Gooooooood morning! Arteta dropped some intel about some of the reasons we struggled early in the season.
DEADWOOD DEEPSTATE. Think I stole that from someone on the Arsenal Vision Podcast. Now it is mine.
The allusion was that certain players that aren’t here now were the problem.
I cannot imagine which part-time social media manager on £350k a week that could have been?
I cannot imagine which binned players might have been causing those issues?
I cannot imagine which players exiting might also have had a role?
The mess of the squad at the start of the last season led to dramatic decisions. Those decisions against big names were obviously going to hit the morale of the squad. You’ve all worked with a dickhead who hands their notice in and determines to burn the house down.
‘THIS PLACE IS A HELLISH VACUUM OF PUSS THAT IS GOING ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM’
Actual quote from Sandra from accounts at my place.
The biggest issue, Mesut Ozil, was a problem because he was the king. Everyone knows that when the King is dethroned, you have to kill him, because their prior power will always be a threat to stability. The German was too big for Arsenal at that point, he was hurt by the rejection, so it was clear he’d be a problem internally and externally.
Form has picked up since we rid the squad of bad eggs. Things have been better since we discovered the power of creativity in our midfield. We controlled games far better with Thomas Partey in the side.
Everyone is whining on about how 23 games of form doesn’t count for anything. Well, let’s see how that pans out next season, but also dig a little deeper into some other elements.
Leicester beat us with their only run into our box. We smashed them at their place.
Fulham beat us without having a shot on target.
Wolves didn’t deserve to beat us chance. Self inflicted Wolves.
Spurs beat us off 5 attempts at our goal and 30% possession. It was palmed off as ‘genius’ at the time, but let’s be real, it was luck as shown by Jose exiting the building a few months later.
Burnley beat us off 2 shots on target.
Everton beat us twice.
Villa beat us twice.
Basically, a lot of very lucky stuff happened against some very average teams this season.
Turn 3 of the above games into more positive results and the last game of the season sees Arsenal in Champions League spots in our worst ever season.
Hardly a stretch, right?
Think how much better life will be if we have a settled squad come the summer. Creative players from the start. An Auba not dealing with family issues and malaria. Young players a season on.
Arsenal will sell a whole collection of players. I’m not sure reading the praise of the manager is indicative of who we are keeping, it’s a negotiation tactic. Do we really think Madrid believe their future hinges on Odegaard? Doubtful… but it’ll pump his price. Same for the players Mikel is saying are under contract. We are less desperate this summer, which will lead to bigger fees (or actual fees).
Arsenal will no doubt try and make Martin a centre piece of our rebuild this summer and I’d agree with that. I’d certainly prioritize him over the Norwich fella at £450m or whatever they are looking to charge for him.
Then we’ll go for a right back, which has basically been a dead position all season. A nightmare for many reasons, but mainly because we’re lopsided when we attack. If we can bring Tierney levels to the right, it opens a whole world of possibilities.
Ryan Bertrand is perfectly acceptable cover on the left (Leicester after him, so should be safe).
Then we need to address that midfield. I have no idea who we’ll look for in that role, but hopefully we have another press resistant player that can move in the role.
Shake out the deadwood this summer.
Have a 6 week preseason and bond the leaner group.
Make sure everyone is excited and knows their own personal plan.
There will be no excuses next season, but I don’t believe there will be a need for them.
The players are backing the manager. Look at the vibes in the training ground video for David Luiz’s send off.
The club is going to bat for the first team again this summer.
I think we’re on the up.
Final word for the Edu story doing the rounds. The gist is he was taking orders from someone banned from Brazilian football for corruption when he was over there. I don’t understand enough detail to give a running commentary, but the basics are pretty clear, he took orders, he knew who from.
Arsenal relevance:
- It shows real lack of leadership to keep quiet when things like that are going on. The guy giving orders was behaving like Pablo Escobar from jail. Shocking stuff.
- Subservience to shady characters is clearly part of his operating system.
Speaking up about tough things that don’t feel right is part of any big job. I’d say ‘imagine if that was Arsenal’ but let’s be honest, we’ve seen people fail to speak truth to power in our football braintrust to great cost. Shocking deals, cosy agent relationships, huge wastage that a layman could have predicted.
This story is a bad reflection on Edu, but an even worse one on our leadership. Did anyone check in with people that had worked with him to see if he was a determined leader, or a soft touch people pleaser?
