The Premier League NEEDS Mikel Arteta to be its saviour... he is the only one capable of taking down the Man City machine, writes IAN HERBERT

Even as Mikel Arteta was interviewed on the Emirates pitch, moments after the season’s end on Sunday, there was evidence of the ego which makes him the winner of very few popularity contests.

He became the director and curator of that moment, taking over the microphone to relate to supporters that his way had been the right way all along, even if it had taken them time to appreciate that. ‘You started to believe,’ he told them. ‘You started to understand what we had to do.’

Arteta has driven through unpopular changes at Arsenal – the marginalising of Aaron Ramsdale; the sacking of Steve Bould, shown the door after 33 years’ service; the ushering of older players to that same exit without compunction. This is Arteta – extremely confident in his own ability and austere to the point of unpleasantness at times. Behind the sparkling eyes, the crew neck and the perfect hair, there’s an arrogance, and unlike Pep Guardiola, he doesn’t seem to care who sees it.

Contrast the saccharine Manchester City All or Nothing Amazon Prime documentary, in which Guardiola is generally all sweetness and light, with a scene in Arsenal’s own series, after the team’s side’s 2-0 defeat two at Newcastle seasons back. ‘Shut your mouth and eat it,’ Arteta tells his players in the away dressing room, with a ‘zip it’ gestures. ‘Don’t worry. I will take all the shit again. No worries.’

In management, this is what winners look like. Guardiola is supercilious on a regular basis. Klopp could be as unpleasant as the best of them. Going back a generation, Sir Alex Ferguson’s nastiness frequently descended into bullying. 

But never has the Premier League – or British football – needed a manager to maintain an arc of progression more than Arteta now. It is hard to see where, beyond Arsenal, a challenge to a Manchester City’s vice-like grip is coming from next season. Liverpool are cast into transition, unclear which players Arne Slot will hold on to. Manchester United are wondering who on earth can pull off a miracle for them. Chelsea still look years off.

The Premier League looks to Arteta as its saviour. The one to keep the division’s competitive candle burning and the notion of a title story alive. The one capable of demonstrating that there is a way to win trophies which does not entail having limitless funds and a Gulf state sovereign wealth fund at your disposal. The one who might deliver a title which does not require an asterisk next to the winning points tally.

The managerial rivalries have fuelled the Premier League narrative for over 30 years - from Keegan and Ferguson, Wenger and Ferguson to Mourinho and Wenger, Guardiola and Klopp. There will be no such fire next season if Guardiola and Arteta does begin to combust. Can there be such rivalry between master and one-time apprentice? Don’t put it past Arteta to dispense with his present honeyed deference.

Some who worked with Arteta at City suggest that he was better, one-to-one, with players than Guardiola and has not been fully credited with his contribution. One of the few episodes of interest in that beige City All or Nothing series reveals Arteta’s work at improving Raheem Sterling’s goal tally.

He has injected something of the City culture to Arsenal this past year, bringing Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko into what was the Premier League’s third youngest squad. Now he will move on, most probably without them. The club’s sights are already set on another full back, midfielder, goalkeeper - and a centre forward, potentially the Swede Viktor Gyokeres, from Sporting Lisbon, RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko, or Bologna’s Joshua Zirkzee.

Arteta’s judgement is proven. A recent piece of data analysis by the Financial Times designed to show how much value Klopp had added at Liverpool, was presented as a comparison with Guardiola. City’s manager, it revealed, had been fractionally superior, of the two, achieving 11.7 points more per season than the Etihad wage bill would have predicted, than Klopp. But it was Arteta who emerged as the outstanding manager from that study, adding 15.1 points more per season than his own club’s wage bill suggested he might.

‘If you don't have the right culture in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake,’ he said in Arsenal’s darker times. ‘So my job is to convince everyone that this is how we are going to live, and if you are going to be part of this organization it has to be in these terms and in this way.’ They were more than pretty words. Many in football will be willing him to scale the final peak and take down the Abu Dhabi colossus.

How Tyson has changed 

We knew a different Tyson Fury once, here in our village on south Manchester’s border with Cheshire where we saw him grow up.

My mother-in-law would hear him read in one of the infants’ classes at the local primary school, and that brought ten minutes or so of calm. 

He was attentive. My eldest, also in that class, would sometimes play at Tyson’s house after school, encountering the particularly fearsome Fury dog and once taking refuge from it on top of a cupboard, to general hilarity. That chaotic house would probably not be your choice or mine but it was a home and, as it seemed to us, there was love within it.

None of this defends his loathsome behaviour on Saturday which made Oleksandr Usyk the people’s champion. But it shows that evil is not innate. With different influences and a different life, Fury would have been a different man.

The beauty of the County Championship  

A sublime day at Blackpool Cricket Club on Friday, for Lancashire v Durham, was testament to the beauty of the four-day county game. 96 overs of cricket and 300 runs, viewed as if from the edge of a village green, for a cost of £15. 

And the heartbeat of it all was Ben Stokes, playing his first game for Durham in two years; bowling, fielding and running that team as if his life depended on it, a leadership extending to the diplomatic effort of encouraging spectators to cease continually moving behind the bowler’s arm. 

The prospect for the Tests against West Indies and Sri Lanka, with Stokes dedicating himself to the sport’s long form, could not be finer.

The values of football

Thanks to Stuart Houghton for pictures sent last week of his grandson, Rupert, saving a penalty in a shoot-out for Starcross Dons under-9s, in Devon, before consoling his opposite number. 

A touching picture of the world of our junior football where so many good principles are being taught and taking root.