i think he will stay this summer no matter what. I think there’s too many proud members of the board to admit they got it wrong. I personally don’t think he will be arsenal manager by summer 2022.
I just don’t understand what so many people see in him. We are 30 games into the season and tied for 11th. I don’t think our style of football is much improved at all; I think we are worse going forward and only slightly better defensively. I still maintain this squad is better than midtable, and if Arteta doesn’t manage to get European football next season, his rebuild will be so much more difficult. I just don’t see enough progress being made in the Arteta era. is it progress compared to the last month of the Emery era? Sure, but that’s not really the bar is it?
Nice enough guy, nothing against him, hoped it work when he joined. However, Emery was gone in a season and a half. Arteta has got the same amount of time and quite frankly dont know where he is headed..
He is very amiable, says all the right things but results are not matched by what he says. Now, our hope now rests on winning the Europa League.. Without that, we would not be Europe next season!
I mean the squad is WAY better than midtable but the Arteta fans will claim its all down the players. I dont like the constant rewarding of poor perfmances.Willian only lost his Number 10 position to Smith Rowe due to having to isolate for Covid. Auba HAS to be dropped, Pepe doesnt deserve to start games neither. Martinelli should be starting games on the other hand. Saliba arrived at Nice in January and they were in 19th place. Since then he has had multiple MOTM displays and the Club npow sit in 10th place. How could this guy not even get any gametime under Mikel?! I just dont get the way he is selecting players.
Absolutely, agreed the team as it is, not capable of challenging for the title. However, as you have rightly pointed out, we are not getting optimum value from the squad of players at his disposal. We even flirted up till December with relegation... The manager has to look at himself as to why his team is consistently underperforming!
I agree we should be performing much better than this and, although our squad probably isn’t top-6 quality, it should be better than where it is now. The only things I’ll say in his defence are that he’s still got a group of players who don’t want to be/shouldn’t be at the club, for half the season has had toxic influences around the dressing room, we had an unusually high number of red cards in our matches (which will impact any team), the likes of Partey and Tierney - whom we don’t have suitable enough cover for - suffering multiple injuries and we’ve had players making far too many individual mistakes leading to goals against us. I know many other teams can point to these factors too, but the scale at which it happens at Arsenal is unprecedented. Now, with that said, the two things I’ve been heavily critical of him for are his game management and squad management. It’s still a let down. Frankly, it’s nauseating that he’s not learning as quickly as he should in terms of dealing and reacting with these situations. He is too often selecting players who don’t suit how he wants to play, and then deploying them in positions they’re not familiar with, whilst isolating the younger players who are more suited to his preferred style. I like Arteta, he’s a knowledgeable guy and is very analytical, so I have no doubt that he is aware of the problems we face. However, his solutions seldom work and there’s still no discernible style of play to implement when we miss our more influential players. Ultimately though, he’s in a results business and while he may get away with this bad form this season, as it was transitional for various reasons (exacerbated by Covid), he won’t get away with this next season. The only way I can see fans retaining faith in him is by going all the way in the Europa League. Otherwise there’ll be doubts again when the season starts and, when fans are back in the stadium, the apprehension will seep into the atmosphere. The players will sense it. We can’t let this happen. Lots of work for all parties still to do.
I totally disagree our current squad is not top 6. That statement itself is a cop out. I might even agree with you if you said our squad is not capable of challenging for top4. I get the injuries and errors leading to goals, the red cards and injuries to key players at crucial times in the season. One thing we also have not mentioned is the form of key players. This is where I feel a lot of sympathy for Arteta. How do you explain Auba's indifferent form? He is still a class act, however his form has been wretched for the vast majority of the season. Our back line, (including Leno), have mistakes in them! You could not even put this down to playing in front of a hostile home fans. Arteta, no doubt posseses good communication skills, analytical mind, however all this non-functional attributes does not match the key requirement, winning games. As a manager and head coach, it is head on the line and ultimately we should be doing better than we currently are. We cannot even hang our coats on the style of Football currently being served. Finally, I am not expecting us to win the Europa League and also not expecting us to qualify for Europe.. So after our worst finish in decades, where does this leave him?
