Mikel Arteta wasn’t even on the bench for Arsenal against Everton on Sunday and for the Mail on Sunday, that was all they needed to take their first dig at the new Arsenal head coach.
Mikel Arteta hasn’t even taken charge of a single Arsenal training session and was only officially announced as the Arsenal head coach on Friday. In fact, he was still on the Manchester City bench on Wednesday as they beat Oxford United in the Carabao Cup.
Still, for some at the Mail on Sunday, that’s not good enough.
Arteta should have been more involved with Arsenal for their 12.30pm Saturday kick-off, not quite 22 hours after he was announced as head coach for the first time in his career at the age of 37.
Bearing in mind that Arteta hasn’t even been in charge of anything yet, here’s how the Mail on Sunday’s sister paper, the Daily Mail, covered the new Chelsea manager, whom they hired from Derby, after he lost his side’s first league match 4-0 despite working with his players for over a month.
You might be wondering what you just looked at. That’s the entirety of the Mail’s coverage the day after that game. As you can see, there is one little bit about Frank Lampard, handily written by our friend Chris Wheeler from above.
There is no comment asking what, exactly, Lampard, had done in the month before this game or why he didn’t do more on the day as they went down 4-0 to a side managed by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
No, they made allowances for his newness and the fact he would need time to implement changes.
Seems like Arteta might not get any of that.