The last few managers and clubs Arteta must still beat to complete football after latest revenge scalp
Mikel Arteta has meticulously removed three monkeys from his back this season – and has an unexpected shot at another when Arsenal face Manchester United.
Arsenal are top of the Premier League table with a perfect record from seven Champions League games.
They also have a lead going into the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final at home to Chelsea, 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, 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 is guaranteed to face two more of the managers he has faced but never beaten this season – one of which is in rather surprising circumstances – and could yet take on 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.
Regis Le Bris
Sunderland 2-2 Arsenal, November 2025, Premier League
Arteta felt “we deserved” to beat Sunderland in Arsenal’s first trip to the Stadium of Light in almost a decade, but Dan Ballard and Brian Brobbey care not for such vague concepts.
Le Bris praised his team’s “masterclass” in taking the lead, going behind and then equalising in the fourth minute of added time against a team on an eight-game clean-sheet streak.
It was very mid-2000s Bolton in the best possible way, and Arteta must have begrudgingly admired it. He has beaten Lee Johnson’s Sunderland, but not the Le Bris vintage.
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
A lot has changed in five years, but somehow not the two managers who presided over Manchester United’s first Premier League home win in almost three months, and will again do battle this weekend at the Emirates.
Arteta cannot possibly have expected an opportunity to exact a measure of revenge for a bizarre defeat Arsenal suffered half a decade ago, especially when Carrick started this season out of employment having been sacked by Middlesbrough. But Manchester United DNA is a powerful thing.
This was Carrick’s third and final game in interim charge at Old Trafford, almost immediately after which he stood down and left the club, giving Arteta no option but to stew over what he felt was another unjust defeat.
Carrick has started his second Manchester United reign remarkably well and heads into their latest meeting with that rare distinction of a winning record over the Spaniard.
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 97 different managers and beaten 90 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 59 different teams and beaten 57 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 yet face Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Bayer Leverkusen or Ajax in the Champions League knockout phase.
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.
