Arsenal have appointed Mikel Arteta as their manager on a three-and-a-half-year contract. The club’s former midfielder joins from Manchester City where he was an assistant to Pep Guardiola. The ex Barcelona manager has wished his best to Arteta and thinks that he can do a wonderful job at the Emirates. Unai Emery was sacked last month after a poor run which led the team just on the brink of the bottom half.

“This is a huge honour. Arsenal is one of the biggest clubs in the world. We need to be competing for the top trophies in the game and that’s been made very clear to me in my discussions with Stan and Josh Kroenke, and the senior people from the club. We all know there is a lot of work to be done to achieve that but I am confident we’ll do it. I’m realistic enough to know it won’t happen overnight but the current squad has plenty of talent and there is a great pipeline of young players coming through from the academy,” said Arteta to the Guardian.