Ex-referee Scott claims Arteta is 'the hardest' manager to deal with
Mikel Arteta has been branded the hardest Premier League manager to deal with by former referee Graham Scott, who admits officials let the Arsenal boss 'get away with too much' on the touchline over the years.
Scott, who spent a decade operating in the Premier League including spells as a fourth official, did not hold back when discussing Arteta's touchline conduct. Speaking on The Athletic, he explained why dealing with the Arsenal manager proved such a challenge.
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“I know whatever I say at this point just gets me pelters and it will be 'well that's because you hate him' but it is Arteta,” Scott said. “He is the hardest work and he really does push all of the limits all of the time. I don't mind that in many ways, he's trying to get a competitive advantage for his team. That's fine. It is part of his job, and he's entitled to push those limits and it is for us to police them.”
Scott went further, recalling a specific example of Arteta straying from his technical area during a match against Everton.
“But he does make your life extremely difficult. He's out of his box all the time. I watched him recently in their game against Everton, and every time Everton had the ball anywhere near the touchline on his side, he was joining in the press! His toes were on the touchline and as a fourth official that's a nightmare,” he said.
“Because if you step forward and do anything about it you're being pedantic, you're being petty, but the time you get there the ball's moved on, it looks like nothing's going on here. But he does get away with rather too much. The officials do need to be a bit tighter, and I was one of them who let him do that, I'm not going to deny that.”
Arteta's response
Arteta has previously accepted that he sometimes oversteps the mark on the touchline, but has argued that other managers are far worse offenders who rarely face consequences. The Arsenal boss has even claimed to keep records to back up his point.
“I do have to be careful. They should put sensors there,” Arteta said. “There are managers who have the record in the league, 36 times in 10 minutes [they] leave the touchline, no yellows. I am clipping all of that so I have now a massive storage of images, so if somebody comes to me I can say, 'I am not in the record yet'. Somebody else has the record so let's see.”
The comments come despite Arteta having guided Arsenal to the Premier League title, the club's first in 22 years, a achievement that has largely overshadowed the ongoing debate about his touchline demeanour. Scott's remarks, reported by football.london via the Mirror, add another voice to a long running conversation about how referees and fourth officials are expected to manage him during matches.
Whether officials adopt the firmer approach Scott suggests remains to be seen, but the subject looks unlikely to disappear from the discourse around Arteta's management any time soon.
