My word does a lot of bad analysis happen in the space of a couple of bad results. I can’t control how people spew on the internet, but if you’ve been reading this site, you’ll at least have been prepared for bad results and shocks to the system.
Top 4, regardless of what you convinced yourself of, was always a stretch goal this season. The way we’ve dropped out of it with a whimper is the big killer because it felt like we’d come so far… but the fact we have been in the running this far into the season has been a big surprise to majority of Arsenal fans. If targets changed, just remember why they changed… because we improved dramatically.
We have a young manager, we have a young team, and things were never going to be simple during this final run of games. This is a painful moment drenched in 15 years of similar collapses, but don’t believe the noise when people say we’re fucked. No club is better positioned to make it back to the top than Arsenal if we stay the course. The average age of our starting 11 is 23, moments like this help players grow, and our inadequate squad will be strengthened this summer so some of the problems won’t be there next season.
Arteta’s deserves to take the heat this week, no doubt. He galaxy-brained a starting 11 that could have been far simpler. The problem he’s dealing with now is that he gambled on being able to keep the same 11 fit all season and that was naive. I liken his approach to smoking, he’s been dropping 2 boxes of Marlboro a day and every day he’s been fine, the smoking could be classed as healthy up until last week… now he’s got lung disease and it doesn’t look like there’s much that can be done about it.
Tomiyasu was the warning shot in December. Arteta didn’t rest him and every issue he’s had since stems from that one calf injury. That should have been the moment he started to rotate his squad a little smarter.
We know Kieran Tierney is injury prone, he’s apparently not shy about sharing his issues behind the scenes, so it was nuts to give him every single minute. Even crazier we let him go for a Scotland doubleheader friendly.
We know Thomas Partey had a great injury record because most of the season in La Liga is like Sunday league football. They have about 6 physically imposing games a year. We also know that Thomas travels a lot and plays on terrible pitches. How hard did Thomas hit the Partey scene after his goals put Ghana in the World Cup? Who knows. But he came back from that momentous game a broken man, dropping a 2/10 performance, before hobbling off. Point here, Sambi is capable, some minutes should have been given to him, as should some starts. Sambi should have started Crystal Palace and it shouldn’t have been a drama.
Finally, if you are going to sell Auba and roll with two strikers, you have to keep both interested. I wrote it at the time. Eddie should have been given games because two things were clear: Lacazette isn’t very fit and was going to fade. Lacazette gave up on goals and having a motivated option off the bench would have helped. All the people saying Eddie wouldn’t have scored goals for us have no idea what they are talking about. He needs rhythm in the starting 11, if he’d been given it, we’d not be talking about our lack of open play goals.
As Matt Kandela from the podcast pointed out to me on the phone yesterday, Sambi Lokonga probably played within himself in the opening 45 minutes because he twice saw what happened to Nuno Tavares when he had a bad start. In the creative world, if you beast someone for taking chances on ideas or work, they will not come to you with ambitious work the next time, they will play it safe. No one wants to be humiliated. You can’t tell me that our younger players don’t fear that pre-halftime axe, Sambi was thinking about not making a mistake, versus how to break the lines with his runs and clever passing.
Arteta is talking about the beautiful opportunity we have to take top 4. On paper, it’s possible. If we beat Southampton, fans will start imagining the promised land. I think it’s over. I don’t think there’s enough belief in the squad that they can do big things against big teams without Thomas Partey in the middle. If we’re honest, most of us expect to lose against Southampton next week.
With that in mind, it’s worth looking to the summer, because Edu will have the feelers out already.
SQUAD DEPTH
The biggest weakness in the Arsenal squad at the moment is that we’re far too dependent on the majestic skills of Thomas Partey. Yes, I have seen people calling him average, but again, this is the weakness of the internet, there are a lot of bad opinions that manage to catch light. Partey is too good, his powers of anchoring our midfield cannot be replicated. This summer, expect us to try and find players that can make the loss of him, which is now a regular occurrence, a little easier to deal with. Tielemans is on the agenda, I suspect we’re looking at Renato Sanches, Ruben Neves might be a little pricey, but no doubt he’ll be of interest as he’s an excellent player. The midfield workload needs to be shared amongst dynamic players that are mobile enough to do the system justice.
GOALS GOALS GOALS
Arsenal will sign a striker. The constant chatter about Arsenal making a mistake by not signing one is painful. On the one hand, yes, we should have signed a striker. But the truth of the matter is a little more complicated.
