to set pieces too. Moyes placed a huge emphasis on them and would regularly have the players spend an extra hour working on routines which, given Arteta took free kicks and corners from every angle, meant a lot of running and swinging of his right leg.

 

[A_G]

Spoiler: PART 2

It paid off in February 2006, though, when Beattie scored the winner against Blackburn Rovers from an idea created during the week — and the trigger was the Spaniard’s eyebrows.

“It was about diverting the attention from me and switching the centre-half off,” Beattie explains to The Athletic.

“I was crouched over, looking at Mikel standing over the ball. He only needed one step to put it on a plate so, as soon as he lifted his eyebrows, I sprung up and he crossed it straight onto my head to score.

“Technically, he was unreal. He had great footwork, could carry the ball, had great balance and could play off either foot. He brought creativity to a workmanlike team.

“He was very, very serious about his football and could seem quiet if you weren’t as close to him, but he had a side to him that he could be quite funny in a dry way. Some footballers are intelligent but not intelligent on the pitch, and some are daft as a brush but very smart footballers. Mikel was both (intelligent on and off the pitch).”

Arteta was Everton’s creator until he suffered a ruptured ACL knee ligament against Newcastle United in February 2009. Anichebe also suffered a severe knee injury and it meant the Nigerian striker got to know Arteta in more depth.

“We got injured in the same game, so we were quite close as we were rehabbing together,” Anichebe says.

“I went to America, as my head was gone for a while. He was always telling me to stay positive and I could see he was doing all the right things.”

Arteta had to adapt his game when he returned by becoming a player who pulled the strings from deep. He didn’t do his work in the final third as often as before but anecdotally that injury also seemed to affect his ability to whip his corner deliveries on top of the goalkeeper — a skill he had previously mastered.

Over the course of his six and a half seasons at Goodison Park, Arteta was part of a team that recorded Premier League finishes of fourth, 11th, sixth, fifth, fifth, eighth and seventh. His ability to control midfield helped Everton change as a team and come the summer of 2011, Arsène Wenger had identified him as the mature head he needed at Arsenal and signed Arteta for £10million ($12.2m).

Everton lost a fan favourite and Osman lost someone he says saw the game quicker than anyone else he played with.

“Everyone is aware that people come and go in football, so no one was surprised and we weren’t upset for Mikel as it was a move he had earned,” says Osman. “But it left a big hole in our squad, as we ended up with Phil Neville and Johnny Heitinga playing midfield for a while. It left a hole in the dressing room, too.”

Arteta worked with Steve Round, his current assistant at Arsenal, for three years at Everton but none of his team-mates saw a relationship that suggested they were destined to be re-united, even if Round was the technical coach who worked on attacking patterns of play compared to Moyes’ organisational focus.

During his time at Everton, Arteta would have picked up on just how much emphasis Moyes placed on the opposition and the subsequent tactical tweaks he would make. It was the opposite end of the managerial spectrum to Wenger, who preferred to focus on his own side’s style irrespective of the opposition’s threats.

There is a niche point that Osman picks up on too when he watches Arteta’s teams. He says: “When they score, the whole team run back to the halfway line — apart from the striker, who walks. But then as soon as he hits the halfway line and the whistle goes, he sprints to chase the ball again,” he says.

Perhaps this was one of the details Arteta took down as he began to think about the game on a deeper level and of coaching as a future career.

One thing not up for debate, however, is that Everton is the place where he first experienced a change to his position, Premier League dressing-room culture and where he began developing as a leader.

 

[El Duderino]

Spoiler: PART 1

“What was I thinking?,” Leon Osman asks himself, pausing for a few seconds. The former Everton midfielder is reflecting on his first impression of his team-mate Mikel Arteta after the Spaniard signed on deadline day in the January 2005 transfer window.

“We had just lost Thomas Gravesen, our main creator, to Real Madrid. My first thought was that he (Arteta) looks as slight as me — oh, and, ‘How the hell are we going to replace Thomas?’

“But Mikel took his place and hardly missed a beat. He arrived a good player and left as a fantastic player.”

Gravesen, who had been at Everton since 2000, left before his contract was going to expire that summer. Manager David Moyes, desperate to maintain his side’s push for Champions Leaguefootball, turned to the 22-year-old Real Sociedadmidfielder Arteta.

By signing for Real Sociedad the previous summer after two years at Rangers, Arteta had returned home to the Basque Country. He was met by a familiar face in manager Jose Mari Amorrortu, who had been at local rivals Athletic Bilbao when Arteta had a trial there as a teenager, but after starting the first three games of the season he was restricted to 11 substitute appearances.

