\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke says behind-closed-doors football during the Covid-19 pandemic allowed manager Mikel Arteta \u201cspace\u201d to help revive the \u201csleeping giant\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE) group took full control of Arsenal in 2018 but it has not always been easy, with fan protests at how the club was being run taking place during their tenure.<\/p>\n The Kroenkes hired Arteta in 2019, giving the former Arsenal player his first senior managerial role after a period of uncertainty at the club.<\/p>\n It took time for that vision to take hold with two eighth-placed finishes, despite a 2020 FA Cup win, leading to some questioning whether Arteta was the right man for the job.<\/p>\n But now the Spaniard has transformed the club after six-and-a-half years in charge and has led the Gunners to their first Premier League title in 22 years.<\/p>\n Relationship with Arteta and how they picked him<\/strong><\/p>\n Giving a manager their first senior job in football is always a risk, but Kroenke says Arteta\u2019s character made it clear that he was the right candidate to succeed Unai Emery in December 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody that gets a chance to be around Mikel, you can buy into what he\u2019s selling pretty easily,\u201d Kroenke said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I don\u2019t want to give myself or my father [Stan Kroenke, founder and chairman of KSE and co-chair of Arsenal] any credit.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Mikel and his staff and our players are the ones that earned those rights to have the patience in those moments by the amount of work and energy they were putting in behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n Arteta won the 2020 FA Cup but finished eighth in a league affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant games were played behind closed doors.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if I would ever acknowledge it, or Mikel or anybody \u2013 there was something about Mikel having a little bit of what I would say \u2018space\u2019 during Covid when there weren\u2019t fans around.\u201d Kroenke said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were some growing pains that went on during matches, different moments, and obviously we won the FA Cup, but to not have that extra pressure of fans being on top of you at different points in time when we were going through different growth phases was probably something I don\u2019t think any of us would acknowledge in the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cBut, looking back I think we can say \u2018maybe that was a little bit of a benefit\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The post Covid era gave Arteta space to revive Arsenal, says Kroenke<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke says behind-closed-doors football during the Covid-19 pandemic allowed manager Mikel Arteta \u201cspace\u201d to help revive the \u201csleeping giant\u201d. The Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE) group took full control of Arsenal in 2018 but it has not always been easy, with fan protests at how the club was being run taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}