New Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta faces a gargantuan task to rebuild from the ruins of a once great club

Arsenal should be one of the best jobs in the game. Instead, it looks like a poisoned chalice

Mikel Arteta takes over a split camp at the Emirates (Getty)

“People often talk about leaders in the squad and the importance of strong characters,” Rafa Benitez, a man who knows all about truculent dressing rooms, observed. “But having a strong character does not mean it is a good character. Leadership works both ways. You can have negative leaders who drag down a team.”

Benitez was not specifically talking about Arsenal but the Gunners illustrate his point.

The squad at the Emirates is riddled with players who have a destructive effect on team spirit. The challenge for Mikel Arteta is to turn negatives into positives. It will probably be easier to conduct a clearout and start again. The next few months will be a difficult experience for everyone involved at Arsenal.

This is not the ideal first job in management for the Basque. It is a very different club to the one he left three years ago with even less sense of direction than during the tail end of Arsene Wenger’s tenure. Too many of the players appear to have given up on the team. A number of big names simply do not care.

Management is rarely straightforward. Even Pep Guardiola has undergone periods where he believed that some of his Manchester City squad were not listening to their boss. The Catalan has been known to pass on team-talk duties to Arteta and the change of tone and approach had the desired effect at the Etihad. Trying to instil pride, urgency and determination into a group of underachievers who have caused the departure of Wenger and Unai Emery is a very different proposition.

The dearth of leadership in the dressing room is a longrunning problem in this part of north London. A culture has developed where the senior, highest-paid players have shirked responsibility, a situation that affects the morale of their team-mates. In private a number of players – especially the younger ones – have been highly critical of their older colleagues. That will not change overnight, regardless of the new man’s appointment.

Arteta will need strong support from a boardroom that has shown little clarity of thought. Arsenal have finally decided what sort of manager they want, 18 months after losing their nerve when everything pointed to the club’s former captain getting the job. The cluelessness on the pitch has been a reflection of the paucity of ideas behind the scenes. The way Arsenal operate needs to be restructured from the academy upwards. Arteta’s inexperience means there are serious question marks about whether he is the right man for the role.

The environment is very different from Frank Lampard’s situation at Chelsea. Lampard’s status at Stamford Bridge gives him a huge advantage. The club’s transfer ban and the former England midfielder’s commitment to play academy graduates brought the Chelsea manager significant goodwill from the crowd. The circumstances surrounding Lampard at the Bridge make copying that template a very dangerous proposition.

The supporters at the Emirates are not shy of expressing their dissatisfaction. Arteta will be welcomed but, like the players, the fans have seen off two managers with trophy-winning credentials. Their patience is at breaking point and no one would be surprised to see their ire turn to the new man in the dugout if there is no sign of an upswing in form after the honeymoon period.

The club need to spend but the chances of Stan Kroenke opening the pursestrings are almost negligible. A fourth year absent from the Champions League is already looking like a reality and it is hard to see this group of players turning things around, even if Arteta is able to bring in a couple of additions in January.

Arsenal should be one of the best jobs in the game. Instead, it looks like a poisoned chalice. As the heir apparent at City, Arteta could have looked forward to inheriting a stable, well-run organisation with a real identity and plenty of available cash. At the Emirates he will be working in the ruins of a great club where no one has a set of blueprints to help him rebuild the shambolic structure.

Arteta will be a positive leader but there might be just too many negatives around Arsenal for him to prove his worth at this stage of his career. He faces a gargantuan task.