ARTETA FIRES UP A RESPONSE, WILL HE USE IT THIS THURSDAY?

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Well, that was a little better.

Arsenal beat Sheffield United with ease.

You can say we should be beating teams like that and you’d be right… but we did not beat a similarly bad Aston Villa side last season when we had our minds on a different competition. The players didn’t show up that time because they were saw the game as a punishment fixture.

We didn’t get that performance yesterday.

Arteta showed that he’s a very good coach. He deployed an interesting system. It was a 3-2-5 moving forward,  sometimes a 3-1-6 which felt very Wenger chasing a game. Xhaka also tucked in at left-back giving us another option for accurate distro from deep.

There were little surprises all over the pitch. He shielded Dani Ceballos from himself by letting him pick up a position on the left. Saka was given a roaming #10 role, he was all over the place, picking the ball up from deep, floating left and right, even adopting centre forward positons at time.

We were dynamic in attacking, sometimes having 4-5 players running at a very confused Sheffield United.

It was pretty clunky for the opening 30 minutes, but it was a new way of playing and we didn’t have many creators on the pitch.

It clicked after a while. Our first goal was a thing of beauty, played through the middle, started by Thomas Partey, followed by some lovely interchanges with Saka, Ceballos, then finished off clinically by Lacazette.

Our second goal started with Nicolas Pepe winning a press, he powered into the Sheffield box, unleashed his classic far post shot, Ramsdale saved it, but Martinelli followed up for the tap in.

The third goal showed off the talents of Thomas Partey, the Ghanaian picked out a ball so perfect, Lacazette could get in behind and finish with a ferocious low strike.

The biggest regret of the game was that Bukayo Saka limped off with a thigh injury. The hope is that it was a dead leg, my suspicion is it’s something more serious. You could criticise his inclusion in that game, but I suspect the gamble was based on the reaction to Thursday from the fans, and the reality that the bad Liverpool loss probably contributed to that. We needed a momentum performance, you’re not getting that if you’re missing 3 creators, your captain, AND Saka.

If you’re a fan that spend Saturday crying about Arsenal dropping to 11th, you should probably pipe down about Saka’s inclusion in the starting 11. Our fans won’t tolerate dead-rubber run-outs, unfortunately.

Back to the game. There were lots of very promising performances that could be the start of something exciting.

Martinelli didn’t have his best game, but he made the runs Auba doesn’t on the left, he takes chances on lost causes, and he is way, way better at defending. He should start on Thursday. He gives far more balance to our forward line. Additionally, I love that he was given permission to move into more central positions. He wasn’t hugging the left, which made us far more threatening.

Nicolas Pepe showed the best and worst as usual, but on the balance of things, it was more of the best. His touch was rancid for the first 30, but then things started to click. He wiggled out of space, made good runs, and he gave Sheffield a torrid time. He’s an inch away from being a really problematic player for us.

Thomas Partey, on fraud watch with the section of the fanbase desperate to see him fail, dropped a proper Atleti performance. He’s just so, so fucking good. The creative part of his game, which he drops for Ghana, is starting to blossom. We need that Partey on Thursday, controlling tempo, bossing proceedings, being decisive. He was probably our most disappointing player last Thursday, he needs to avenge that.

Lacazette also proved that he is, without doubt, our best #9. Further to that, it’s clear that he cannot play with Auba. You either use Auba, a clinical #9, with runners to provide him. Or, you use Lacazette as the link-up man who brings pacey technicians into the game. We are more effective with a link-up #9, because the link-up player doesn’t have a passing interest in downing the manager.

We kept our first clean sheet in 6 years. Pablo Mari played pretty well with Rob Holding. The SPANIARD played a couple of very nice balls over the top. I think he’s preferable to the erratic Gabriel this Thursday. Cal Chambers also had a very good game, I love his volleyed crosses. He doesn’t have the pace, but defensively, he’s robust, and his final balls are very good compared to what Hector offers us.

