Mikel Arteta Agrees New Arsenal Contract After Premier League Title

Mikel Arteta has agreed a new contract with Arsenal, four months after delivering the club’s first Premier League title since 2004.

BBC Sport reported on Tuesday that a final agreement has been reached on improved terms, with Arteta’s current deal due to expire at the end of this season. Arsenal have yet to formally announce the extension or confirm how long it will run, although there has been very little mystery about where this was heading. Arteta said last week that he was confident an agreement would be reached, while co-chair Josh Kroenke had already made keeping him the club’s priority in May.

Arteta only signed his current extension in September 2024, but Arsenal have moved quite a distance since then. At the time, they had finished second to Manchester City twice and were still trying to turn several years of progress into a league title. Another second-place finish followed before they finally got there last season, winning 26 matches and finishing on 85 points, seven clear of City. Arsenal conceded just 27 goals and David Raya kept 19 clean sheets, earning a third successive Golden Glove.

The way they won it also said plenty about how Arteta’s Arsenal have changed. His early sides could look slightly obsessed with controlling every detail of a match. Last season they were happier winning games however they came. Arsenal scored 24 goals from set pieces, including a Premier League record 18 from corners, with Nicolas Jover’s work becoming as recognisable a part of the team as their possession game. For a club still routinely measured against Wenger-era ideas of how Arsenal football should look, there was something quite fitting about ending the 22-year wait with a side that had learned when to be pretty and when to put six large men around a goalkeeper.

Europe nearly made the season even better. Arsenal reached their first Champions League final since 2006 and only the second in the club’s history, leading Paris Saint-Germain through Kai Havertz before eventually drawing 1-1 and losing 4-3 on penalties in Budapest. They finished the European campaign unbeaten apart from the shootout that ended it.

It is a long way from where Arteta started. He took his first senior managerial job in December 2019 with Arsenal sitting 10th, then oversaw two eighth-place finishes, a season without European football and a fairly ruthless turnover of the squad. Bukayo Saka developed from academy graduate into one of the faces of the team, while William Saliba, Gabriel, Martin Ødegaard, Declan Rice and Raya became part of a side capable of surviving the sort of matches Arsenal spent years finding increasingly creative ways to lose.

The club around Arteta has changed as well. Andrea Berta replaced Edu as sporting director after almost 12 years at Atlético Madrid, where he helped build two La Liga-winning squads and two Champions League finalists. Arsenal are no longer trying to convince themselves that getting back into the top four would represent a successful season. They are champions trying to stay champions, with a manager who has now taken them from eighth place to three consecutive runners-up finishes and finally to the trophy they had spent more than two decades chasing.

Their title defence has started with four wins from five league matches, although Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton was a fairly sharp reminder that nobody gets to spend very long admiring last season’s medals. Arsenal are second on goal difference heading into the international break.

Arteta’s contract should soon be one less thing for them to think about. Arsenal waited 22 years for another Premier League title. Supporters probably won’t have to wait quite that long to find out how many more years the man who delivered it is staying.