Mikel Arteta has said his conscience is clear over the Premier League rule breaches committed by Manchester City during the period he spent as assistant manager at the club.
The Arsenal manager worked under Pep Guardiola at City between 2016 and 2019, a spell that overlapped with the nine seasons in which the club have been found to have broken rules and disguised secret funding of more than £830m. He faced questions on the subject at his first news conference since the ruling, which City have appealed.
Arteta repeatedly declined to be drawn on the case itself, saying he wanted to respect an ongoing process. Asked for his reaction to the report from the independent commission, which found that City had arranged “sham contracts” with a number of commercial partners to disguise earnings, he said: “I fully understand the question, but obviously I think it’s very important that we respect the process, the timelines, and it’s still an ongoing process that is not resolved because it’s been appealed. My position, and I think the club’s position, is not to make any further comments until this is fully resolved.”
That message held for more than half an hour of questioning, with Arteta at no point combative but clearly determined to stick to the response he had arrived with. The one departure came towards the end, when he was asked directly whether his conscience was clear given that he had spent three and a half years at the club in a senior position. His answer was a single word: “Yes.”
He was also asked whether he had spoken to Guardiola. “I prefer not to answer those questions,” he said.
Pressed on whether the appeal and any sanction needed to be resolved this season in order to preserve the integrity of the Premier League, Arteta replied: “The people are responsible to manage this process and to come to the right conclusions and I’m sure it will be done and it will be resolved in the right way. We have to trust that.” He added that he “100%” believed the Premier League remains the best in the world.
Arteta’s Arsenal sit three points behind league leaders City and face fifth-placed Leeds at Emirates Stadium on Saturday.