Granit Xhaka dropped another solid performance. He did a job at left-back with commendable defending, but at the same time, causing problems for Sheffield by pushing up into midfield to become an outlet for our attacks. He’s the least of our worries right now, I wish the kids had his robustness when it comes to injuries. Guy is built from Captain America stuff.

We can’t get carried away, but, that was a performance and a much-needed one after the horrors of last 10 days.

I have no idea what the starting 11 on Thursday will look like, but if you have ESR doing what Saka did and you bring Odegaard into the mixer for Ceballos, we could do the same job, but with more precision.

We cannot fall back on players that don’t care about the project. Auba, at this point, is a liability who I wouldn’t trust to behave like a captain. Leave the job to Lacazette. He has form, he makes players around him better, and you know he’ll give to 100% in a tough away game in Prague.

Punchy write up today. Everything rests on Thursday. Pray for Saka. Pray for Martinelli who looked a bit limpy. Pray for everyone.

I want an Emery semi-final, so we can retire his fan club, Cuck FC, and move on from Bummery chat for good.

I’ll leave you with an on-the-whistle podcast with Johnny. Check out his fatherhood podcaster here. BUT, check out our football thoughts as well.

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Champagne Charlie

Rocky
Disappointing. But the mitigating factors for that are his inexperience as a manager. He’s not met my expectations of him, but I read and understood the label before the season started.

Rich
Not sure how you offer up our points tally and goals scored under Emery as a net plus and then blame player poverty for falling short in the end.

We failed to get a win vs Wolves, Palace, and Brighton. Literally one of them and we bag CL football.

Habesha Gooner

Cazorla You would think it would be a game we should be winning but we just don’t know with Arteta. Remember going out at the hands of Olympiacos last season? And I feel less confident about Arteta finding the solution with our two CAMs and Possibly Saka not being involved in the game. Pedro Whatever agenda you are trying to push, Emery has never been and will never be a chump. His first season wasn’t a disaster by any means. I just felt he was a bad fit for us in the end. Hell, Arteta is doing worse with a… Read more »

Wiglaf

Shame that so many can’t seem to let emery go.

Pierre

Prague have nothing to concern us ..if we play to our potential we will qualify… Arteta’s main priority should be to set up right defensively.. The back 4 he will choose is very difficult to predict. I get the feeling that Cedric and Gabriel are now in the naughty corner , so it could be a very similar back 4 as the shef utd game with possibly Bellerin for Chambers, personally I’d go with Chambers. Partey will play alongside Eleny, which leaves the offensive 4. I believe either odegaard or smith rowe will be back, pepe will start, martinelli will… Read more »

Dissenter

Pedro
There were many times during that 22 game stretch that the Emirates fans broke outninto spontaneous chants of “we have out Arsenal back”

You are indeed captain agenda with that suggestion that Emery’s played out of the dying Wenger Arsenal.
When we beat Spurs at home and Chelsea at home, the fans were rocking with appreciation of what he was doing.

Ultimately, he ran his course and fully deserved his exit
Arteta has delivered less and deserved to be sacked if we don’t qualify for the semis on Thursday.

Ray+in+LA

@ Pierre

I’m comfortable the team you predicted for Thursday could do the job 🙂

Tony

“Shame that so many can’t seem to let emery go.”

Hmmm you mean like you with Wenger and Wilshire?

AKBs become shallower by the day led by – take a bow Pedro.

Tony

“Habesha, he let the travel planner do a motivational speech.”

And yet Emery’s stats are better than the fraud Artetas’.

This fact alone tops anything you can say Pedro in Arteta’s defense.

Troll on, though, in support of Arteta the guy who decided he was too good to coach/manage a Euro, USA, Championship club.

Look how that’s turning out Pedro.

Optics are never good for guys (Pedro and his AKBs) who repeatedly crow about a manager who has broken all the worst possible Arsenal records for the past 50+ years.

Hilarious stuff.