Wenger, Emery and Arteta have all been suitably slightly ****e now. Replacement after replacement. Who do we replace with? Poch is abou to manage something quite spectacular at PSG and not win the league in a one team league. Tuchek just lost 5-2 at home to West Brom. There's no obvious 'next Klopp' to target. Nagelsmann maybe but firstly why would be come to us and is he really any less of a gamble than letting Arteta have another year or two? Other than that who? Moyes? Gerrard?
You not agreeing with my statement doesn't mean it's a cop-out. Out of interest, which of Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs, Leicester or Everton are we better than? We should, on paper, be ahead of West Ham, sure, but it's my view that the other aforementioned sides are better than us. We have one of the worst midfield combinations in the league, an average defence, and we have good attackers yes, but a team is more than the sum of its parts. I am NOT saying Arteta is faultless - my previous comment proves that actually - and he absolutely is underperforming right now. But he was dealt a bad hand to begin with, with toxic players, inheriting bad habits, a culture where players didn't want to work hard. Currently, he still has many of the players that downed tools under Emery. To shift that mentality from the feeble-minded eras of yesteryear, unfortunately, we need more than one covid-impacted Summer transfer window. Yes, I agree with you - and that's where he needs to earn his money. What I'm saying though is I can't see Arteta being sacked anytime soon because the club have invested a lot of time into him. I expect him to be in the dugout for the 2021-22 season (rightly or wrongly). If that is the case, then these excuses he has this season won't wash next year. For me personally, if this happens, I don't think he can have any complaints if he got sacked. However, I don't think he will even if we don't win the Europa League. I genuinely don't believe the club expected us to compete for the top-4 this year - this was partly reflected in our summer transfer activity, but also, he would have been sacked ages ago if he was expected to get top-4. The hierarchy have used this season as a means of assessing who is good enough, who isn't, what players we need for next season etc. All the noises coming out from the club suggest that Edu and co. have been planning for the 2021 summer transfer window since the start of the season. If that's the case, they're under massive pressure to deliver come season's end, Europa League or not.
I say cop out because, setting the bar very low and not expecting to finish in top6 is a win/win situation.. I think our current squad should be more than capable of mixing it with squads like Spurs, Leicester, Everton and West Ham. Flipping the question round, do you think Arteta as a coach is better than the coaches of the afore mentioned teams, apart from Pep and Klopp? Moyes, I can kinda take out as well. Again I vehemently disagree, we have the worst midfield combinations in the league, even disagree we have the have a mid-table midfield combo. Nothing new here, every manager inherits a team of disgruntled players, if things were so good, there would not be a regime change, he has to earn his crust, and right now, he is not doing so and to my mind not capable of doing so! Me neither, and I expect more of the same next season. The board have always been sluggish to act and don't expect the lack of European football to make a difference to their mindset - the next target is to be comforted by the fact that we finish mid table, playing dross! No one but themselves knew what their targets were, however if I was to hazard a guess, I would say flirting with relegation (with over a third of the season gone) and finishing mid-table with no European football was not on the table! I think planning is a bit too strong a term with these lot..
In theory, we should be competing with these sides. But Leicester's recruitment has eclipsed ours massively. As has Everton's last Summer (they also have a superior manager), Spurs did a lot more business in Summer to a squad that was already ahead of us. West Ham have massively overachieved this season, too. But remains to be seen if it's a one-off season. I don't agree at all with you on this. I'm sorry, but Ceballos is not good enough. Elneny is not good enough. Xhaka for me isn't good enough. Partey is, but he's been injury prone and hasn't had a consistent run of games. These midfield options are nowhere near the likes of Leicester, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd etc. I really don't think it's a debatable point whatsoever. Our defenders too: Gabriel - promising, but very young and still has much to learn. Holding - not at the required level. Luiz - good as a squad option, but shouldn't be a regular starter. Mari - looks decent, but is another squad player. Not a starter. Chambers - not at the required level. Bellerin - not at the required level. Cedric - good enough. Tierney - good enough, but injury prone. These calibre of players aren't enough to sustain a top-4 challenge. Yes, but these issues were a lot more long-lasting for us, had been boiling over for years and we also weren't able to solve as many issues as we'd have liked in the transfer market. The likes of Mustafi, Kolasinac, Ozil, Sokratis etc, who were viewed as divisive and difficult, were not shifted for ages due to their lucrative wages, meaning their stench lingered around the rest of the squad, feeding into the negativity surrounding the club. We needed better personnel in the Summer in several areas. We didn't do enough. There's no magic wand to fix these problems. We need better and new players. To do that, you need to spend money and get rid of the others. Until that happens, Arteta's always going to be at a huge disadvantage. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be doing slightly better with what he has at his disposal - he 100% should be - but his job is made harder as a consequence. And frankly, even if we were performing better, I still don't think we'd be in the top-4. We will have to wait and see. If the reports are true, I expect a busy window. If they are not, we will continue spiralling into obscurity.