Firstly, we did try and sign a striker: Dusan Vlahovic. The player went where his agent told him to go. Not much you can do there. But, bigger picture here, there is a hyper-specific profile of talent we’re going after because this purchase needs to work for us for 8-9 seasons. They are looking for someone that is tall, powerful, and fast. The player has to be young. The link-up play has to be good. Plus: Goals, goals, goals.
How many of those exist in world football right now? 4 or 5? How many clubs do you think sell their top-class talents in January? Not many. The money will be the same in the summer, so why would they ruin their season for Arsenal’s needs?
Waiting on a striker hurts, no doubt, but when we land a near-world class talent in the summer, you will be grateful we didn’t blow £20m on someone that can’t do the job. You have to always remember that Arsenal are not a financial superpower in football. Cash is finite, the over-investment that happened last summer won’t continue to happen, we have to get things right.
LEFT BACK
Do not be surprised if we bolster the left side this summer. Kieran Tierney is a top player, we all love him, but he can’t be relied upon. Every season, there is a huge chunk of time he’ll be out injured. If someone offers big money for him, I suspect we’ll shift him on. Great players are no good if they are on the bench. You need consistency at left back, that isn’t going to be Kieran, especially if we make Europe.
MANAGEMENT
Mikel Arteta will also need to address some things this summer. He’s too transactional with players. That is ok when you are winning because no one notices weaknesses in a system when points are going on the board. However, things don’t always go well. One of the biggest problems they had filming war scenes on Game Of Thrones is that idle horses get bored and start causing problems. Arteta has left certain horses idle at Colney, now he needs them, they lack focus, fitness, and connection. If we’re going to be successful as a club, he needs to have coaching staff around him that can deal with the human aspect of squad planning, and actually influence him to do things that don’t come naturally. My guess is that the only way that element of his game improves is if he decides to embrace it himself, because some of these problems he’s facing now seemed so obvious, I’m a bit shocked they have to be lessons.
There’s a big test case coming up: William Saliba. All the press seem to report that he’s been out of sight out of mind. Why? Ben White and Gabriel have been poor, Saliba is now a French international, why hasn’t Arteta been talking to him? If there’s a grudge, who at the club is showing leadership and making him sort it out? I don’t expect Arteta to be Whatsapping every single loan player, but I do expect him to have relationships with those that are smashing up a league every week.
So… a miserable day, a shit weekend, but as Colin Lewin said on our podcast, things are never as good as you think, and they are never as bad.
Amen to that.
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Hello
@Ernest Reed I get the claims that Arteta is still learning, but seriously, how many games does a manager need to stop making the same amateurish mistakes? Einstein’s famous definition of insanity fits AFC’s generational one. Well, last season we were without KT due to injury towards the end of the season. This season again without KT at the end of the season. Last season Xhaka as LB was to solve that problem. It did not work. This season… you get the picture we have a manager plagued with insanity and who is incapable of learning from mistakes. Will there… Read more »
Since Christmas Lacazette has had four open play shots on target in 1000 minutes of PL football.
The black thread in clothing is trying to copy a truly genius generational person Steve Jobs and his signature black turtleneck sweater.by Issey Miyake. I t has been tried by Elizabeth Holmes and it ended very badly for her. It could be a precursor that it will be ending badly for our fraud.
Killroy-TM
“we have a manager plagued by insanity” and yet some on here see him as our saviour.
Typical Arsenal!
Pedro
Do you genuinely believe that Arteta helps to attract players to our club?
Imagine if PV4 was at the helm.
Wow! With our resources and infrastructure, we’d be purring.
I think we can safely say the seasons over unless the scrap for 5/6/7th excites you. To me Arteta looks bemused as though he doesn’t really know what’s happening. The lack of activity in the Jan window was either a plan or incompetence. Either way it was a massive mistake and the side are paying the price. What happens now is anyone’s guess.
Pedro-on the pod you said we had ‘lost our two best players’.in Tierney and Partey. Do you really believe that?
Killroy…the turtleneck passage was a chuckle of pure beauty 😂😂😂
Thanks for the link to “Arsenal fan lists all of Mikel Arteta’s ‘sackable offences'” and it is truly mind boggling that the club hierarchy doesn’t act on these facts. For me besides the obvious of squad mismanagement here are just two others: Arteta has spent a quarter of a billion euros to get us where we are now. Paying Barca to use one of our players to possibly win the EL and finish with CL next season. What would have been the damage to just keep Auba since the dressing room liked him and we pay him anyhow, if he… Read more »
Great point i heard.
Arteta has been the big man. The ruthless manager hanging Nuno out to dry.
A young boy whose confidence now must be shattered.