I doubt anything will come of it, but at the very least, I hope Vinai V, Richard G, and Josh K are keeping an extra close eye on who we are talking to this summer. The number 1 interest should always be Arsenal FC, that clearly hasn’t been the case with a lot of the decisions we’ve made over the past 4 years. The weaknesses on show in this story aren’t hard to trace back to some if the things we’ve seen at Arsenal (subservience). It is also a worry that he can be so comfortable working with a man of corruption. It’s a canary in the coal mine. Let’s hope we’re not on the receiving end of one of these stings in the future.
1st ?
Holy shittt I did it !!
Not sure how significant the abedul story is. I’ll rate him on how effective he is for us.
How many can I get in ?
Edu story
And about Edu , it was not only him it was the whole Brazilian FA . It doesnt incriminate him , he wasnt really in charge of the finances was he ?
Pedro There’s no point Arteta bluffing that we don’t want to sell our dross Nobody is going to believe him, we’re desperate to clear the decks, and the whole world knows it Our main focus this summer should be a coherent and balanced squad of much better quality, and to assemble that squad ASAP, we really can’t afford a slow start, we’ve got to be bang at it from the off The sooner we get players out, the sooner we can get new ones in We’ve currently got 17 non homegrown players, and 8 homegrown, which is our limit Every… Read more »
I think it would send a really positive message if we could nail a couple of our main targets as soon as the TW opens.
“I think we’re on the up.”
Absolutely agree we will move from either 10th or 9th to 8th. Great improvement for Arteta but not for AFC and its supporters.
Basically, a lot of very lucky stuff happened against some very average teams this season.
Why don’t you go f*ck yourself Peter woods
“There will be no excuses next season, but I don’t believe there will be a need for them.“
Pedro, this made me smile after having read the litany of excuses that preceded that sentence.
petey he lost to UNAI EMERY in a EUROPEAN SEMI FINAL stop with this lets whitewash Arteta’s record stuff.
big game came and he fell flat on his face TWICE.
If these players were being a major disruption then why didn’t Super Arteta stop them training with the rest of the first squad and isolate them?
I suppose at least we’ll see some new excuses for Arteta first half of next season.
Edu hmmmm
Luiz, Willian, Cedrac and Pepe deals smell
‘THIS PLACE IS A HELLISH VACUUM OF PUSS THAT IS GOING ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM
Pedro
Did sexy seductive Sandra mean to say ‘pus’ or was she being vaginocentric and missed off the ‘Y’?
If its the latter, how do I get a job at your place?
Marc, HR applies to football as well.
Rich, not as desperate as last season. We have money, don’t need to sell to spend, and there’s no pandemic (well, nearly)
LA Liga going bonkers, both Madrid teams have conceded.
Tom, positive thinking.
Our time is coming.
Pedro
Yes HR applies but if the players are being paid and given training (just separately to the core first team squad) then there’s very little they can do.
If it wasn’t like this then any player not included in the playing squad would have a legitimate claim against the club.
Here is a very applicable German proverb: “Wenn das kleine Wörtchen “wenn” nicht wäre, wären wir alle Millionäre” English translation: “If it weren’t for the little word “if”, we’d all be millionaires. Application, If Arsenal had a competent manager they would finish top 4 as Ian Darke predicted at the beginning of the season, but reality hit home. Therefore come to grips with the reality that Arteta is not a competent manager so mid-table it will be next season unless AFC is Arteta-less. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Pedro you can do all your wishing but with Arteta… Read more »
Clutching at straws
Pedro “We have money, don’t need to sell to spend, and there’s no pandemic (well, nearly)” Agree of the pandemic (thank fuck!) but we have money? £70 odd million accumulated losses between 16/17 and 18/19, losses of £47 million for last season with next to no pandemic effect and the current season is going to show those losses plus the loss of £90 – £100 million in match day income. We do not have money – we’re fucking broke. Now the Kroenke’s may be willing to guarantee the club borrowing money but that will be shown as another liability on… Read more »
Hi Pedro,
As much as I haven’t heard or seen the recordings about Edu’s convo, in a country like Brazil where violence is rife, you can’t blame people who take orders to survive.
Because one false step means you could be lying flat on your back, with a clip in your skull, and your final thoughts are about how you might’ve done things differently.
Pedro
You are really clutching straws to white wash Arteta’s record.
How many shots did we have against Chelsea and we got three points.
How many shots did we have against Crystal Palace in our 3-1 win?
