Arteta joins Arsenal’s all-time managerial greats | Stats | News

After guiding us to the 2025/26 Premier League title, Mikel Arteta has cemented his place in our history as one of the greatest managers of all time.

Having overseen a huge turnaround in our fortunes since taking charge in December 2019, our former captain has become the first former Arsenal player to lead us to a top-flight championship as a manager, ending our 22-year wait.

Since then, Mikel has never finished lower than the previous campaign during his six-and-a-half-year tenure in north London. Guiding us to eighth in his first few months in the hot seat – a season that ended with them lifting the FA Cup – he repeated that finish in 2020/21, then led us to fifth 12 months later.

He then brought us close to the Premier League title in each of the next three seasons, ultimately finishing all as runners-up, but now he has gone one step further and joins the illustrious list of Arsenal managers who have claimed at least one of our 14 league championships:

What makes Mikel’s achievement even more remarkable is that he was given the opportunity to manage us, even though he had never led a team before. The last manager to win an English league title in his first managerial job was Kenny Dalglish, who did so after inheriting the all-conquering Liverpool team of the 1980s. Mikel follows in the footsteps of other Gunners owners who have previously achieved the feat: Bertie Mee, Tom Whittaker, George Allison and Joe Shaw.

However, the Spaniard, aged 44 years and 54 days, is the youngest Gunners boss to win a league championship, narrowly beating George Graham, who was 124 days older when he led us to silverware in the famous 1988/89 campaign. Only Jose Mourinho has claimed a Premier League title at a younger age than our boss:

Mikel is only the second man to join the Premier League as a player and win it as a manager, after Roberto Mancini, who played for Leicester City in 2001 and led Manchester City to their first title after 11 years, while his mentor Pep Guardiola is the only other Spanish boss to win the title.

Guiding us to 25 wins this campaign, allowing our red ribbons to be tied to the trophy once again, while also taking us to the Champions League final where we would battle it out with Paris Saint-Germain for the honor of being Europe’s premier club, Mikel has another claim to being seen as one of our managerial greats.

He now tops a 60% win ratio from his 351 games in charge, a figure that sees him epitomize the head and shoulders of the likes of Wenger, Graham and Chapman:

Having ended our long wait for a league title, he can now achieve something no Arsenal manager has ever been able to do in our 139-year history – lead us to becoming champions of Europe.