Yet up front Laca who has been a good presence we do admit but he has scored 1 goal in 17 games(a penalty) yet gets selected over and over again.
So one rule for Nuno and clearly another for the likes of Laca.
Fucking shameful.
Arteta’s rules are nonsensical.
It’s great on here.
When the evidence against Arteta is as clear as day, those that see it, go into overdrive, whilst those that trust in Arteta and the train wreck of a process tend to disappear and await their opportunity to pounce on anything that promotes a semblance of hope……..as long as it doesn’t show Arteta in a bad light.
The joys of LG.
preach HerbsArmy…in my earlier post about our continued organizational malaise, I spoke of the notion of us finally “exercising our demons”… in this regards, I was speaking directly about the plethora of commonly held myths that have continued to negatively impact the way in which we conduct business, both on and off the pitch…below I will state just a few of those aforementioned myths, which emerged during the latter years of Wenger’s reign and in the years immediately following, that still permeate the club and negatively effect our club to this very day: (1) that we can’t compete monetarily with… Read more »
Yes, I see that Mr Gazidis is not too popular in Milan.
Culpable in our slow and gradual decline over the years.
Could read him like a book from day 1.
Why is it that there are so many people out there getting paid vast sums and yet are shite at their job?
TRVL
Arsenal have been using the same approach to appointing managers since Chapman died in 1934, and although it has worked on a few rare occasions, overall it has failed, and yet Arsenal fans fall over themselves to get excited about a money saving ‘project’ that almost always demands yet another reset.
Herbs Army
I always find your comments very informative.👍
Thanks Graham 👍
Herb that’s what I am always worried about we have had 3 resets in the last 6 seasons it’s inevitable it will happen again in a couple of seasons
Pierre dragging the relic that is O’Sullivan into yet another conversation even though he is getting booted from the Turkish league for being an abject pleb as usual
Keep flooding that dead horse mate lol
O Sullivan ? Lol ozil Irish cousin
Hey Graham do you think PV4 is the answer ? Or just a better answer than what we have, not sure he is personally
Mertesacker is the answer
“Pedro-on the pod you said we had ‘lost our two best players’.in Tierney and Partey. Do you really believe that?”
Not a chance.
Partey , sure, but Tierney wouldn’t make anyone’s top six most important Arsenal starters.
Many on here wondered whether Tierney would get back in once fit, after the start Tavares had made.
Did anyone wonder Partey would ever lose his spot……..or Saka, White, Ramsdale………..
Pedro’s way of stretching the truth to paint the most absolving scenario.
Tierney being talked about as if we are missing prime Marcelo.
When in reality he has looked dodgy defensively for a while and so-so going forward. Players always become much better when they are unavailable/injured. We saw it so many times in the past with Diaby, Wilshere, etc.
Since his move to Barcelona, Aubameyang has scored 10 goals while Arsenal have netted 12.
The whole pre-assist/assist debate is interesting. Mostly because these stats are so vague that anyone can use them to prop up their argument. Ozil was shit because his assist dried up……..or Ozil was key because his pre-assists made it possible for Auba to score. For me it’s always been about the quality of the ball that springs the attack/makes the goal possible. Let’s be clear, a ten yard nothing sideways pass ,that doesn’t move defenders around but is followed by an assist, is not a pre-assist. And a hopeful hanging ball from a corner where ten different players have a… Read more »
If Lacazette starts on Saturday we might have to rethink our expectations for the rest of the season…
“Mertesacker is the answer”
Same guy that openly admitted to dreading playing in his last season with Arsenal, so much so that he did not want to get selected. That Mertesacker, Sid?
“If Lacazette starts on Saturday we might have to rethink our expectations for the rest of the season…”
Unless Laca is sick or injured, you can count on it. Arteta will play Laca until Laca breaks down completely and even then Arteta will blame others on the team for not being able to step up and fill that role properly.
This used to cheer me up but today it just made me feel worse. https://youtu.be/SQDz-CX5QSs Ironically both those who support Arteta and those who want him gone (me), use the league table/ position to argue the point, most notably the will we make top 4 line in the sand. But sometimes I just look at how far we’ve fallen in pure footballing terms, the way we play, and it’s so sad. I know the ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day ‘ argument and I appreciate the task in hand when he took over. But,I’m not talking about title winning here,… Read more »
“Since his move to Barcelona, Aubameyang has scored 10 goals while Arsenal have netted 12.”
NOTHING to SEE here… please move along.