Moyes’ fellow Scot and assistant manager Alan Irvine knew Arteta from his time in Glasgow and championed a loan deal until the end of the season.

“David always had the final decision but I was very keen on bringing in the likes of Mikel, Steven Pienaar and Leighton Baines,” Irvine tells The Athletic.

“None of them were blessed physically but I love clever players who are intelligent and know what’s happening before the ball comes. David didn’t want too many small players in the team but me and coach Jimmy (Lumsden) pushed for them, probably because we were small, technical players ourselves.”

When Moyes had taken over in March 2002, Everton were in danger of relegation from the top flight for the first time since the 1950s. He managed to steer the club to safety but, as his team moved up the table in subsequent seasons, the make-up of the side began to evolve.

The squad Arteta joined had 17 English native speakers, with 15 of those British or Irish. It was not like the cosmopolitan squads you see at every club in the Premier League now.

“The challenge was that we had a very hard-working group of players, so we were trying to add quality while not losing the team ethic. That’s why Mikel played off the right side to start with. He probably needed that period of time before moving into the chaos,” says Irvine.

Osman played over 100 games in midfield with Arteta and in his first couple of years the Spaniard played a more advanced role in midfield and tailored his natural game to fit into the more direct style Everton used at the time.

“Even Leighton (Baines, a future England international) took a while to get into the team, as we were slight and needed to physically get used to the role demanded of us. Once we showed David (Moyes) that we could do that, we would then play football,” says Osman.

“At that point, Mikel needed to be as close to the opposition goal as possible (due to his impressive) through balls and range of passing, but people forget his crossing was fantastic.

“We generally played with a striker who wanted crosses and a Tim Cahill or, in later years, Marouane Fellaini who wanted to get in the box late (from midfield), so it actually suited him.”

Arteta was recovering from an injury when he joined but he became a regular from March until the end of the season as Everton broke the glass ceiling to record their first top-four finish in the Premier League era. He made enough of an impression for the loan to be made permanent that summer for £2.8million ($3.4m).

Victor Anichebe was a 17-year-old striker training with the first team at that point.

“I felt Mikel carried himself a little differently. Footballers can be rugged but he was always a little calmer and thought about things more.”

That was off the pitch but it was the same on the pitch too, most memorably for Anichebe in a UEFA Cup group-stage victory away to Nuremberg in November 2007. Everton were drawing 0-0 with the Germans with 15 minutes to go and as Anichebe readied himself to come on, Arteta had a message for him.

“He came up to me to tell me where he wanted me to stand and where he was going to play it every time he got the ball,” Anichebe says.

“He wanted to play it to the right side, so I could get my body in and roll the defender. The first time he did it, I turned him and we won a penalty. He always understood how I wanted the ball and when I went to West Brom (in 2013) that was the big difference I noticed.

“People will think that’s obvious but a lot of players don’t think about those small details in the heat of the moment.”

Irvine describes Arteta as “low maintenance” but that he also possessed the seeds of an analytical brain that would take him to the elite of the coaching world:

“I loved having conversations with Mikel. It would often start with, ‘Did you see the game last night?’, which might sound an obvious question to get a yes to from a footballer but the number of players who don’t watch any games is astonishing.

“They were conversations, not a monologue of me saying this happened and that happened and him nodding. It would be two-way, where he would say, ‘I really liked this, did you see how this happened?’. It was never just about the goals, it was always wider than that.”

In his first full season, Arteta was voted Everton’s player of the year. He had won over his team-mates and become a bigger presence in the dressing room compared to the quiet and unassuming character who entered it 16 months earlier, which Anichebe attributes to his friendship with Cahill, who was best man at Arteta’s wedding, and vice versa.

While Anichebe found their closeness surprising on paper, he believes the Australian’s more extroverted nature helped bring out more of Arteta’s personality.

“He really changed over time. He always had a temper, as he would complain to the refs and used to dive a lot at the start in training to try and win, but that soon stopped.

“One day before a Merseyside derby, he got into a bit of a fight with (Eveerton full-back) Tony Hibbert. Hibbo is from Liverpool so it was a big game and we were in Europe and hadn’t beaten Liverpool much. Mikel wouldn’t take training lightly but that day he wasn’t training to the best of his ability and Hibbo said something like, ‘We’ve got a ****ing game tomorrow, this means so much to the fans’, and Mikel told him to do one.

“They ended up being pulled apart but there was just passion on both sides as Mikel really bought into the rivalry. We say he became Scouse in the end as he would say ‘****ing hell, man’ all the time.”

Osman recalls someone who hated losing and struggled to get over it, while ex-Everton striker James Beattie says Arteta was able to combine a coolness on the ball with fire in his belly that could subtly see him leave one on an opponent.

