He took over a team that had slipped to 10th in mid-season, finished the campaign in eighth and reached a cup final. Three years later, his side were European champions. After a further season, their long wait to win the Premier League was over.
For Jurgen Klopp, read Mikel Arteta? It is the best-case scenario for Arsenal, that a transformative appointment propels them back to the summit of the game. From what Arsenal showed while beating Liverpool on Saturday at Wembley they could already be on the right track.
That it has taken Klopp time to restore Liverpool to past glories shows that, after an identical inheritance in terms of league positions, Arteta’s is a long-term task.
Arsene Wenger won the Premier League in his first full season in charge. Arteta won’t. Instead, a more realistic aim is to mimic Klopp by getting a top-four finish in his first proper attempt.
Their Community Shield opponents, that they beat on penalties, may offer a roadmap. In a way, they already have.
That early emphasis on the cups – with Klopp reaching the League Cup and Europa League finals within months of his arrival and Arteta winning the FA Cup – came in part because league campaigns were faltering long before either was even interviewed.
Each showed his mettle in one-off matches. For Klopp’s early triumphs over Chelsea and Manchester City, read Arteta’s maiden win, against Manchester United, and more recent victories against Liverpool (now twice), City and Chelsea.
Each prevailed as underdogs, Klopp with fervent gegenpressing, Arteta with clever counter attacking. Liverpool went through 2016/17 unbeaten against the top six. Arteta has already shown that he now knows the ideal formula to beat the best.
The test Liverpool eventually passed, and which confronts an Arsenal side who lost at Brighton and Aston Villa in the summer, is to become more consistent against the rest.
Community Shield reaction
In one respect, Arsenal’s record offers some advantages. They were deficient in so many areas in finishing 43 points behind Liverpool that plenty offer scope for improvement. Addressing some could bring the return to the Champions League that has to be their objective for 2020/21.
It may be easiest to list the departments that do not require attention.
Arsenal have gone unbeaten at home in domestic competitions in 2020; their goalkeepers, whether Bernd Leno or Emi Martinez, recorded the highest save percentages of any club in the division last season; and in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, they have a finisher supreme.
Not only do they have the sole player to get 20 goals in each of the last two Premier League campaigns, but the Arsenal captain outperformed his expected goals by 5.65 last season, behind only Mason Greenwood and Danny Ings.
The simplistic analysis is to say Arsenal therefore need their other nine players to be better. Certainly the sense Arsenal’s excellence in both boxes prevented them from slipping further is shown by the statistics. They ranked 15th in most shots, with three fewer than Norwich, pointing to a lack of invention, and no Arsenal player figured in the top 24 for creating ‘big chances’.
Aubameyang made the most of limited service. Arsenal had an xG difference of -7.1 last season (49.1 for, 56.1 against), which was only the 11th best in the league. Their xGA was similar to relegated Bournemouth’s, of 56.7, and Watford’s, of 57.2.
Their goalkeepers made the most saves, 147, in the league last season. The signing of William Saliba and the attempts to buy Gabriel Magalhaes are a recognition that their centre-backs have to ensure Leno and Martinez are less busy.
Saliba averaged more interceptions per game than any Arsenal player in league football last season, and Gabriel more tackles than anyone other than Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Arsenal’s older defenders, David Luiz and Sokratis, were low scorers in both.
In midfield, attempts to re-sign Dani Ceballos make sense, and not merely because of his end-of-season form. Arsenal won 65 percent of games he and Granit Xhaka started together – 75 percent under Arteta - and only 38 percent when neither began.
It is about personnel, but also organisation and intensity. Liverpool may offer a lesson: they regained possession the highest percentage of times within five seconds of applying pressure, Arsenal the fourth lowest. They also registered the lowest number of interceptions per game (9.2).
That explains the arrival of Willian. The Brazilian won more tackles last season than any Arsenal player except Xhaka and Ceballos. He was involved in more successful pressures, when the team got the ball back within five seconds, than any.
Willian can be seen as a defensive forward, but his 145 shot-creating actions was more than double the 66 of Nicolas Pepe, the leading Arsenal player in the charts, and his 67 shots was topped only by Aubameyang at the Emirates.
Willian’s brace in December’s victory at Tottenham highlighted an ongoing issue for Arsenal, who have not won away at ‘big-six’ opponents in the league since January 2015. It is another area for Arsenal to address after their lowest finish for a quarter of a century.
As Klopp can testify, Liverpool’s progress was both rapid and gradual. The road from 10th to first took half a decade. But the journey from eighth to fourth lasted a season, and it is a path Arsenal must hope to follow.