Tony

AKBs Emery was Raul’s choice with Gazidis. Arteta was Raul’s choice with Vinai and Edu Not a worthy CEO or TD/DoF among them choosing our last 2 managers.Let that sink in. I absolutely wanted neither offering, but supported both during their tenures because I’m a fan and had no other choice. Emery made it to the last game of a season missing out on 4th by one point with a far poorer squad than Arteta has now. he lost a EL final that Arteta is struggling to get past Slavia Prague in the quarters. Emery got fired for being higher… Read more »

Tom

So apparently plenty of people at Arsenal want a season without Europa, but at the same time the pressure to be in it is ……..great?!?!

Who are these Arsenal people who want a break from Europe then,……the mascot and the tea lady, Pedro?

Tony

AKB = Arteta knows best Guess that fits the narratives that are also rubbish: Black is white Water is dry Cavemen live in mansions Xhaka is better than Messi Arteta is a brilliant coach and just bees more time Sid faints every time his long staff fills with blood leaving his conquests looking for selling salts. Is any of that true? Not sure about the Sid analogy, but the rest would be supported by Arteta AKBs. Wenger AKBs are a different breed to the Arteta AKBs as in Pedro’s case being on the right side leading the anti Wenger AKBs… Read more »

Tony

needs* So what did Arteta do after winning the FA cup? Proceeded to believe in his hype and give us our worst season for 50+ years. Kind of shows what a fluke winning the cup was for Arteta or he would have us in the mix for top 4 now. To be honest he might have been had he kept Emi in his rich vein of form which continued with Villa even though he was working with players he’d never played with before. I feel we would have been at least 3 wins better off with Emi in goal giving… Read more »

Dark Hei

Tony

That is going a bit far. We did beat Mourinho at least, that should count for something.

China1

Arteta had a good first season and thus far a pretty dreadful second one. Any other conclusion unless we perform miracles in the league now and win the EL is not to be taken seriously And Pedro we both know emery did luck out in his good start. We didn’t play anything like wenger’s arsenal. It was a lot of battling displays, tough defensive play and nicking decisive goals on the break. We physically man handled teams like Burnley which was never wengers style and that winning period was defined by lots of very early proactive and effective subs Bag… Read more »

China1

We both know emery didn’t luck out*

China1

If the start of emery’s tenure was luck (it wasn’t) seems quite fair to say artetas was too last season (it wasn’t) Because over a span of 50 games that late season form last year was our exception to the rule of artetas form which has this season varied between dog shit, sporadic and decent with most of the season falling into the former two labels, including recently. There is no need to run PR on any of this. Arsenal won’t pay you for it. They aren’t reading this blog. Just like arteta won’t pay you for pretending emery was… Read more »

Habesha Gooner

Pedro Well his travel planner had motivated these players to better results it seems. I am not batting for Emery. In the end the team looked like shambles. He wasn’t a good fit for what we wanted. But I don’t like the hypocritical stuff that is going around here. Arteta isn’t being held to the same standards. He has a better squad. And the results are worse. And he is having to do it with out fans in the stadium to put pressure on him. He is a lucky guy in my eyes because that losing run before December would… Read more »

China1

Pedro you bring up emery’s crappy xG now but who can forget the moment he got fired and arteta came in you totally stopped talking about it. Dead silence on the xG front in the first half of this season.

Can’t begin to imagine why. I haven’t checked but I assume our xG was great before Christmas right?

Tony

Dark Hei
Too far? Did I say anything that wasn’t true? 🙄

China1

People are playing a straw man game suggesting we all love bumery He was sacked for failing. That’s a fact which give or take *everyone* endorsed. What annoys people is that people pretend he literally did zero good things in his first half a season (patently a lie) and that he’s done nothing throughout any of his career to warrant a reputation as someone who can in fact manage football teams even if not a club as big as arsenal or PSG. Meanwhile said people are falling over themselves to excuse the shit show we’ve been served by arteta this… Read more »

China1

People doing two foot lunges studs up on emery’s name whilst lightly caressing mikel’s ballsack

It’s weird and it makes absolutely no sense

Tony

What you’re suggesting is like totalling your Porsche and saying it’s ok because the steering wheel doesn’t have a scratch on it.

