Arteta Puts Zubimendi’s Title-Run Contribution Beyond Debate as Guimaraes Era Begins
Traveloasisspot.com – With Arsenal’s new Premier League campaign set to open Friday night against Coventry at the Emirates, manager Mikel Arteta has made clear that Martin Zubimendi’s contribution to last season’s title charge will not be erased by a single summer of squad reinforcement. The Spanish midfielder’s role in the Gunners’ historic run was, in Arteta’s framing, foundational rather than peripheral — a distinction the coach felt compelled to draw before the competitive pressures of a new campaign take hold.
The urgency of that message becomes harder to ignore once you factor in the £75 million signing of Bruno Guimaraes from Newcastle United. The Brazilian’s arrival injects a new layer of competition into a midfield already crowded with talent, and it places Zubimendi squarely in a battle for minutes that he did not face in the same intensity last year. Add to that the emergence of Myles Lewis-Skelly, who earned a starting role in the Champions League final over the Spaniard, and the fitness return of Mikel Merino after injury sidelined him through much of the second half of last season, and the arithmetic of selection becomes genuinely complex.
A Season Defined by Volume
What separates Zubimendi’s previous campaign from a typical first season in England is the sheer volume of football he absorbed. Fifty-seven appearances across all competitions represent by far the most he has played in any single season of his career. He scored five Premier League goals — the highest tally of his professional life — and built a midfield axis with Declan Rice that became one of the defining structural features of Arsenal’s title-winning side.
Yet the season’s final stretch told a different story. Fatigue became visible. Form dipped. Lewis-Skelly stepped into the midfield in May, and the selection hierarchy shifted. Arteta acknowledged this openly, conceding that Zubimendi’s playing time in the closing weeks was reduced, while simultaneously arguing that the reduction in minutes should not diminish the weight of what came before.
“Zubi without a doubt was one of the best players for Arsenal last season. Without him we would never get into the position that we got in the last few weeks and he deserves massive credit. He deserves some credit from all of us, all the coaches, myself and especially his team-mates.”
The coach went further, pushing back against a narrative he saw taking shape among fans and commentators who fixated on who started the Champions League final rather than who carried the team through ten months of sustained competition.
“This guy did it for 10 months. Otherwise we weren’t here and we wouldn’t be playing in those finals. I think he deserves a lot of credit for that.”
The Competitive Calculus Ahead
Arteta’s defence is not merely retrospective. It carries a forward-looking dimension: the manager wants Zubimendi to understand that the squad’s quality has increased and that the old model of simply accumulating minutes is no longer viable at the level Arsenal now operate.
“He’s an extremely honest and straight guy. He’s so demanding of himself that sometimes it can be even too much. But he knows that and he knew that we were going to add and increase the quality of the squad. Because it has to happen in every position and we cannot not do what we did.”
The practical implication is straightforward. Zubimendi cannot replicate last season’s workload. Fifty-five games played before the final stretch is a ceiling, not a floor, at this tier of competition. The question Arteta poses is not whether the Spaniard will feature, but how he will distribute his energy across eleven months of fixtures while competing with Guimaraes, Lewis-Skelly, Merino, and Rice for influence in the engine room.
“When he got to the last stage of his season, he already played 55 games. We cannot have that again at this level. He recognises that. Now it’s going to be, ‘Okay, how am I going to raise the level to be able to do what I did last year but for 11 months?’ That’s it.”
Madrid Rumours and the Question of Loyalty
Speculation linking Zubimendi to Real Madrid gained traction after the Spanish giants failed to secure Rodri from Manchester City. The logic is easy to follow: a proven Premier League midfielder, still under contract, available in a market where Madrid are actively shopping. Yet Arteta dismissed the notion of a summer departure with characteristic brevity.
“He’s a really important player for us.”
Whether that statement reflects a firm contractual position or simply the manager’s preference for continuity, the practical effect is the same: Zubimendi enters the new season as a first-choice candidate rather than a surplus asset. The Guimaraes signing, far from rendering him redundant, has instead sharpened the competitive environment in which he must prove his place week in, week out.
For Arsenal, the midfield question of 2025-26 is no longer about filling a gap. It is about managing depth, distributing minutes intelligently, and ensuring that the players who carried the title charge last year can sustain their influence across a longer, more demanding calendar without burning out before the decisive weeks arrive. Arteta’s public defence of Zubimendi is, in that context, less a tribute than a boundary-setting exercise: the manager is telling the squad, the fans, and the wider football world that last season’s hierarchy will not be casually dismantled by a single summer transfer window.
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