I think we have to agree to disagree on this one sir. It is easy to reel out names after names, labels after labels, and refer to players as subversive, disruptive etc etc. I feel real sorry for the vast of majority of these names, apart from ESR, Saka and Tierney, a lot of our players have not really delivered this season. I also do not think it is because they lack quality or to borrow your phrase "not good enough" or not at the required level. Someone like Ceballos, I remember last season against Burnley, he almost single-handedly was instrumental in dragging us through that game, and many sterling efforts like that last season. He was so good, that we were happy to see him again for another season. Another one fans are singing his praises in Odengaard.. If Auba had been a new signing and performed the way he has been of late, he would have been pilloried and villified. Another one is Willian, knows the league, won everything there is, he comes to us and his reputation is almost in tatters... For me the vast majority of the names you have mentioned, I would not file in the"not good enough" or squad player category. Like I said, these players from top to bottom, are not operating optimally, I am not saying I expect 100% performance every week from them, to me their efforts collectively and individually has been below par - getting the best out of what we have is the mark of a seasoned manager. We cannot bin these players and get new ones in, we have to make them work and I believe a seasoned manager in the mould of Allegri, will be able to bring out the best in our current squad!
I think both of our clubs are experiencing similar problems in the sense that we are both saddled with a load of players who simply aren't up to scratch but will be hard to shift in one go, not least of all with the majority if not all clubs posting massive losses this year. Secondly, I don't think our managers are getting the most out of the players available to them. Thirdly, it seems that both clubs have totally lost sight of a coherent recruitment policy in recent years, with some players signed with great anticipation and fanfare only to never be seen again (Saliba, Sessegnon), others massively underperforming (Ndombele, Pepe) and then a bunch of players who don't really have all that much to prove anymore and whose hunger to succeed I would question (Willian, Bale). Leicester and Everton are great examples of teams who have made some very smart acquisitions in the last year or two. West Ham have too, and are also a good example of a manager making the most of the tools at his disposal. Flash in the pan or not, if Moyes achieves CL football having played Michail Antonio as a lone striker for most of the season, he deserves MOTY hands down. Your saving grace this season has been the timely emergence of some excellent youngsters. Ours has been that in Kane and Son, we have two genuinely world class players who would walk into the starting line ups of all the teams above us. I see both our clubs as in a very precarious situation, especially as the likes of the teams above plus newcomers such as Villa and Leeds (who both have massive fanbases already in place) continue to strengthen.
What I find truly remarkable is that we've actually shifted a lot of players over the past couple seasons - Iwobi, Mkhitaryan, Jenkinson, Lichtsteiner, Monreal, Koscielny, Welbeck, Ramsey, Ospina, Cech, Ozil, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Torreira, Guendouzi - yet we still have MORE to offload. It just highlights how badly we've either a) recruited, b) mismanaged contracts and c) failed to recoup most of the transfer fees paid (with the exception of Iwobi). In fact, with some of the latter players, we ended up having to pay the remainder of their contracts off in a desperate attempt to get rid. Our younger players have put our more senior players to shame this season. As professionals, getting paid handsomely for mediocrity, they should be ashamed of themselves. However, as you point out, it's not all on them. We have some excellent depth in attack, but the manager has struggled to get any rhythm from them, partially because he keeps chopping and changing the front line. Meaning there's minimal continuity for players to get in their flow. But he's also trying to force the older players to adapt their game in a way that has never been their strength (e.g. Aubameyang). Our style of play has suffered as a result. Square pegs in round holes and whatnot. Ultimately, when you combine all these issues together - an inexperienced manager, an unbalanced and demotivated group of senior players, expensive signings who haven't performed, no coherent identity established and a culture of tolerating failure, then it spells a recipe for disaster.
good post. the other slight difference is that Spurs have a manager that makes the dressing room toxic and then gets a massive pay off, and the team takes a season or 2 to recover. Jose has parted badly with every team he has been at, and I don’t understand why you went in for him and not Ancelotti - he would have been ideal for Spurs. Arteta does seem determined to clear out all the deadwood, and the cancellation of contracts is a sign that we won’t keep players that aren’t part of the future or willing to back Arteta. It isn’t a cheap exercise and not sure Levy would want to do the same, but a fire-sale was needed.
