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Mikel Arteta builds success free of pragmatism and Arsenal are smiling | Jonathan Liew

01-Oct-2022 17:21:05 | The Guardian

Win or lose the Gunners are enjoying themselves and it showed again as they gave their coach a win to savour over Tottenham

In the 90th minute, Mikel Arteta finally had to start enjoying himself. Hard work, sacrifice, suffering: most of the time, these are the foundation stones of the Arteta method. You work, you fight, you suffer, and if you’re lucky you get to do it all again in five days. Even in the closing stages here, as Arsenal gleefully toyed with Tottenham and the Emirates lapsed into calypso mode, Arteta had lost none of his skittish focus: still urging his team forward, still whirling his arms round and round like a damaged toy.

But as Kieran Tierney let fly from distance, almost scoring a spectacular fourth at the death, something in Arteta finally broke. As he turned to his bench, he melted into a broad, shimmering smile. It was the moment he realised – possibly the last man in the stadium to do so – that after 13 long days of waiting and worrying, of running through the permutations of this game over and over again in his mind, everything was going to be fine.