Mikel Arteta and David Moyes are currently the seventh and eighth longest-serving managers in England.
In the Premier League, only Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Thomas Frank have been in their positions for longer periods of time.
Of course, the West Ham United boss is one who Mikel knows well from his time playing under him at Everton.
“To be in this league and manage for so long and be more successful than him is not easy,” Mikel said in his pre-match press conference on Wednesday.
“The teams that he’s done it at and how he’s done it, obviously I know him and I love him a lot and I’m so grateful for everything that he did for me and the times that we had together, but he’s an outstanding manager.
“He does it in a way that’s, in my opinion, very special. He doesn’t make too much noise, but what he has accomplished at West Ham is remarkable.”
On his own involvement in the statistic, with Mikel having recently passed his four-year anniversary as our manager, he added: “I’m getting old I think!
“Well, I’m surprised by that, but it tells you how difficult this job is. A few years before and that number would have been very different, but that’s the context that we live in. Let’s keep going.”
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
