Arsenal are closing in on a new long-term contract for Mikel Arteta. My reaction: good, and about time. Both halves of that matter.
The reporting, as of this writing, is that Arsenal and Arteta are in the closing stages of agreeing a new deal, with confidence on both sides that it gets done. Nothing has been signed or announced yet, so treat every version of "finalising" and "nearing" as exactly that. But the direction is clear. The club's chief executive Richard Garlick has called it a "matter of time," and Arteta himself said last month that his will "certainly is to be here."
So why am I not just handing out gold stars? Because this is a manager whose current deal has roughly nine months left on it. Arteta guided Arsenal to the Premier League title last season, the club's first in 22 years, and in the same cycle steered them to a Champions League final, only the second in the club's history. He's already the longest-serving manager in the Premier League and EFL. And Arsenal have let his contract wander all the way into its final year before getting a new one over the line.
That's the story worth arguing about: not the deal, the delay.
The results were in a long time ago
You don't need a spreadsheet to make the case for extending Arteta early. Since taking over in December 2019, he inherited a club that had lost its Champions League place and turned it into champions of England. Last season Arsenal went top of the table in early October and led it for a combined 238 days. The title race wasn't a fluke that snuck up on anyone. It was the natural next step after two near-misses, the 89-point and 84-point seasons that both ended with Manchester City lifting the trophy instead.
The European run said the same thing. Arteta got Arsenal to a Champions League final for the first time in two decades. It ended in the cruelest possible way, a 1-1 draw with Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest that PSG won 4-3 on penalties, but reaching that stage at all was the kind of achievement that usually gets a manager a fresh deal handed to him on the spot.
The evidence to lock Arteta up long-term existed well before his contract ran down to its last season. Arsenal simply chose to take their time.
Arteta made it easy
Usually when a contract drags this close to expiry, it's because the manager is playing games or letting his agent run the clock to squeeze the club. That's not what happened here, and it's exactly why the delay bugs me.
By every account, Arteta removed his own leverage. A title-winning manager nine months from free agency, in a market where elite jobs are rare, would ordinarily hold all the cards. Arteta publicly declined to play them. Back in March, with the title still up for grabs, he was already waving away contract questions: "There is no news on that. We don't have time to discuss that now." In August his message was that everyone is "doing things in a very organic way."
Translation, at least as I read it: the manager wasn't the bottleneck. Which puts the pacing on the club. And letting a saga about your best asset simmer through the back half of one season and into the build-up of the next is a risk nobody needed to take. Speculation fills any vacuum you leave open. It seeps into press conferences and into every conversation with players you're trying to recruit or keep. None of that helps a squad chasing more.
Nobody inside the club has publicly griped about the timeline, and neither has Arteta. The tone from all sides has been calm. So this critique is mine, not theirs. I just think "it worked out fine" and "it was handled well" are two different claims, and only the first one is safe to make.
The money tells you how much they value him. So did the calendar.
When the deal is done, Arteta is set to become one of the best-paid managers in world football, a significant bump on his current terms, reported to be worth £10m a season plus an extra £5m for Champions League qualification. No specific new figure has been reported, so I won't guess at one. But think about the logic for a second. If you're prepared to pay a man like he's one of the elite in the profession, you don't leave the paperwork until you can practically see the expiry date.
Right now the on-pitch backdrop makes the whole thing look painless. Through the opening weeks of the 2026-27 season, Arsenal have been flying. As of the weekend of September 5-6, three league games in, they were unbeaten and level on points with Manchester City at the top, having beaten Chelsea 2-1, and they'd already hammered City in the Community Shield. Three games tell you very little about where a title ends up, and that snapshot will likely have moved by the time you read this. But it does show why sorting Arteta's future now, with the mood high, is smart.
It would have been just as smart a year ago, when the trophy was already in the cabinet.
The bottom line
I'm glad it's getting done. Keeping Arteta is the single most important piece of business Arsenal could do, more than any signing. If the deal lands as reported and stretches his stay toward a decade in north London, it's the right outcome.
My only complaint is that the right outcome should never have been left this late. When a manager delivers a first league title in 22 years and a run to a European final, and then quietly tells the world he isn't going anywhere, you reward that early. Arsenal are getting there. They just took the scenic route to a decision that was obvious the day the confetti fell.