But, we’ll, yeah beating Mourinho does count as one of a very few glory moments for the un enlightened one add that to the FA cup I guess.

It’s funny beating Emery in the semi doesn’t in any way be more than a bragging rights game.

It certainly won’t be a proclamation of Arteta being the better manager or a career defining moment for the spiv manager making him capable of taking us to the top level.

Habesha Gooner

China That is what I am saying. I wanted Emery sacked after an away Watford performance long before he was sacked. I gave him enough time. It annoys me that when you mention anything good ever did, people either call you are an Emery fan or you are batting for him. And we mention him because pedro thought he was such a bum of a manager. And Arteta is getting worse results. And it is not like we can hang our hopes on performances that the results will get better. They are too inconsistent. We haven’t had a string of… Read more »

Tony

Regardless of what Arteta achieves in the EL cup, it can’t gloss over all his ever increasing negatives. Apparently the club is 8th in the wealth list worth £2+ billion and we have a rookie manager, a rookie TD, a rookie CEO and rookie American owners as far as European football is concerned. No scouting network to speak of and mostly back room staff who have won little or nothing of note bringing that vast lack of experience to guide the inexperienced manager/ head coach. It’s like a fictional channel 4 football soap drama rather than a £2 billion enterprise.… Read more »

Wiglaf

I’m not going to defend Arteta. He’s made too many of the same mistakes over and over again and the football has been shocking for most of it. But….. Emery was lucky in his 22 game run. Not every game. But many. We were just as shit for much of it as we have been under Arteta only our forwards were much more efficient and we had Cech, Holding and Torreira in fine form at the back. As soon as they got injured the team fell apart. Funnily enough our best form under Arteta has included any keeper other than… Read more »

asad

testing

Tony

Wiglaf
I’m not proclaiming Emery to be anything more than his record suggests – more a cup winning manager than a serial league title winner.

Like you, Emery was not my choice, as my Saturday post explained at length.

Any man who has accomplished what Emery has in football should be afforded respect.

The same as I highly respect Wenger for his first 10 odd years and will always defend Wenger up to and including his Invincibles’ season.

After that I saw Him as detrimental to the club’s league title aspirations.

Sid

Emery is the past Mertesacker the future

asad

sad to see what’s happened arsenal so far down the table with just moments of good football UE failed MA is failing harder we’re just going to have to deal with that odd that nearly a year and a half since UE was sacked, he’s still mentioned in the post here once or twice a week or so shocking/brilliant display of trolling to keep bringing up UE to deflect from the present anyway, focusing on the future, hope MA learns how to get the job done or at least gets lucky enough to win the EL we need to stay… Read more »

Valentin

What grates a lot of people is Pedro constant insulting of Emery in order to big Arteta when both the results and the performances do not warrant such narrative. If Emery was a bum, then what does that make Arteta? An arrogant narcissist ultra bum? Emery was the wrong fit for Arsenal as he is unable to manage a strong dressing room full of players with big ego, but at least his previous success in Spain lead to his job at PSG. When Arteta finishes at Arsenal, I doubt he would get a job in the Championship! He won’t be… Read more »

Kroenkephobe

I simply don’t get the rabid antipathy in some quarters on here towards Emery. He had some pedigree and was hired on the strength of that. Ultimately he failed and had to go. I’m sure it upset him at least as much as it did us (I agree that the Watford away game was abysmal). But comparing our current and former managers is a false dichotomy of the first order and doesn’t move the discussion forward. Compare tets to another currently serving newcomer at another large club if you must, but the Emery fascination is a bit tedious as is… Read more »

Goobergooner

Wenger eagle. Well said mate. In need of a repeat from the other day. “It’s happened gradually but in fifteen years we have regressed from a club that challenges for top honours, i.e the Premier League title and the Champions League, to a midtable club. The decline began and metastasised under Wenger but we have undoubtedly gotten even worse under Emery and Arteta. Two wrongs don’t make a right having said that so I’ll never understand how the Wenger obsessives believe that sacking him wasn’t the right thing to do based on two terrible coaching hires since that have been… Read more »

Goobergooner

Also are Sheffield better than Slavia?!?!