G62, I think you misinterpreted the original intent of my post, as Gazidis has been nothing short of spectacular in his reinvention of the long-struggling AC Milan wheel…”In his first season as the club’s CEO, the team finished fifth in Serie A, which was its best result in six years. And just 2 seasons after, the team finished second in Serie A season 2020-2021; making them qualify to the UEFA Champions League for the first time since season 2012-2013″…as for this season, they’re currently sitting in first place…his plan to return this club to prominence has been spot on and… Read more »
“Since his move to Barcelona, Aubameyang has scored 10 goals while Arsenal have netted 12.” NOTHING to SEE here… please move along.”
He was never going to score that at Arsenal under Arteta’s rigid system – so why bother bringing it up is right.
Sal, and that’s the Barca we were all gleefully deriding just a few months ago what a shit show of a club they had become.
But Pedro preemptively settled the debate saying even if Auba scored 50 for them the rest of the way, it still was the right move.
Where do you go from that?
No striker will thrive under this system, the onus is on our wingers and attacking midfielders to bag our goals essentially.
Mertesacker an interesting one. I’ve heard some good things about him in the academy from some friends who have a very talented player.
Be good to see his progress in a few years.
Merts isn’t the answer to any of our organizational questions, except maybe if someone were to ask who was our tallest and slowest defender during Wenger’s reign….he, like MA, was brought here to be a glorified “fine cops”, as Wenger was so fragile by that point that he had to outsource his in-house player management minions…this was the natural outgrowth of the revolving door captaincy initiative, which left us devoid of any real vocal leaders
I love a friendly banter so I would be interested to know WE’s opinion on Auba after his opinion that he’s fallen off a cliff physically and there’s no way back. I was supposedly wrong on Auba.
Tom the thing is… When Ozil was in his prime he was getting the assist numbers at Real Madrid, Germany and Arsenal. And he was truly in his own class in that regard, setting records. So to think he suddenly switched to concentrate on the pre-assist is a bit silly. His numbers dropped off after his last contract for a large variety of reasons. not necessarily because his technical ability diminished.. He still had amazing touch on the ball but because his stamina and desire was much much less. You could see it when he played, he would be completely… Read more »
Written apology would do it.
That is the gist of it all.
Under Arteta’s rigid system, any striker would struggle.
The reason that Aubameyang is scoring freely is that he’s playing for a manager who knows how to play progressive attacking football.
Lacazette would thrive under Xavi.
If Xavi was Arsenal manager all our attack minded players would be benefiting.
There are some good posts but I think they are missing the point. The issue at Arsenal is the lack of ambition and accountability. Personnel is way down the list of issues. Kroenke road on the back of Wenger until he wasnt providing him with cover. And when he wasnt he sacked him. Arsenal are where we are because the Kroenkes know fuck all about football and aren’t willing to pay what it takes to win. Its a side bet and an irrelevance. All these posts are the equivalent of moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Leftside “No striker will thrive under this system, the onus is on our wingers and attacking midfielders to bag our goals essentially.” That’s my thought really. It’s all well and good giving Lacazette pelters and he isn’t good enough and we should see the back of him in the summer but it’s difficult to see an Arsenal striker really thrive under Arteta unless he changes his ways and gets the team to play in a more front footed positive manner. We will probably see Nketiah struggle as well if he is asked to start straight from the first whistle rather… Read more »
“I love a friendly banter so I would be interested to know WE’s opinion on Auba after his opinion that he’s fallen off a cliff physically and there’s no way back. I was supposedly wrong on Auba.”
The comeback for that question is simple; La liga is a very very easy league, that’s what Pedro will probably say anyways.
Scoring goals is what it’s all about.
Those players blessed with goal scoring skills will thrive if they play in the right areas.
Under Arteta, Aubameyang was often played out of position.
Lacazette is asked to do too much.
It’s like asking a defender to attack when they should be concentrating on defending.
Pep is blessed with a plethora of talent who can score goals from all over the pitch. They are also playing a progressive style of football.
I find Arteta’s methods suffocating as a fan. Imagine how the players feel.
Lacazette will go to his new club after the summer and start scoring again, he scored within minutes of his premier league debut. He’s not that bad.
Arteta does not know how to set up a system that makes his strikers thrive.
He’ll keep the same assistant manager until hell freezes over.
