Arteta’s referee dossier risks deepening Arsenal’s siege mentality, Guardian argues

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta’s collection of video clips comparing managers’ touchline behaviour has prompted a Guardian warning that any deliberate campaign could deepen a damaging siege mentality around the club. The Guardian columnist Jonathan Wilson said Arteta did not call the material a “dossier”, instead describing it as “a massive storage of images”. The collection followed Arteta’s second booking of the season for leaving his technical area during Arsenal’s 2-0 win over Everton last Saturday.

Arteta accepted that he had left the technical area, but argued that other managers were treated differently. The article reports him saying that some managers had left the touchline 36 times in 10 minutes without receiving yellow cards. He said he was clipping those incidents so that, if challenged, he could point out that he had not reached the record.

The Guardian says former referee Graham Scott counted 44 occasions on which Arteta left his technical area before being booked. The column also refers to Declan Rice escaping punishment for kicking Malick Yalcouyé off the ball against Brighton, while stressing that Arsenal remained, in Arteta’s framing, the victims of inconsistent treatment. Wilson presents two possible readings of the manager’s approach.

It may be a genuine attempt to document inconsistency in refereeing decisions. Alternatively, the column suggests, Arteta may be collecting examples to reinforce the belief among Arsenal supporters that officials are acting against the club. The article does not establish that Arteta has launched a formal campaign against referees, nor does it show that the clips have influenced any ruling.

Its central warning is conditional: “if” the dossier is part of a deliberate strategy, Wilson argues, it is dangerous. That distinction separates the columnist’s interpretation from a confirmed club policy. The column places Arteta’s actions within football’s long tradition of psychological manoeuvring.

It recalls Wolves manager Major Frank Buckley’s pre-1939 FA Cup final claim that his players had been given “animal secretions”, a story linked to contemporary interest in monkey-gland treatments. The article says Wolves actually received nothing stronger than vitamins and lost 4-1 to Portsmouth. It also cites Inter manager Helenio Herrera’s use of leaflets before a 1965 European Cup semi-final against Liverpool.

The material claimed Liverpool supporters had insulted Italians, and the Guardian says the campaign helped create an angry atmosphere at San Siro, although it notes that questionable refereeing was not necessarily explained by that factor alone. Alex Ferguson is described as a master of football mind games, while José Mourinho is cited as someone who openly treated the next match as beginning in the press conference after the previous one. Wilson says Arteta has not reached that level, but argues that encouraging a belief in persecution could have consequences.

The column says the theory may find support among some online Arsenal fans, who have long believed referees work against the club. It notes that some supporters defended Max Dowman after he was sent off for thrusting a knee toward Harrison Neal’s chest, despite Arteta appearing furious. Those examples underpin the article’s concern about grievance becoming part of Arsenal’s identity.