Mikel Arteta and Gabriel Jesus: The Misleading Feud
Mikel Arteta, Gabriel Jesus and a ‘row’ that barely exists have been dragged into the clickbait machine and chewed to pieces.
You would think, from the headlines, that the Arsenal manager had gone nuclear on his former No. 9. The reality? He spoke about “gratitude”, “understanding” and the awkwardness of delivering bad news. Hardly a dressing-room grenade.
This is how it was sold.
“Mikel Arteta fires back at Gabriel Jesus as row over bitter Arsenal transfer exit escalates,” shouted the Daily Mirror website.
“Mikel Arteta hits back at Gabriel Jesus after making accusations against Arsenal boss,” added Football.London.
“Shocked Mikel Arteta hits back after Gabriel Jesus blasts Arsenal treatment,” chimed the London Evening Standard.
And then you get to what Arteta actually said.
“Very surprised, to be fair, especially because with Gabriel I had an individual talk in the dressing room. I don’t know what the words were said, it’s fine.
“And the words that we used for each other, it was all about gratitude. So, I don’t know, it’s okay. Sometimes I understand when you have to deliver bad news or news that people don’t expect. Those things are reactive. Somebody has to be there to be bad cop. If I have to be, I have to be. And I understand.
“What is important is normally what happens three months later, six months later, when Trossard comes in, he’s in the dressing room with all of us, the atmosphere and the relation you have. And thank God so far, with all the players that they left, at some point their relationship has been really good. I hope that’s the same case.”
That’s the big “hit back”. No rant. No public shaming. No thinly veiled digs. Just a manager explaining that sometimes he has to be the one who delivers the call a player doesn’t want to hear, and that he hopes the relationship settles with time.
Arteta even framed it in the context of the dressing room dynamic months down the line, pointing to Leandro Trossard’s integration and the way former players usually reconnect with the group. For a supposed “bitter” exit, the Arsenal manager sounded more like someone trying to keep the bridge intact than burn it.
The gap between the rhetoric of those headlines and the content of his quotes is enormous. This wasn’t a feud. It was an adult explanation of a difficult conversation, dressed up as a feud because “gratitude” doesn’t sell as well as “blast”.
And it’s not an isolated trick.
The same cycle played out with Gabriel Martinelli’s omission from a squad before a lucrative move, spun as a sign of unrest and “unhappy” players hinting at revolt. Again, the reality was far more mundane: a selection call wrapped in the financial and sporting logic of modern football.
Arteta, we’re told, “needs to be more careful”. On this evidence, he’s one of the few in the room actually choosing his words carefully.
While the Arsenal saga was being inflated, another old storyline was dragged out and reheated: Mauricio Pochettino’s suggestion that Spurs should be handed the 2016/17 Premier League title and Chelsea stripped of it. The Daily Mirror website went with:
“Premier League responds after Mauricio Pochettino calls for Chelsea to be stripped of title.”
There is no suspense in that headline. Of course the league wasn’t about to reopen a decade-old season because a former Tottenham manager fancied a retroactive coronation. The opening line from John Cross said it all:
“Premier League chiefs insist they did not let Chelsea off lightly amid the storm surrounding their 2017 title.”
Obviously. The only story would have been if they had admitted the opposite. The quotes used weren’t even fresh; they were at least a month old, repackaged as if this was breaking news.
The same paper also found space on its back page to effectively announce that Boxing Day football falls on a Saturday this year, not a Friday. A calendar quirk framed as a grand restoration of tradition. Only recently, we were told that festive football was “a goner”, dumped in “the bin”, the erosion of an English institution. Now? The fixture list happens to line up nicely and suddenly the old ways ride again.
Was it ever really under existential threat, or was it just another excuse for performative outrage?
The inflation of language doesn’t stop there.
From The Sun website came this effort:
“Nkunku lifts lid on Chelsea nightmare… and slams ex-Man Utd boss Amorim.”
You brace for a verbal volley. What you get is this:
“Milan’s decision? It’s a choice that should be respected, but I don’t know why they acted that way. I was surprised. In any case, I wish them a good season. At Milan I didn’t have any injuries, but the vision of football was different from mine. So, as soon as the opportunity arose to come back here and play my football, I seized it.”
Respect, surprise, a polite explanation of a different footballing vision, and good wishes for the season. That’s not a “slam”. That’s a carefully worded answer from a professional who doesn’t want to torch his past employers.
Then there’s the word “hoodoo”, dragged into a MailOnline headline to describe Manchester City’s recent record at Old Trafford:
“Why Man City are fired up to end their Old Trafford hoodoo: Squad unity, the star duo drumming standards into newcomers and the missing ingredient players say Enzo Maresca has added ahead of Man United clash.”
A hoodoo? City haven’t scored there since 2023, we’re told. What that actually means is: they’ve played there twice in that period. One of those games finished 0-0. The other was a defeat. Before that, they won 3-0.
Two games without a goal after a thumping win is a blip, not a curse.
The pattern is obvious. Ordinary football realities – players leaving, managers explaining, teams dropping points, clubs changing coaches – are constantly repackaged as “storms”, “nightmares”, “rows”, “blasts” and “hoodoos”.
Arteta’s calm, almost clinical explanation of his talk with Jesus gets turned into a feud. A respectful answer from Nkunku becomes a “slam”. A small sample of away results becomes a psychological barrier.
The football is dramatic enough on its own. The question is how long the sport’s biggest characters will tolerate having every nuance of their words twisted into a headline that bears no resemblance to what they actually said.
