Ahead of his Manchester City side's latest meeting with Arsenal on Sunday, Pep Guardiola explained why he publicly defended Gunners manager Mikel Arteta when his position seemed untenable two years ago.
Arsenal's third defeat in as many games of the 2020/21 season was a 5-0 thumping dished out by City. Arteta had overseen a pair of eighth-placed finishes over the previous two years before steering his side to the club's worst start to a top-flight campaign since 1954.
However, Guardiola rushed to the defence of his former assistant at City immediately after the match, citing the raft of defensive absences that Arteta had to juggle. "The moment he has the full squad, everything is going well," Guardiola predicted at the time. "I know him perfectly and know the quality he has as a person and as a manager."
Two years on, Arsenal are billed as City's biggest challenger for the Premier League title having led the top flight for 248 days last season. Reflecting on his kind words for Arteta, Guardiola explained: "In that game, we started off quite equal, and then after we scored two goals they had [Granit] Xhaka sent off. It wasn't easy for Mikel.
"After what happened in the first 20 minutes he understood it perfectly, the reasons why and adapted individually and collectively. I am not usually here to defend colleagues because everyone can defend themselves, we all respect each other but we are not friends.
"But Mikel is an exception, he is completely different. We worked together for two or three years with a lot of success. I said many times I learned a lot. And I was pretty convinced that he would be good for Arsenal because I knew him here, how he communicated with the players, his ideas. I was convinced."
Arsenal's hierarchy agreed with Guardiola's diagnosis, resisting the urge to give in to short-termism and - to use Arteta's own terminology - "trust the process". Guardiola gushed: "He's proof that when a club believes in something when the board and sporting director decide the way they want to play and keep the manager to play that way and sign the right players, it works. Sometimes you see it immediately and sometimes you need time.
"It happens when the people above you really believe in you and have patience and look at the training sessions and how things are building rather than just rely on results.
"If clubs only look at the result, that is the first step to being down. You have to rely on what the manager is doing rather than the results. Results will always be a consequence.
"Arsenal trusted him and the results are here. At the end, they have a manager for many years. He knows the club. He loves the club. Better than that is impossible."
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This article was originally published on 90min as How Pep Guardiola helped Mikel Arteta keep his Arsenal job.