Bertrand and Odegaard? Thank Percy’s right testicle that Pedro isn’t in charge of our transfer window this summer.
No to Odegaard. Real send players on loan for obvious reasons. For every Bertrand-like signing, they should deduct one place from our target league position be it top 4, 6 or 8.
Should be saving some excuses for August….
Should be saving some excuses for August.
“Should be saving some excuses for August….”
So true he just had to say it twice!
From an article that sums up my thinking and many others here about the 2020/2021 Arsenal season: https://www.football365.com/news/arteta-arsenal-kane-tottenham-real-madrid-transfer-mailbox QUOTATION: “I just read that perhaps it might be time to reassess Arteta. It’s an interesting question to ask. Apparently, Arsenal are third in the league since December, a 23-game period – more than half a season. But does it mean we have to reassess Arsenal’s season? No. Such a run certainly bodes well for the future, especially if they can get necessary reinforcements in the summer window, but it makes very little difference in the context of this season. This season… Read more »
Oh dear.
What about all those lucky results that went in our favour. Those games where we had no possession but picked up a point or three. It goes both ways.
I suppose we put those games down to an Arteta master class. 🙄
Left
No it doesn’t we ignore the bad shit which is no mean feat bearing in mind the enormous steaming Everest sized pile of it and focus on made up stuff.
The evidence that “Form has picked up since we rid the squad of bad eggs.” is tenuous at best. Form picked up on Boxing Day when Arteta,, because of absences and injuries, was basically forced to rely on young creative players against Chelsea. Arsenal then went on a run of 5 or 6 games unbeaten before Ozil left. The best run of results during the season. The improved form is more strongly linked to the use of Smith-Rowe and subsequent loan signing Odegaard as center attacking mids.. A point that Ozil actually made in a tweet when complementing Smith-Rowe on… Read more »
yeah, gone so deep , willing to murder reputations of Brazilian and German.
Stockholm Syndrome love
If the theory goes we should win more home games next season because there’s fans in the stadium then surely it works both ways and we should lose more away games because they’ll have their fans in the stadium . Can’t have it both ways . Some of these metrics for why we’ll be better next season is utter nonsense it’s all just wishful thinking . All if , buts and maybes everything we can improve on so can every other side . Put whichever signing you like in attack and they’ll still be stuck in arteta’s rigid structure ,… Read more »
With all the back and forth over lucky or unlucky results, there’s one question that should still be asked.
Did we actually play good , entertaining football this season?
If our bad form was down to ozil putting out a few fucking tweets then goodness me you really got to question arteta’s mentality
Bac
Do you really need or want someone to answer that?
@Bac
The football was so entertaining that I switched to the Trans Tasman and Pro14 Rainbow Cup Rugby competitions at least there was excitement while at the Arsenal matches there was anxiety when the ball was at Leno’s feet and frustration in front of the opposition’s goal when they couldn’t finish major chances. Had to protect my physical well-being and take care of my health first.
Arteta is a very poor judge of character
He was bigging up Mustafi and still giving games when it was cL,ear the German was part of the Ozil crowd, That Mustafi would publicly post about not doing enough for Ozil says a ,to.
…all the while, a certain French lad who reported early was forced to play games with the U-23s.
The Kroenkes are bad owners, no other owner would give a rookie manager so much power. In the NFL, the club general manager has those powers.
Bacary
What you need is a referral from Pedro to an ophthalmologist to do a cornea transplant for you.
Then it will all be clear how entertaining our football has been.
So entertaining that gooners are going celibate these days.
Pedro said he doesn’t have all the details
…but he still put the knife into Edu
That’s the deep state for ya.
Marc
Haha-might have been a rhetorical question!
La liga officials doing everything they can to rig the title race
Suarez wins the La.Liga for ATM.
Atleti win!
“Spurs beat us off 5 attempts at our goal and 30% possession. It was palmed off as ‘genius’ at the time, but let’s be real, it was luck as shown by Jose exiting the building a few months later.” The trouble is Pedro when you then look at the 1-0 win at SB these were the stats. Arsenal possession 32% attempts Chelsea 19 Arsenal 5 Or what about the 0-0 at Leeds . Leeds 67% attempts 25 , Arsenal 9.? How about the 1-1 with Southampton their possession 65% 13 attempts compared with Arsenal 9? Or the 2-1 WHU win… Read more »
That’s a £40m + £1 player for you!
Great story over in La Liga, Suarez again coming up with the winner. Cost them 6m, lol.
