Speaking on the Sky Sports Pitch to Post podcast, Alan Smith has slammed Arsenal’s decision to promote Mikel Arteta to manager rather than head coach.
The ex-Gunners striker was talking about the match-up between Carlo Ancelotti and Arteta ahead of their game against Everton this weekend, and he said that the decision to promote Arteta wasn’t the wisest.
“Arteta, as we know proved his credentials at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, but being a manager is much different, which he is now, he went in as the coach and now he’s the manager, which makes a difference, and maybe not the wisest move by Arsenal that,” Smith said.
“But yeah he’s had to learn on his feet and he’s encountered a lot of problems as we know.”
As an outsider looking in, you’d have to say that it looks as though Smith was right.
In Arteta’s last season when he was a head coach, the Gunners won the FA Cup and things were looking up for them, but here we are just six months down the line and they look more like relegation candidates than silverware challengers.
Ray Parlour has even said that Arsenal could get relegated, so that just shows you how poor they’ve been as of late.
Perhaps Arteta doesn’t quite have time to fulfil all of the duties of a manager and it’s taken away from the coaching aspect of his job, but it certainly seems as though something has changed, and perhaps this is it.
Either way, the problems at Arsenal are running deep at the moment and this change doesn’t look as though it’s helped improve things at the Emirates, at least not yet anyway.
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