Anyone who thinks that Auba’s struggles had very little to do with the lack of direct football on display under the largely negative, sideways, cross heavy tactics of our novice manager, should give their heads a shake…it appears that under this model Auba’s primary role was to simply distract the opposing CBs so that we could run the wide channels and send a myriad of rather aimless crosses into a box, where we were always outmanned…of course, after awhile opposing manager’s realized that this was simply a ploy so they adjusted their respective defensive tactics, which meant that our wide-side… Read more »
Bard, although I concur with your thoughts regarding our absentee landlord’s lack of footballing knowledge, I would contend that he likewise knows jackshit about American football, yet he just won the Super Bowl….I just want to know when we’re going to be given a shot at the “all in” team building model that he currently employs with both the Rams and the Avalanche
Raptora
Auba has surprised me with how well he has done in Spain and yes, I was to some extent wrong on him being completely washed.
Having said that, I still believe that getting rid of him and his wages was the right move for us long-term. He was also terrible for us this past 18 months, something which 10 goals with Barcelona doesn’t overwrite.
Do you seriously believe we should have kept him and those wages?
”It’s all well and good giving Lacazette pelters and he isn’t good enough and we should see the back of him in the summer but it’s difficult to see an Arsenal striker really thrive under Arteta unless he changes his ways and gets the team to play in a more front footed positive manner.” You have said it yourself in the past Ishola. So much of this is due to our terrible CM and being incapable of progressing the ball directly through the middle and being overly reliant on the wings and our full-backs/wide forwards for ball progression and chance… Read more »
Reality i’ve little issue letting Auba go, bodes well for this summer window but then begs the obvious question.
Why could this manager not exact more out him to get us thru season if a replacement wasn’t available?
If there wasn’t a scorched earth track record with players i’d not think twice but we’re getting to a point where the trend quite set. Tavares looks the next after a very bright start.
Sal, I 100% approve your last post. Wenger EAGLE How can you still insist it was the right call to get rid of Auba without any replacement, even when faced with evidence that the call was wrong? We don’t get rid of his wages until the summer. We are funding his Barcelona field excursion. Was he so toxic that he had to be shipped off, … No? Was he so bad, he couldn’t find his way back, .. No. Laca has been worse and is still starting games. His problem was solely Arteta. He wasn’t squabbling with staff or other… Read more »
so true Dissenter….not to mention, the same argument many were using to crucify Auba are now being shouted in Laca’s direction….meanwhile we have no viable alternatives, whereas Auba has helped Barca fly up the charts on our dime….I’m not a big fan of the half-season loan gig if it’s taking valuable time away from those who need significant minutes for developmental purposes, but that simply wasn’t the case here
Lacca has never been a top scorer he has always been a one goal in 2-3 games for us this season it’s fallen off a cliff is this because he is leaving ? Getting older ? We way overspent on him and what’s his best ever season 19 goals in 40 plus games, he is not the answer,
Not sure I am on the camp that we will not find a striker that suits our system, I just don’t think we have one at the club
M. Serge, concur with your Laca assessment…as for our Striker problems, moving forward, I think the real difficulty will be finding someone who can come good in spite of the tactics on offer…of course, if things continue on a sideways trajectory this might become a moot point, as I can’t imagine us hiring on another rookie with a negative tactical agenda…now if MA remains, which appears more likely than not, I think it would be wise for us to target a young Striker who’s both proficient with his head and good with the ball at his feet, especially if he’s… Read more »
The problem is not with our strikers, it is with the way Arteta set our attack. We keep shifting the ball laterally with little to no penetration with both central midfield players under instructions to not wander forward. The few times, a good ball reaches our strikers in the penalty box, they knackered from all this running around and they lack the energy and composure to put the ball in the back of the net. It’s not difficult to see, look at the goals Auba scores for Barcelona and you quickly realise that he rarely received the same opportunities while… Read more »
Valentin
So true.
Why is it then that some actually believe in all this crap?
Martinez Guendouzi Saliba Nketiah Let’s see how their careers flourish ( or not) in the next couple of years.. They could have been the backbone of the Arsenal team for the next 7/8 years ….what a waste. And i still believe Martinez is the better keeper than Ramsdale. I’ve always said that Arteta’s tenure as manager could turn out to be a period of regret.. Arsenal fans will be watching every man of the match performance, every international call up , every goal that Eddie scores , and use it as a stick to beat Arteta with , just like… Read more »
Pierre
Arteta is possibly a good Number 2 but lacks the management skills at this stage in his career to become a top Number 1.
not sure why people are saying 5th is ok .It’s not for me Arteta needs to finish in the top 4 or leave .he has us in a good position but everyone can see we will now fail with two injuries to valuable first team squad players and if we are honest this is very very poor management .The very public execution of his own player in Nuno was incredibly poor judgement. There is still a chance of a fourth place finish so we can only get behind the team but again it looks like an inexperienced management fuck up… Read more »