Simeone adds to his legend.
Suarez is the new RVP
Agree of the pandemic (thank fuck!) but we have money? £70 odd million accumulated losses between 16/17 and 18/19, losses of £47 million for last season with next to no pandemic effect and the current season is going to show those losses plus the loss of £90 – £100 million in match day income.
Marc
And the money that the government lent the club. To suggest that the club is in a healthy financial position is bonkers.
Messi will be even more furious with Barcelona for letting Suarez leave against his wishes.
At least Suarez helped to stop Real winning
Torreira won a title!
Good Fuck Bara and their way of doing things.
Glad this bit them in the arse.
Good for Suarez
So did Trippier.
More than Spurs since……..
Ronald Koeman deserves the sack for that singular reason
He was trying to reduce Messi’s power base and effectively gave the title away before a single game was played.
Terraloon, we controlled the game against Chelsea and showed Leicester the way the week after in the final when they did the same thing. Form team in Europe and Champions League finalists. Our bad luck has massively outweighed our luck this season. Most things prior to Christmas were bad. Most games post Xmas, bar City/Liverpool, we’ve been the better side. Behind the scenes numbers all suggesting this team is close to banging. I think next season is going to be good. Great to Atleti win La Liga after everyone called Simeone a dead manager a few months ago. Unreal achievement.… Read more »
I wonder if it’s too soon for Xavi
Barca will look at how the Pirlo show went down at Juve and seek a manager with experience. They can always find another Argentine manager from South America to manage them for one season.
maybe Torreria will want to stay and pine for a move permanently?
We really didn’t light up the league this year cos of the bad eggs, so bad that we did nothing worthy of note after axing them. Didn’t we lose europa because mesut ozil?
Guns of SF
Nope he’s not a regular. Atetlico were linked to another La Liga CM recently. Can’t remember his name
Torreira likely ends up in Serie A for a couple of years before returning to South America
Come on Lilie…..and Milan if they can bother to turn up tomorrow
Congrats to Atm
(Didn’t miss Thomas Partey clearly.)
What is so bloody difficult that Arsenal can not appoint a manager of similar calibre?
Imagine Simeone whining about ‘rotten apples’ derailing his season after finishing 9th?
Pitiful.
Good on Torreira winning the league too
Diet pep would ask 34 yr old Suarez to press or play him on the left wing
Im telling you for free!
Lille win tomorrow will mean that out of the top 5 Euro leagues that there will have been 4 new champions from last season.
Pulling for Milan to pull it out the bag tomorrow Bati.
Wouldn’t put a penny on it though. Think Atalanta will win.
Fuck Milan as Ivan is there the wanker did nothing for this club
Good one from Pedro. Arteta is doing a good job under difficult circumstances and the indications are there will be a marked improvement in results come August. I’ve tried to understand why reason and logic doesn’t work with the whiners and wailers, why they get angry and blow their tops. I put it down to an inbuilt pessimism. But now I realise they have an additional problem: an egocentric viewpoint that does not allow any other. I’ve tried to understand why logic and reasoned argument doesn’t work with the whiners and wailers, why they get angry. lose theirdismiss reasoned argument,… Read more »
Pedro
I have absolutely no idea what game you watched but suggesting that Arsenal controlled that game is just not the case. Yes there was defensive organisation but come off it they had far more of the play, far more possession and far more chances.
EB the Troll…
Logic and Reason that tells you that anyone can play FB and that Grealish isn’t all that?
Looks more like insanity to me.
Terra, controlled it so well that xG (the stat that used to matter but now doesn’t for some reason) was Chelsea 1.85, Arsenal 0.59. Shots 19 to 5, shots on target 5 to 2. That’s Emery level of ‘control’.
I’m delighted we won at SB but no way in hell we controlled the game. Lets not kid ourselves. The goal we scored was an error by Chelsea ( albeit a forced one). Some good last ditch defending and top class defending kept them at bay. Lets not pin this as a masterclass by Mikel.
It doesn’t matter who we’re playing against we shouldn’t allow the opposition 72% possession and 19 shots.
top class goalkeeping*
I’m beginning to suspect that either eb is Pedro posting under another guise – it must be lonely being the only one who loves Arteta or even worse eb is some mutated bastard Pedro / Arteta lovechild.
Kroenkephobe
When is the loan repayment due to the Government – it’s got to be soon?
If that’s ‘englandsbest’ I’d hate to meet ‘englands worst’, may as well pack up and leave.