Danny S

In Wengers glory years he never had to contend with City and Chelsea and Liverpool as they are now. Even Leicester and Everton being as good.

He had Man U then Chelsea and that’s when he started to struggle and top 4 became a thing. Then last 2 seasons he couldn’t even achieve that.

His weaknesses were laid bare when you look at our European record.

Ustyno

Emery is bummery while Arteta is generational

When you thought you’ve heard or seen it all then you visit le-grove and you just become a learner

Danny S

Arteta is just a rookie maki g rookie mistakes and learning on the job.

Unfortunately he’s a rookie at arsenal and while his intentions are all good, he’s actually in danger of setting us even further back regarding playing squad.

Terraloon

Tony Just spent ( wasted ) a few minutes looking at the. monies KSE have “ invested” in their Arsenal project . The more you dig the more of a concern things are. We know that they spend a wedge buying out everyone bar Usmanov but when you factor in the £550 million they borrowed over two years to get their hands on that last 30% it shouldn’t be underestimated just how much they have shelled out. The paying off two of the bonds should ultimately help cash flow in the very short term but the suggestion from some is… Read more »

Tony

Terraloon In loose terms I’ve always thought Stan wouldn’t let his investment drop below his set profit margin targets. Barring war breaking out in Europe where Putin’s sabre rattling turns ugly, Stan’s investment is safe. Peace seems to becoming increasingly fragile these days. My Kroenke disillusionment comes from them watching the same mistakes being made from top to bottom: Arteta being the last addition to mismanagement for at least a decade. In some ways we’re lucky to have Stan to mop up our loses from their chosen leaders. Wonder how long or how many further mop ups are going to… Read more »

Rich

KSE paid roughly £1,050,000,000 for Arsenal The club is valued at just over £2 billion Before COVID, they’d made roughly £950 million from their 13 yr association with Arsenal They’ve taken £6 million “consultancy fees”, and the club also paid the legal fees for their takeover Even if this pandemic costs the club £200 million? They’ve still got £750 million equity tied up in the club It’s the reason I don’t think KSE can allow us to drift further into obscurity Arsenal can’t afford to invest money into the playing staff, but KSE can’t afford not to invest in the… Read more »

Terraloon

Rich. I am a lightweight when it comes to trying to get in the mind of a billionaire or indeed trying to understand tax provisions I did find it interesting the KSE didn’t have the cash to guarantee the money borrowed to buy Usmanov out indeed it was Kronkes wife who guaranteed the loan. Looking at those Forbes valuations the “ profit” that both Man City and Chelsea owners have on paper achieved for their investment outperforms the numbers suggested for KSE and going forward they both seem far better placed at this point in time than Arsenal. From what… Read more »

Rich

I still think the best model for Arsenal is developing younger players, buying players at the bottom and middle of the market, and selling at the top of the market Investing in older players with no resale value And Investing big wages into experienced players, hoping to see a return from that investment on the pitch, really hasn’t worked Wenger’s original philosophy of: “We don’t buy superstars, we make them” Is what we should go back to Wenger lost his magic in the transfer market in his latter years, we desperately need talented scouts and data analysts, who can identify… Read more »

NORG

Rich
Uncle Stan’s worth is currently dropping like a stone. I wouldn’t mind being a pound behind him and when you reach his level of worth it fluctuates regularly. Currently he is probably in the cautious stage with all of his ventures.
His sports franchises are manageable in the US but AFC is probably giving him nightmares.