Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has been successful in rebuilding the club he once captained, but he did undergo an unusual route into management.

Arteta won two FA Cups as an Arsenal player before retiring in 2016, and immediately became Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City.

He then returned to Arsenal in 2019 with the club in crisis after Unai Emery’s failed spell in charge, and after a long-winded process of resetting the culture and revitalising the squad, his side are now competing for Premier League and Champions League glory.

Arteta initially joined Arsene Wenger’s side in his playing days as something of a panic buy, as Arsenal needed to replace club captain Cesc Fabregas, who forced his way out to join Barcelona.

Fabregas has since retired and gone into coaching himself, and he has now admitted that he is ready to take the next step into management.

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Former Arsenal star Cesc Fabregas admits he is ready to become a manager

Speaking via The Standard, Fabregas, who is currently a coach at Italian Serie B side Como, claimed he wants to become a manager in the Premier League.

“You never know how the future will go, but I want to be a main coach,” he explained.

“I am doing my own way at the moment. 100 per cent my ambition one day is to coach a top club in the Premier League, the Champions League.

“But you need to respect the right steps. I feel I am ready to be a first-team coach already so I don’t really want to go into these types of little coaching on the side or being an assistant.

“I have very clear things in my mind that I just want to be a main coach, a first-team coach, and that’s why I will do my own way until I am ready to jump onto a big train.”

How Fabregas can follow Mikel Arteta into becoming a coach

Although Fabregas has stated that he does not want to become an assistant next, his role at Como is not too dissimilar from the one Arteta had at Manchester City when he first started his coaching career.

Fabregas, like Arteta, has played in different countries under managers with differing coaching styles, and is also a La Masia graduate.

The World Cup winner played in a free-flowing attacking style under Wenger, a more structured attack under Guardiola and a defence-minded Chelsea team under Jose Mourinho, and later Antonio Conte.

If Fabregas takes a leap like Arteta did straight into a big job, rather than working his way up, it will be interesting to see how much he will have learned from watching his progress as Arsenal manager.