Mikel Arteta should listen to Roy Keane's title warning: 'Agitated' Arsenal's search for perfection has seen Gunners go backwards - and looming contract chaos could derail their project entirely

Never one shy to air his feelings, Roy Keane was particularly scathing in his assessment of Arsenal, not only in Sunday's draw at United, but the trajectory of their project under Arteta.

Asked by Sky Sports presenter David Jones if the Gunners could win the 2025-26 Premier League with the Spaniard at the helm, the ex-United captain replied. "No. Why would I? What makes you think the manager can do it? They've got close over the last few years, but [Manchester] City will be strong next year and I'm sure Liverpool will be too.

"Where is the evidence to think they can do it? Getting a striker in would help, have they got the right mentality? Has the manager? You see a different side to them when they're winning every week, but they get all agitated when they're losing.

"I don't think getting a striker in who'll score 20 goals a season will necessarily be the difference. Will City and Liverpool just stand still? They're going to look to improve, Pep [Guardiola] will bounce back and I think Liverpool will be stronger next season. We don't know where Chelsea are, but what's the evidence of this group of players that they can do it?

"It's alright challenging, but it should be about winning titles."

The questions over Arteta's credentials to this point have been disingenuous and attention-seeking. Of the 10 managers in history to have recorded more than 100 wins from their first 200 games as manager, the ex-midfielder ranks fifth (118), with only Pep Guardiola (146), Jose Mourinho (137), Jurgen Klopp (127) and Sir Alex Ferguson (122) coming away with higher tallies. Arsenal's two-season rolling average of 86.5 points from 2022 to 2024 is their highest ever at any point of their history. The numbers don't lie.

The Gunners are no longer the laughing stock they were throughout Wenger's final years, Unai Emery's short-lived spell or even the first 18 months of Arteta's reign. He has completely reinvented the team in his image, restored a dying club to conversations that matter. For that, he deserves enormous credit - it's hard to imagine many other managers walking into N5 back in 2019 and doing a better job.

For these reasons, Arsenal fans are particularly protective of their manager, and not just because he was an important player for them during the twilight years of his past life. When it comes to picking holes in Arteta's approach to date, they're right to get their tails up. Supporters liking the person in the dugout and wanting them to succeed compared to asking questions of how the future may actually look do not have to agree with one another, however.

It's rather ludicrous how often managers have to front up for the media, sometimes taking six press conferences in a week, plus an additional six interviews pre-match and post-match for TV. That is, however, part of their job in the modern day, and a young coach like Arteta should know the importance of saving face.

Not for the first time, he lost his cool in the aftermath of a disappointing result. When quizzed by Sky Sports' Patrick Davison about the title race, he walked off set. This show of petulance came three weeks after he claimed conceding to Liverpool would have to come "over my dead body". Since then, Arsenal have taken two points from nine available in the Premier League.

Arsenal have been afforded a bit more grace than some of their other rivals in recent years as part of recognition that Arteta picked them up from such a low ebb. That kindness has slipped this season and there is more demand than ever for them to not only win a trophy, but the Premier League title itself, particularly with Guardiola's City toiling.

The 2024-25 season will likely go down as a missed opportunity for Arsenal. Whether they'll have the energy to go again next term is another can of worms.

Keane, part of various United teams who always found new ways to win, made an important point about teams needing to evolve. The expectation is City will be back with a new cohort of stars, that Liverpool will re-tool regardless of what happens to out-of-contract trio Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk.

So what of Arsenal? As the Irishman suggested, the obvious next step is a big-name striker to add more firepower, but the Gunners' problems run deeper. Their only improvement on this season compared to last is their set-piece proficiency and menace, yet even then the goals have started to dry up in that department. This current iteration of the team cannot hold a torch to their 2022-23 and 2023-24 selves.

The easy answer to the question of why this has happened is injuries. For two years, the Gunners got by with only William Saliba's back problem, which ended his 2022-23 campaign, as the only major headache for Arteta to contend with. Tugging at the string of squad depth has exposed further issues this year, with both captain Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka missing months of action.

That can't be the only reason why Liverpool have sprinted 15 points ahead of them, though. Arsenal's regression from the league's premier entertainers to a slower and more methodical side has come at a cost. Their inability to maintain that extra attacking edge, or discover how to pick that pace up again, has had the same effect as sticking a Ferrari in farmland mud. Set-pieces were bailing them out to some extent and giving them that extra dimension, though that still hasn't been enough.

Arsenal have not only given up that threat in attack, but look much weaker at the back, despite that becoming the key point of focus. United, one of the least effective teams in the final third across all of Europe, found it far too easy to force David Raya into action. When performances are down across the board, it's a cry for tactical development, only Arteta has shown no desire to this point to stray away from his favoured system and routine structures of play.

It is this rigid approach which has ultimately led to Arsenal's decline from a tactical and footballing perspective. They've spent too long trying to perfect every little detail, attempting to become the best at the intricacies. Their obsession has been with control rather than winning at all means and costs.

There's another huge problem creeping up behind Arsenal like the villain in a slasher horror - the contract lengths of their key players. There's already a need for a midfield refresh with Thomas Partey and Jorginho's deals up this summer, while Leandro Trossard, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Takehiro Tomiyasu's run until 2026.

Then there's the unwanted big three of 2027 - Saka, Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes. There's been no news of developments on extensions for any of them, and we'll soon be entering the two-year zone of the club weighing up whether the time is right to cash in.

The assumption is Saka, a boyhood Arsenal fan, will stay and help the club fight for honours. Such optimism can't be said of their monstrous centre-back pairing, with Saliba already the talk of the Real Madrid press machine (we're about three months away from Sergio Ramos saying the Frenchman has the requisite 'DNA' to play for Los Blancos). While they're at it, why not pick up his Brazilian partner on the cheap too?

At some point, as Keane touched on, contention has to turn into success, nearly-men must become the men. Arsenal must show the seriousness of their ambition to their best players given how easily they could command moves elsewhere to other, perhaps more willing challengers and incumbent winners.

After Arsenal's failure to capture the 2023-24 title was confirmed on the final day of last season, Arteta gave a rousing speech to an emotional Emirates Stadium crowd.

"All this is happening because you started believing," he said. "You started to be patient, you started to understand what we were trying to do and all the credit has to go to these amazing players, and the staff that are unbelievable.

"I think now it's time to have a break, think, reflect and please, keep pushing, keep inspiring this team. Don't be satisfied because we want much more than that, and we're going to get it. Thank you so much."

All sport can prove random when it comes to winning windows, but none more so than low-scoring football. Arteta's assumption that the only way was up for Arsenal was misguided.

No one foresaw City's fall-off this year, nor Liverpool's slide in Jurgen Klopp's penultimate season or Thomas Tuchel being sacked by Chelsea just over 12 months removed from winning the Champions League. These are only recent examples close to home, but the history of football is littered with sudden declines and drastic changes of situation at the top level.

Arteta has harped on about his five-phase plan, and prior to Sunday's stalemate with United, claimed his team were at phase four: "Establishing yourself at the highest level in the Champions League. Consistently perform with a lot of unity and being very close to touching big trophies."

This methodology has taken the Gunners this far. It's as fair to praise them for that as it is to have doubts over whether this will actually lead to tangible success. Arsenal, to some degree, must set their own precedent and prove the world wrong from within before the slide becomes a chute.