I've seen a us repeating a lot of the mistakes that ruined you in Wenger's last years. Rewarding underperforming players like Dier and Alderweireld with bumper new contracts was just madness and they will be incredibly difficult to shift. Then other players like Janssen and Rose not even having a squad number yet still picking up a salary. Why didn't we just cancel their contracts and make a clean break? Believe me I have no clue what Levy was smoking when he thought appointing Jose would be a good idea. And it will set us back at least 2 years. However I would say that in terms of revenue forecast from commercial and stadium income, we are better placed than most of the other teams in the PL including, if reports are to be believed, yourselves and even Chelsea. And that is before we even have a stadium sponsor in place for another £20-30m per year. And that is what is so infuriating about Levy. Genius in off-pitch decisions, bumbling buffoon in decisions relating to anything on the pitch.
Na mate Partey, Odengaard, Smith Rowe, Guendouzi, Ceballos, Xhaka, Maitland Niles is a very good selection of midfielders. Defenders wise. Mari is WAY better than given credit for being. Gabriel is a top talent. Mavropnos has been one of the best defenders in Germany and Saliba is smashing it in France. Tierney is an elite LB. Like ive said before I think this squad is actually pretty damn good. Auba should be scoring though, Martinelli should be playing. Saliba for sure should be there. There's a ton of questionable decisions being made when it comes to squad and team selections IMO. I think we have a better squad than Everton, Leceister, Villa, West Ham etc..
No, sorry, but this just isn't true in the slightest. I don't agree with 90% of this. The issue is you've not applied context and the cold hard reality of how those players have actually performed on the pitch, as opposed to them simply being big names. You've also not factored in the injury issues they've suffered, which have clearly affected us too. Partey is a good player. But injuries and being in and out the team have meant he hasn't fulfilled his potential with us so far. He's not been that great for us. Odegaard has only been with us for 2 months. He's done well overall, but our horrific form was in 2020, not this year, and that's the main reason why we're in this position. He joined when most of the damage was already done. Guendouzi is bang average. I've not seen anything from him that makes me think he'll make it as a top midfielder. He's gone to Hertha Berlin and has done OK, from what I've read, but has hardly been a monster in the middle of the park. He's always been overrated by Arsenal fans. Ceballos and Xhaka are absolutely NOT at the required level, especially the former. He's had countless chances and simply isn't quick enough or mobile enough to succeed. Maitland-Niles has predominately played as a right-back for us. He's gone to West Brom to play in central midfield and not exactly pulled any trees there. Their own bloody fans have said so: http://westbrom.com/forum/index.php?topic=25565.150 Mari has had 15 first-team games for us. If you think that's enough of a sample size to say he's a top player, that's up to you, but you're not correct if that's what you think. Gabriel is still young and learning. He's had some excellent performances for us, but he's also suffered moments of inconsistency. Mavropanos has played 16 games for Stuttgart this season. He's been having a good loan spell when he's played, but has suffered injuries over there, too. This has no relevance to Arsenal right now though. Likewise with Saliba. Tierney is a top player, but he has been injury plagued and that has affected us this season. I do agree that there's been questionable decisions made - but you vastly overrate the quality of some of our players, and haven't contextualised the situation each player has gone through, which partially (but not totally) explains why we're mid table.
Half of your arguments here are redundant. Soo and soo hasn't been good for us.. well duh. That comes down to the manager. Partey is ****ing class. Xhaka is a quality player, Ceballos has plenty of ability. Maitland Niles is a midfielder though - Arteta choose to play him as a fullback. You can't hold that against the player. I'm not actually his biggest fans but he has potential, Yes young players do suffer from inconsistency but you know how you get past that.. by playing them! Thats how they develop. Again the manager is making the mistakes here. Martinelli is arguably the most talented young forward we have had for many years, Barely gets any game time at all. I'm talking about the actual quality of the player - not the performance level. We've had this argument tons of times but yeah I think this squad is actually a lot better than our position in the League.
