Thierry Henry shares the difference he’s noticed with Arsenal since Mikel Arteta’s appointment

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Arsenal legend Thierry Henry has waxed lyrical about Gunners boss Mikel Arteta for having brought “happiness” and “passion” back to the Emirates Stadium.

After the Gunners parted company with Unai Emery in November, they brought Arteta in a month later as their new permanent head coach, snapping him up from Manchester City.

At the time of his arrival, Arsenal were stuck in a rut, in the bottom half of the Premier League table with just 23 points from 18 games, amid some bad results and poor football.

Nearly a year on, the Gunners are a completely different proposition, having won two trophies over the summer and looking stronger in terms of mentality, tactics and personnel.

Henry believes that Arteta is doing an excellent job but says there’s still a fair bit of work needed before they are the finished article.

“First and foremost, you can see an identity, a togetherness,” Henry told CBS Sports podcast Que Golazo, also shared on the CBS Sports YouTube channel and transcribed by Metro.

“When you’re going to be the boss after the big man, so obviously Unai Emery was but now it’s Arteta, it’s not easy to go after Arsene Wenger, it’s not easy at all.

“But what I see with Mikel is that the passion is back, the happiness is back, obviously he gave them a good solidity.

“Now he needs to deal with what he needs to deal with: the Ozil case and other cases. That doesn’t happen overnight.

“When you inherit a team from someone, you need to make sure you can clear some stuff, because it just doesn’t happen overnight.”

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Arsenal couldn’t have picked a better head coach than Arteta, a club icon who learned the ropes under Pep Guardiola and now gets the chance to mould in his image a team that has underachieved in recent years.

While it’s not been plain sailing all the time, the improvements over the past 11 months have been remarkable, and it wouldn’t be surprising were Arsenal to comfortably make the top four this season.