David Moyes wasn't 100% sure when Mikel Arteta arrived at Everton. "He was a quiet boy and at the start we had to play him off the right of midfield," he recalls. "I was thinking: 'This is a young Spanish boy who might not be ready for the rigours of the Premier League and Goodison Park, for what is expected.'"
Alex McLeish sent his assistant Andy Watson to watch Arteta at Paris Saint-Germain when Rangers were considering signing him a few years earlier. "Different class, two good feet, quick enough, nimble," Watson said. But there was a kicker. "He was never tested because PSG just rolled the ball out and it then took them 20 minutes to get to the halfway line!" It didn't immediately scream "Scottish Premiership midfielder", thought McLeish, picturing Aberdeen away on a wild, wet, winter's afternoon.
But there's something about Arteta, who started his Arsenal managerial career on Boxing Day five years ago at Bournemouth and takes on Ipswich tomorrow. McLeish would realise early on. "He was on the receiving end of a few reducers but he rode those challengers," he says.
When Rangers, in a head-to-head title race with Celtic in Arteta's first season, won a late penalty on the final day against Dunfermline with the championship on the line, the Spaniard stepped up to score, even though the club captain, Barry Ferguson, and Ronald de Boer were penalty takers. Rangers finished top on goal difference. "Mikel was unbelievably mature for a 21-year-old and just grabbed it," McLeish recalls.
The next season, when high-profile players such as Ferguson were sold to balance the books, it was "a wee bit of a struggle", says McLeish, and Arteta ended up back home in the Basque Country at Real Sociedad, which was when Moyes took a chance on him.
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