Irvine left to take his first managerial post at Preston North End in November 2007, but within that two and a half years he had observed Arteta’s stature within the squad grow.

“He became someone a lot of the foreign lads would gravitate towards. I remember once on the training pitch he spoke in five languages in the same conversation — English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French.

“It was a smaller group of foreign lads to start with but it gradually changed and he was switching from one to the other. He became the hub of the team as his ability had already won over the British lads.”

Anichebe even recalls Arteta being a tour guide for new signings in later years, when he had become vice-captain:

“The manager always asked Mikel to help them embed into the team and take them out for the afternoon. I was always around the foreign-speaking guys so I saw that and he even translated for them when they first came.

“(Argentinian forward) Denis Stracqualursi didn’t speak any English and during team talks and the video before the game he (Arteta) would be explaining what had been said.

“He became a leader and someone we all looked up to. Above all, if you had the ball, you just gave it to Mikel — it made life a lot easier.”

That applied to set pieces too. Moyes placed a huge emphasis on them and would regularly have the players spend an extra hour working on routines which, given Arteta took free kicks and corners from every angle, meant a lot of running and swinging of his right leg.

Moyes done it again, I'm afraid.

 

[Goonerist]

To any ConteSexuals still left here, our hearts and prayers are with you at this very difficult moment.

The Tuchelsexuals if there are any left in here can console you as they went through the same situation very earlier on. They can relate.

Stay strong guys..

 

[CaseUteinberger]

When you know your coach is on the brink of madness. Better to try to score the fogging winner...

 

[Riou]

Spoiler: PART 1

“What was I thinking?,” Leon Osman asks himself, pausing for a few seconds. The former Everton midfielder is reflecting on his first impression of his team-mate Mikel Arteta after the Spaniard signed on deadline day in the January 2005 transfer window.

“We had just lost Thomas Gravesen, our main creator, to Real Madrid. My first thought was that he (Arteta) looks as slight as me — oh, and, ‘How the hell are we going to replace Thomas?’

“But Mikel took his place and hardly missed a beat. He arrived a good player and left as a fantastic player.”

Gravesen, who had been at Everton since 2000, left before his contract was going to expire that summer. Manager David Moyes, desperate to maintain his side’s push for Champions Leaguefootball, turned to the 22-year-old Real Sociedadmidfielder Arteta.

By signing for Real Sociedad the previous summer after two years at Rangers, Arteta had returned home to the Basque Country. He was met by a familiar face in manager Jose Mari Amorrortu, who had been at local rivals Athletic Bilbao when Arteta had a trial there as a teenager, but after starting the first three games of the season he was restricted to 11 substitute appearances.

Moyes’ fellow Scot and assistant manager Alan Irvine knew Arteta from his time in Glasgow and championed a loan deal until the end of the season.

“David always had the final decision but I was very keen on bringing in the likes of Mikel, Steven Pienaar and Leighton Baines,” Irvine tells The Athletic.

“None of them were blessed physically but I love clever players who are intelligent and know what’s happening before the ball comes. David didn’t want too many small players in the team but me and coach Jimmy (Lumsden) pushed for them, probably because we were small, technical players ourselves.”

When Moyes had taken over in March 2002, Everton were in danger of relegation from the top flight for the first time since the 1950s. He managed to steer the club to safety but, as his team moved up the table in subsequent seasons, the make-up of the side began to evolve.

The squad Arteta joined had 17 English native speakers, with 15 of those British or Irish. It was not like the cosmopolitan squads you see at every club in the Premier League now.

“The challenge was that we had a very hard-working group of players, so we were trying to add quality while not losing the team ethic. That’s why Mikel played off the right side to start with. He probably needed that period of time before moving into the chaos,” says Irvine.

Osman played over 100 games in midfield with Arteta and in his first couple of years the Spaniard played a more advanced role in midfield and tailored his natural game to fit into the more direct style Everton used at the time.

“Even Leighton (Baines, a future England international) took a while to get into the team, as we were slight and needed to physically get used to the role demanded of us. Once we showed David (Moyes) that we could do that, we would then play football,” says Osman.

“At that point, Mikel needed to be as close to the opposition goal as possible (due to his impressive) through balls and range of passing, but people forget his crossing was fantastic.

“We generally played with a striker who wanted crosses and a Tim Cahill or, in later years, Marouane Fellaini who wanted to get in the box late (from midfield), so it actually suited him.”

Arteta was recovering from an injury when he joined but he became a regular from March until the end of the season as Everton broke the glass ceiling to record their first top-four finish in the Premier League era. He made enough of an impression for the loan to be made permanent that summer for £2.8million ($3.4m).