Seems like Luiz was loved by the players especially the young ones as stated by Arteta many times.
Marc
Clearly logic and reasoned argument don’t work with you 😂
Andy
There are far too many blinkered views being taken.
I am not one for saying that teams have to play a certain way because of tradition but some of the performances dished up have been dire and had crowds been in attendance then they wouldn’t have been in attendance
.People rightly criticised Mourino for parking the bus but Arteta reverting to a game plan when coming up against top teams is so devoid of ambition for me it says more to me about his lack of confidence in the squad.
Marc
In 9 days.
In attendance they wouldn’t have been cheering
Terraloon
So right about the time ST revenue will be coming in – unless Kroenke is going to back us I can’t see us spending much at all this summer and yet you get people talking about signing Grealish etc.
It doesn’t matter if you are Arteta in or out what is concerning to me, is our dull dull insipid football especially at home.. That needs to improve drastically for me to get behind the IN brigade
Just read the post.
It reminded me of the old joke.
If alcohol can damage your short term memory…..imagine what alcohol could do!
Marc From what I read the Kronkes potentially carried out a slight of hand when re arranging the stadium debt whilst there was certainly a short term benefit in that the £30+ Million that had to be kept on deposit would be released the need for Stan to pay off the short term loan he took to buy out Usmanov potentially all was swept into one loan which AST certainly have concerns about. The £120 million loan is highly unlikely to have been cleared more likely it’ along with the other sums have been consolidated into one super debt albeit… Read more »
AC. May 22, 2021 17:05:25
Basically, a lot of very lucky stuff happened against some very average teams this season.Why don’t you go f*ck yourself Peter woods
Ac
Pedro’s company are always looking to recruit
Fun, articulate, original thinkers like you.
You should apply
Terraloon I’ve been saying much the same for a couple of weeks now. It really is an attack from several fronts. We lost £47 million last season after missing out on match day revenue for 4 matches due to COVID. ST holders already had 2 credits to carry over because of Arteta’s poor performance, those 4 matches ticket revenue etc probably about £10 – £12 million. This current season we’ve lost match day revenue of £90 – £100 million. Now the club did offer ST holders the option of taking back the money they were owed on cup credits or… Read more »
If Odegaard is our marquee signing this summer then I have very little optimism for next season.
Hi Almunia Echoing your earlier piece, I wrote something about the lack of truth and consistency when it comes to analysis of our games and the failure to hold the club’s owners, senior administrators and managers to account. But guess what? Yeah mate it got nixxed. So here’s a poser. What are your 3 best and 3 worst things about this season. Here are mine (neither set is in any particular order). 1 Balogun signing 2 Beating Chelsea at home (we were fucking shit in the away game) 3 Changing lyrics of songs to make them about Arsenal And the… Read more »
Ideal day of football tomorrow looks like:
PL:
– We beat Brighton.
– Leicester beat Spuds, close-ups of Spud knuckle-draggers in tears knowing Beavis is gone and St Totteringham’s Day is back on the menu with a bang.
– Citeh beat Everton.
– Villa shithouse result vs Chavs causing them to miss out on top 4.
Serie A:
– AC Milan and Napoli both win their games sentencing Juventus and Ronaldo to Thursday night football.
Ligue 1:
-Lille to beat Angers and win the league.
Not too much to ask, right?
Steve Bould has been sacked !!!
U23 Team had a very poor season finishing 10th.
So, according to Arteta, it looks like it’s the players not at the club presently who are to blame for such a poor season.
It’s the fault of AMN, Torr, Guendouzi, willock, mustafi, martinez, ozil, kolasinac and Sokratis apparently.
A classic case of passing the buck, probably the best example of passing we’ve had all season.
And there was I thinking that football was all about the 90 minutes on the pitch , apparently not , as that group of players haven’t played more than a handful of league games between the lot of them.
Kroenkephobe How are things? Doesn’t feel like the end of the season at all. Normally I don’t like this,facing into a few months without Arsenal playing but the truth is our season was over a long time ago. I never bought into the Europa as a means of rescue. Also this summer is a real crossroads for both club and manager,I’m eager to see what lies ahead. Ok difficult challenge. 3 best 1. ESR, I love him even though I don’t think he should start regularly yet, he ticks all the boxes so far. This is the year he emerged,… Read more »
Kroenkephobe
And btw I rate your lyric adaptations ahead of my own so I’m going to be working on closing that gap!