As St Totteringham's Day slips away, Arteta's rebuild looks increasingly tricky

The joke about St Totteringham’s Day has long since rung hollow, the force of the punchline lost amid its waning relevance.

St Totteringham’s Day was invented by Arsenal fans during their period of dominance over their north London rivals to celebrate the day when it was mathematically impossible for Tottenham to overtake Arsenal.

Arsenal held the whip hand for 21 years, beginning in 1996, before Mauricio Pochettino’s team finished second in 2017 — 11 points clear of Arsenal. Since then, Arsenal have finished below Tottenham every season.

That run looks set to continue, even in this mediocre season for Spurs, with Jose Mourinho’s team going into Sunday's north London derby seven points clear.

Naturally, Arsenal will point to the fact that they have accumulated two FA Cups since 2017, whereas Spurs’ last trophy came in 2008.

But such has been the decline since Arsene Wenger left in 2018, when fifth place was considered bad, that the battle for north London dominance is a bit of a sideshow, given that Arsenal are currently the fourth best team in London.

Is that acceptable for Arsenal? Manager Mikel Arteta was asked that question on Friday. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘We want to be the best. And not in London. We want to be the best in the league.

‘That is the standard we have to try to reach because of the expectation that we have and what this club has done over the years. I’m not interested in London. I’m interested in the whole country and being the best in the country.’

That looks a tall task, with the club languishing in 10th, 30 points behind leaders Manchester City. Still, Arteta can point to the FA Cup and Community Shield wins within his first 15 months at the club.

In fairness, it has been an extraordinary time. It was a year ago on Friday when Arsenal announced that Arteta had contracted Covid-19, one of the first in football to do so, and shut down their training ground. It wouldn’t reopen for two months, as the game ground to a standstill.

‘The time that I’ve been in the job… the conditions were having two and a half months in normal circumstances and then a period when you are completely away from the team and then you have very difficult circumstances. It’s not the same as having a year, the same period, in normal circumstances.’

Arteta acknowledges that it has been the most testing year of his professional life.

‘Absolutely. Learning wise for everybody here, it was a challenge — the issues, the problems to resolve. But there was a huge community around the club. The staff and the players were looking after each other and making sure everybody is right, showing how much we care about what we do and trying to get the best out of each other to try to bring the club to where it belongs.’

However, that will be tough given the financial results they released last week, with the club losing £47.8million after tax last season.

Obviously, all clubs are currently in dire financial straits without fans and Tottenham’s equivalent loss was £63.9m. But Arsenal’s losses for this season are projected by the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust to increase to £158m.

Relatively speaking, Arsenal are falling behind Spurs. Their swanky new stadium and more regular Champions League football are ushering them past Arsenal not only on the pitch but also off it, as a bigger financial player.

So Arsenal cannot spend themselves out of trouble and there was a hint of the frustration from Arteta about how past transfer windows have played out, presumably referring to the seismic restructure of recruitment chiefs last year, which saw executives Raul Sanllehi and Huss Fahmy leave as well as most of the senior scouts.

‘When you talk about the transfer windows, (it’s) very difficult to explain how they were dealt with,’ he said.

In reality, Arteta may have to nurture youngsters like Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli and hope to exploit the loan market, as he has done with Martin Odegaard.

Yet Arteta seems to indicate that to achieve his goal, he will require owner Stan Kroenke to extend lines of credit, as he did to sign Thomas Partey last summer.

‘You know the successful teams in this country in the last five to 10 years, what they’ve done to become successful,’ said Arteta. ‘Nobody has done something unprecedented, apart from Leicester. But we have to find a way to do it.

‘This isn’t the time to find excuses. The way we are going to evolve this squad is not being done in this window. It is going to be a constant evolution.

It’s not going to stop, so we avoid a position where you need a massive rebuild, like what we had to do in the last two transfer windows.

‘Hopefully, when you are able to adjust little things, you can bring out the best ability and then just add good quality. Because that is what the squad demands.’

The question is how long might that take? ‘When we are able to do that? I don’t know. If I knew, I would give you a date.

‘What I do know is that tomorrow it has to be a better team than today. My whole focus is towards that. So, looking at that, I need to make the right decision for the next day to be better.'