Mikel Arteta has beaten 92 of the 98 managers and 58 of the 60 clubs he has faced while in charge of Arsenal. Who are the last few blemishes on his record?
Arsenal are top of the Premier League table with a perfect record from eight Champions League games.
They are also in the Carabao Cup final, with Wigan next up at the Emirates in the FA Cup fourth round.
Four trophyless Arsenal players are about to start their collection with a Quadruple.
On a personal level, Arteta has managed to address a few of his shortcomings this season. In 2025/26 he has recorded his first career victory as a manager over Fabian Hurzeler, Regis Le Bris, Bayern Munich and, most recently at the San Siro, Inter.
It leaves only a handful of coaches and clubs Arteta has faced but never beaten.
The Spaniard has also won his first ever meetings with Liam Rosenior, John Mousinho, Ivan Leko, Darren Moore, Diego Simeone, Ernesto Valverde, Jose Luis Mendilibar, Christian Chivu and Keith Andrews, as well as Club Brugge, Atletico Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Port Vale, across this campaign.
He could yet face another of the few managers or one of the two clubs he has failed to beat if the Champions League knockout draw falls kindly enough.
No wonder Arteta is being spoken about in ‘elite’ terms.
Managers Mikel Arteta has faced but never beaten
Arne Slot
Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool, October 2024, Premier League
Liverpool 2-2 Arsenal, May 2025, Premier League
Liverpool 1-0 Arsenal, August 2025, Premier League
Arsenal 0-0 Liverpool, January 2026, Premier League
The one true final Premier League monkey Arteta must extricate from his back is the increasingly bald reigning champion. It brings immense shame on the Gunners that in four games against Slot’s Liverpool, they have conceded a truly absurd five goals.
That defeat at Anfield still stings a little but it turns out their title credentials might not actually rest on winning at Anfield. Or in fact even beating them at the Emirates.
Simone Inzaghi
Inter 1-0 Arsenal, November 2024, Champions League
An actual, proper shortcoming, and one which was not even properly addressed when Arsenal teased a Quadruple in the San Siro as Inzaghi, who taught Arteta a lesson in last season’s Champions League league phase, packed his bags for Saudi in the summer.
Gian Piero Gasperini
Atalanta 0-0 Arsenal, September 2024, Champions League
It is literally impossible to forget the David Raya double-save game. Gasperini felt that “Arsenal seemed to me to want to settle for a draw”, which doesn’t sound like them at all.
Ruben Selles
Arsenal 3-3 Southampton, April 2023, Premier League
Just a really quite hilarious match that confirmed a surprise title push came slightly too early. Selles has since been sacked by Hull and Sheffield United and is currently in charge of Real Zaragoza, who are second-bottom of the Spanish second division, so Arsenal might not be able to right that wrong particularly soon.
Michael Carrick
Manchester United 3-2 Arsenal, December 2021, Premier League
Arsenal 2-3 Manchester United, January 2026, Premier League
With a little over four years in between, Carrick has offered two bizarrely similar pieces of proof that he is somehow Arteta’s managerial Kryptonite.
He beat Arsenal in his third and final game in interim charge of Manchester United in the winter of 2021. He beat Arsenal in his second but definitely not final game in currently temporary but very possibly eventually permanent charge of Manchester United in the winter of 2026.
On both occasions, Manchester United trailed 1-0, led 2-1 and won 3-2. Arsenal had evolved from Champions League qualification bottlers to Premier League title favourites in between, but nothing had changed when Carrick came to town.
Rafael Benitez
Everton 2-1 Arsenal, December 2021, Premier League
It threatened to be the most bleak of winters for Arsenal, who followed that Manchester United defeat with a loss to an Everton side which would sack Benitez 41 days later. But the Gunners stabilised with four straight wins before ultimately bottling Champions League qualification.
Benitez’s only jobs since have been with Celta Vigo and Panathinaikos, who are not quite in Arsenal’s orbit.
Clubs Mikel Arteta has faced but never beaten
Atalanta
Atalanta 0-0 Arsenal, September 2024, Champions League
Raheem actual Sterling came off the bench so it almost doesn’t count.
Villarreal
Villarreal 2-1 Arsenal, April 2021, Europa League semi-final first leg
Arsenal 0-0 Villarreal, May 2021, Europa League semi-final second leg
One does not simply beat Unai Emery in the Europa League.
Best managers Mikel Arteta has never faced
Arteta has taken on 98 different managers and beaten 92 of them. The empires he still has to conquer to complete his personal set have already been covered, but what about those he has yet to face?
Ranking every manager to have been in charge of at least 100 Premier League matches by their career points-per-game record – and ruling out your Fergusons, Wengers and others who either essentially or officially retired before Arteta took charge in December 2019 – there are only six in the top 50 he has yet to face.
Here they are, with their position in that points-per-game ranking, as well as their jobs in the time Arteta has been Arsenal manager, in brackets:
Roberto Mancini (4, Italy and Saudi Arabia)
Manuel Pellegrini (12, Real Betis)
Ronald Koeman (22, Netherlands, Barcelona and Netherlands)
Mark Hughes (40, Bradford and Carlisle)
Alan Pardew (48, ADO Den Haag, CSKA Sofia and Aris)
Chris Coleman (50, Atromitos, AEL Limassol, OH Leuven and Asteras Tripolis)
Ranking every manager to have been in charge of at least 50 Champions League matches by their career points-per-game record – and ruling out your Heynckes, Van Gaals and others who either essentially or officially retired before Arteta took charge in December 2019 – there are only nine he has yet to face.
Here they are, with their position in that points-per-game ranking, as well as their jobs in the time Arteta has been Arsenal manager, in brackets:
Zinedine Zidane (4, Real Madrid)
Hector Cuper (20, DR Congo and Syria)
Massimiliano Allegri (26, Juventus and AC Milan)
Guus Hiddink (30, Curacao)
Manuel Pellegrini (31, Real Betis)
Luciano Spalletti (32, Napoli and Italy)
Roberto Mancini (33, Italy and Saudi Arabia)
Ronald Koeman (36, Netherlands, Barcelona and Netherlands)
Mircea Lucescu (38, Dynamo Kyiv and Romania)
Fatih Terim (40, Galatasaray, Panathinaikos and Al-Shabab)
Best clubs Mikel Arteta has never faced
Arteta has taken on 60 different teams and beaten 58 of them. Using UEFA’s own ten-season club coefficient ranking, it is possible to identify the best teams his Arsenal has yet to face. They are:
Barcelona (5)
Borussia Dortmund (10)
Juventus (12)
Roma (13)
Bayer Leverkusen (16)
Ajax (20)
They could face either Borussia Dortmund or Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League round of 16, with Barcelona and Juventus also still in the tournament.
So sod Quadruples and all that nonsense: to complete football, Arteta needs to beat Arne Slot and hope Atalanta appoint Alan Pardew before the turn of the year.
