Arteta Is Now Focused On Signing Strong And Powerful Footballers – Carragher

Liverpool legend, Jamie Carragher has come out to reiterate that Mikel Arteta’s current style is more similar to Jose Mourinho than Pep Guardiola. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, the Arsenal team is clearly going from intricate players to strong and powerful footballers, and that is proof that Arteta is taking the Mourinho route with his signings.

Carragher added that height, strength and power were the key traits in Jose’s best teams, and this is what Mikel is trying to build with the Gunners right now.

His words, “When I talk about where this team is moving to, I don’t just pluck a statement out to try and create headlines – and it’s not a criticism, it’s an analysis that this team is going from intricate players to strong, powerful players. Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho are the two most dominant and successful managers of the last 15, 20 years, but they’re at both ends of the spectrum in terms of style of football. You look at the players brought in here. And it is moving towards Jose Mourinho. Now, again, it’s not a criticism of Arsenal or Mikel Arteta, it’s analysis. Because this is a guy who has won the Premier League three times. Arsenal haven’t won the Premier League for 20 years.

If you think of Jose Mourinho as a manager, if he took over my club, what would I think I was getting? My first thing would be thinking, my teams will be strong defensively. No doubt about that. Arsenal are strong defensively. Height and strength and power in my team. We’ve just highlighted that about the size and the power of this Arsenal team. That’s what you get from Mourinho. That’s what you get from Arsenal right now. Set piece reliance – at times – you think how powerful Drogba and John Terry were. That’s exactly the same with Arsenal. You rely on set pieces, especially this side. We just highlighted – at times, not all the time – Arsenal and the goalkeeper going direct. How often did we see Petr Cech go direct to Drogba, knock it down to Frank Lampard? The one thing that we should also say that Arsenal are not like Jose Mourinho, is winning trophies.

Now, if Jose Mourinho is watching tonight, and he’ll see that, he will say, ‘but I win trophies’. At the moment, Arsenal haven’t won a trophy. They have been fantastic, the football they play is superb and how they are going about it, but anyone who thinks I just plucked this Jose Mourinho thing out to sort of create a negativity around Arsenal, it’s analysing exactly where Arsenal are going.

And if people don’t agree with that, I don’t think you’re actually watching what’s going on with Arsenal right now. I think Mikel Arteta feels he doesn’t have the attacking quality that Manchester City have, so he’s going another way to try and win the league, which is being strong defensively and a more powerful team.”

WOW.

Arsenal Football Club is an English professional football club based in Holloway, North London. Arsenal compete in the Premier League, the top flight of English football.

The club has won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, two League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields, the Football League Centenary Trophy, one European Cup Winners’ Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.

After conducting an overhaul in the club’s operating model to coincide with Wenger’s departure, Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club’s new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club’s first ever ‘head coach’ and second manager from outside the United Kingdom.

In Emery’s first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was dismissed as manager and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach. On 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the league season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994–95, but beat Chelsea 2–1 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season. Arteta’s title was changed from head coach to manager.