TIM HOWARD: I played 152 games with Mikel Arteta… the manager leading Arsenal vs. Manchester City is not my friend. He has changed. He is no longer the teacher’s pet with special privileges – and that’s a good thing

There are only certain Premier League managers – such as David Moyes at Everton, Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool – who have truly owned a club and made it their own.

They came in and said, ‘Anything I say goes. I run this entire club: from what the players eat and drink, to how they play.’

The special thing about Mikel Arteta is that he did that after just two years at Arsenal. He got rid of players and said, ‘This will be the way it is.’ He built that culture, he is the figurehead and he accomplished all that in a very short time.

I played 152 games alongside Mikel at Everton – only Phil Neville and Leon Osman played more with him throughout his career.

I’ve interviewed him a few times as a manager and every time, before the cameras started rolling, it was just like old times: he calls me Timmy, there’s a lot of laughing and giggling. It’s all very casual. It’s the Mikel I shared a dressing room with.

But then the interview starts, he goes into game mode and he has to be the person he wants to portray. That’s not my friend. That Mikel the manager. He changed.

When I first joined Everton he was one of Moyes’ crown jewels. He was by far our best footballer. He was a really good guy and a very interesting guy. But Mikel was always someone who took football very, very seriously. There was never an off day.

He was meticulous in the locker room, in the cafeteria and on the bus. He was always studying film or conversation tactics. He was someone to look up to, to model your lifestyle on.

Many players don’t worry about that so much: they just get on the bus, plane or train and fall asleep. I was always lost in my own world: put on headphones, listen to music or watch a movie, maybe have a conversation with the guys around my table. I didn’t study film!

We had team meetings where we looked at the tape and broke down tactics. The manager would be there, but Mikel was always an important voice in the room. He talked to other players and even showed them: ‘We have to play here, you have to find the pass here’. He wasn’t afraid to say, “I see this, and this is how we should do things.” He never clashed with Moyes. It was just a matter of getting certain players on the same page.

He didn’t have to give you a costume party. He was very strict and told you, ‘Timmy, it’s not good enough.’ And I never had to come back to him again. Because this guy is on the phone. When he says it’s not good enough, I have to look in the mirror and realize: he’s right. And there were plenty of those days!

Moyes even made sure to put a lot of responsibility on Mikel: he had to lead the team and manage us tactically. He wanted the responsibility and could take it. He was Moyes’ midfield general, his tactician, his little technical genius. The gaffer loved him. In Moyes’ eyes, he could do no wrong.

But he brought it every day: he always trained, he was always fit. So Mikel was given special privileges when it came to going back to Barcelona to visit a physio, or taking his physio with him.

That’s normal: the best players get more leniency because they continually produce for the manager.

Mikel was a teacher’s pet, but he was definitely one of the boys too. Not many players can do that; normally you are either on one or the other side of the line. He was a special player and a special person.

Mikel is different now. He’s changed… but I think in a very good way. As a manager you have to think about what your voice will be and how you want to portray yourself.

Nowadays he is quite closed and doesn’t reveal many secrets. That’s no surprise: he trained with Pep at Manchester City.

When you look at who he has become as a manager, he definitely has a touch of Moyes to him too.

Mikel had the guile, the tactical awareness and the magic feet. But David and his teams were always steely and he turned Mikel into a tough midfielder.

However, there are some things he didn’t learn at Everton. Blow out You are never alone during training, for example! But as a manager you have to look deeper than you ever did as a player. You have to find little nuances to give your team an advantage. Football is constantly evolving and you can’t be afraid of things that could hurt you or make you fail.

As long as the players in the locker room believe in it, other opinions don’t matter. And right now there’s a huge buy-in from that team.

International injuries prove Fergie was thinking ahead

Perhaps this week proved once again that Sir Alex Ferguson was ahead of his time. John Stones, Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji and Andy Robertson all suffered injuries on international duty.

Fergie recognized early on the importance of missing big players during a title race. But there were also a lot of myths surrounding my former United boss, for example Fergie Time. Forcing players to miss international football was another.

I’m sure there were times when someone conveniently ‘pulled a hamstring’ during training the day before an international break. But I have never seen a player under pressure to withdraw. I wasn’t aware of that – at least not as a somewhat naive young man in my early twenties.

I’ve certainly never been asked to leave an American team. Maybe I wasn’t that important!

Good on Louis Rees-Zammit for coming over from rugby and signing a deal with the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s almost impossible to do – that’s why we see so few athletes make the switch.

I’ve been in elite locker rooms on both sides of the Atlantic and the two cultures have come to mirror each other.

But here we are even more cheerful and in-your-face. And here, American athletes aren’t scrutinized like Premier League players, or even top-level rugby players.

In the US there is more freedom to express yourself. It’s a cultural thing: Americans want to stand out, Brits want to stand in line.

I lived and enjoyed that culture. But I think Rees-Zammit will do well in this new environment. In Britain it is almost frowned upon to express yourself outwardly, while in America it is celebrated. You can be yourself and if you take that to the field, everything snowballs from there.