Victor Anichebe was a 17-year-old striker training with the first team at that point.

“I felt Mikel carried himself a little differently. Footballers can be rugged but he was always a little calmer and thought about things more.”

That was off the pitch but it was the same on the pitch too, most memorably for Anichebe in a UEFA Cup group-stage victory away to Nuremberg in November 2007. Everton were drawing 0-0 with the Germans with 15 minutes to go and as Anichebe readied himself to come on, Arteta had a message for him.

“He came up to me to tell me where he wanted me to stand and where he was going to play it every time he got the ball,” Anichebe says.

“He wanted to play it to the right side, so I could get my body in and roll the defender. The first time he did it, I turned him and we won a penalty. He always understood how I wanted the ball and when I went to West Brom (in 2013) that was the big difference I noticed.

“People will think that’s obvious but a lot of players don’t think about those small details in the heat of the moment.”

Irvine describes Arteta as “low maintenance” but that he also possessed the seeds of an analytical brain that would take him to the elite of the coaching world:

“I loved having conversations with Mikel. It would often start with, ‘Did you see the game last night?’, which might sound an obvious question to get a yes to from a footballer but the number of players who don’t watch any games is astonishing.

“They were conversations, not a monologue of me saying this happened and that happened and him nodding. It would be two-way, where he would say, ‘I really liked this, did you see how this happened?’. It was never just about the goals, it was always wider than that.”

In his first full season, Arteta was voted Everton’s player of the year. He had won over his team-mates and become a bigger presence in the dressing room compared to the quiet and unassuming character who entered it 16 months earlier, which Anichebe attributes to his friendship with Cahill, who was best man at Arteta’s wedding, and vice versa.

While Anichebe found their closeness surprising on paper, he believes the Australian’s more extroverted nature helped bring out more of Arteta’s personality.

“He really changed over time. He always had a temper, as he would complain to the refs and used to dive a lot at the start in training to try and win, but that soon stopped.

“One day before a Merseyside derby, he got into a bit of a fight with (Eveerton full-back) Tony Hibbert. Hibbo is from Liverpool so it was a big game and we were in Europe and hadn’t beaten Liverpool much. Mikel wouldn’t take training lightly but that day he wasn’t training to the best of his ability and Hibbo said something like, ‘We’ve got a ****ing game tomorrow, this means so much to the fans’, and Mikel told him to do one.

“They ended up being pulled apart but there was just passion on both sides as Mikel really bought into the rivalry. We say he became Scouse in the end as he would say ‘****ing hell, man’ all the time.”

Osman recalls someone who hated losing and struggled to get over it, while ex-Everton striker James Beattie says Arteta was able to combine a coolness on the ball with fire in his belly that could subtly see him leave one on an opponent.

Irvine left to take his first managerial post at Preston North End in November 2007, but within that two and a half years he had observed Arteta’s stature within the squad grow.

“He became someone a lot of the foreign lads would gravitate towards. I remember once on the training pitch he spoke in five languages in the same conversation — English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French.

“It was a smaller group of foreign lads to start with but it gradually changed and he was switching from one to the other. He became the hub of the team as his ability had already won over the British lads.”

Anichebe even recalls Arteta being a tour guide for new signings in later years, when he had become vice-captain:

“The manager always asked Mikel to help them embed into the team and take them out for the afternoon. I was always around the foreign-speaking guys so I saw that and he even translated for them when they first came.

“(Argentinian forward) Denis Stracqualursi didn’t speak any English and during team talks and the video before the game he (Arteta) would be explaining what had been said.

“He became a leader and someone we all looked up to. Above all, if you had the ball, you just gave it to Mikel — it made life a lot easier.”

That applied to set pieces too. Moyes placed a huge emphasis on them and would regularly have the players spend an extra hour working on routines which, given Arteta took free kicks and corners from every angle, meant a lot of running and swinging of his right leg.

No wonder @Trilly hates Arteta.

Mikel once told Tony Hibbert (Trill's childhood hero) to **** off, no way was he ever forgiving our manager for that!

 

[sergio_giorgini]

Decent video detailing the work Teta has done at the club the past 3 years.

 

[SuperGoon]

When you know your coach is on the brink of madness. Better to try to score the fogging winner...

My voice is sore just listening to that.

 

[BergMan]

We’ve been hearing about how much Arteta loves Arsenal (regarding the time where he was Pep’s assistant). What I’d like to know is where does Arteta’s love for Arsenal come from?
He had a very good spell here as a player and won 2 fa cups but he wasn’t a fan favourite, fans weren’t singing his name at the time. Everton fans showed him more respect as a player.
Is it the the way he was treated by the staff behind the scenes that he admires greatly etc?