Well good morning my dearest, dearest of chums.

What do I want to talk about today?

Last season’s table since Christmas. I wrote about it a lot because the first 38% of the season was dreadful, but the second 62% of the season was really, really decent. I wrote this after we beat Brighton.

The final 24 games of the season also post a cheery outlook. 2nd most points. 2nd best defensive record. 3rd most goals.

If you are looking for signs of life and you can’t feel a heartbeat in ‘6 points off 4th place, with the 2nd best form over the final 24 games after we made pointed changes at Christmas’, I honestly can’t help you.

If you thought the first 14 games were relevant enough to merit sacking Arteta, I can’t listen to you tell me the 24 games after count as a mathematical sleight of hand. Again, just to remind you, I understand that the league is 38 games, but we’re searching for light, I’m not trying to convince you we actually won a trophy.

This landed quite the reaction from certain quarters:

ANON 1:

I was thinking more about sacking Arteta pre Christmas after we went through a horrific barren run to get in a clearly better manager. Again I don’t really buy into the whole upward trend post Christmas nonsense cause there was still inconsistent performances embarrassing defeats and struggles along the way.

I will say what actually might save the god awful manager might be the fact that while we fail to make an actual smart decision on him we’ve missed out on Nagelsmann, Rose, Marsch and possibly Galtier. Might be left with a scenario where Fonseca, Allegri or I dunno Rangnick might be the only ones left.

Should have sacked him pre Christmas during that period and made a move for Marco Rose before he committed to Dortmund.

Ouch.

There were people who thought Arteta hadn’t changed anything in 24 games and he’d be gone by the following Christmas.

ANON 2:

Arteta needed to go, but instead of taking the hard decisions now, so that the new manager could have the summer to peopare the squad, we’ve decided to drag our feet and keep him until December next year so not only content with sabotaging this season, we want to sabotage next season by keeping Arteta on.

Why does Arteta deserved to be kept on?

The silence is deafening.

There were the out and out doomers:

ANON 3:

However next season when the situation will stabilise (no COVID, people in stadium, …), I do expect us to be back in mid table mediocrity between 6th and 10th. That’s exactly where the underlying stats and performance point.

ManCity, ManUtd, Chelsea, Liverpool will be back to proper level of performance.
Leicester also played in Europe this season, so I see no reason why next season should provoke a dip in performance and result. If they recruit smartly like it look they are doing in getting B Soumaré.
WestHam may be impaired by having mid European competition.
Spurs are going to treat that 3rd tier European Cup as an hindrance and plays kids and fringe players.

So of the club above us, I can see us overtaking WestHam or Spurs. However from the clubs that finished below is, I do expect Everton to have a better season.
If Leeds recruits well, they could become a force.
AstonVilla have in their academy a player ready to explode and lessen the impact of Grealish injury. Basically with Grealish Aston Villa is a top half club without they are hovering above relegation.

Where are we 11 months later after those great non-data-driven predictions?

Sitting in 4th with the run in our hands.

So why do I bring this up? Because football requires a bit of vision in 2022.

10 years ago, you could hire Antonio Conte, spend £50m, and put on a title charge. 2022, you just can’t do that. Why? Because you need more than money, you need to be smart.

The two best teams in the world, City (richest) and Liverpool, both have a long-term vision, both have a strategy, and both are ruthless about delivering on their philosophy.

The biggest mess heads in world football?

PSG: No footballing vision, no recruitment plan outside STAR PLAYER NOW, and no control over club culture. The teenagers loved their summer signings, but most saw what was coming, a disaster of a season again.

Manchester United: Again, the strategy is BIG NAMES. They nearly had a bit of a vision under OGS who wanted to sign young exciting players that cared about the club… but then they signed Ronaldo, a 37-year-old past his prime, and it crashed everything. None of their players make sense, they’re just expensive. The idea that Ten Hag is going to come and fix that squad in one window, again, is extremely fanciful. Ralf Rangnick is one of the best squad builders in the game, he says they need 10 players and 6 years to get to the Liverpool standard. Why would he be wrong? Some fans don’t believe him, but really, why should you believe the truth of someone that has never worked in football, let alone United? It took Liverpool 5 years to get to their standard, if Rangnick is 50% wrong, United are still 3 years away.

Barcelona: This is a club that didn’t look after the basics when it had the greatest player of all time. Now he’s gone, the curtain has been drawn, and no one knows what they are doing. They brought back an exlegend with the hope he could revive club fortunes like Pep did. His player strategy looks like some of the business Arteta did at the start of his career. Auba is not reviving Barcelona, nor is Lewandowski. Throwing money at short-term ideas rarely works for the short term, but even if it does, you pay in the end, because you have to replace aging players.

So back to my point, Arsenal had to accept that getting back to the top was a process, and it was going to take time. That’s brave, because fans online don’t care for patience, and clubs have traditionally behaved like fans. This video doing the rounds perfectly captures the modern fan and the delusion of who we are.

Daniel Levy at Spurs had implemented an elite plan of his own. He had a young dynamic coach, a group of really talented players, and a style of football that was progressing. It took Poch about 5 years to get Spurs into the Champions League final. They lost, but it was an incredible achievement. Then what happened? Levy shit the bed. He decided that the failings were on the manager, not part of the process in building a sustainable football club. He jumped on Jose because he believed in the idea of short-term winnertivity. That failed, he went for Nuno because Mendes said so. That failed, so he doubled down on Antonio Conte, despite the biggest chequebook manager in football being a HUGE mismatch for a club that is incredibly frugal / now skint.

Strategy takes discipline. There are always quick hit temptations. The best resist them.

Back to that half-season table and why it is still important.

The second part of the season we:

1. Shipped out the toxic players that were trying to down Arteta
2. Arteta finally discovered the benefits of young players over seasoned pros that had done it all
3. Arteta showed that he could progress players through good coaching

A large chunk of the fanbase thought he should be fired because of the first 14 games, but refused to acknowledge the 24 after were absolutely immense from a points collection total. We had the 3rd best defence, scored the second-most goals, and had the 2nd most points.

Mad that anyone thought that sort of run should have still ended in the sack.

There was a notion that this sort of sample was dishonest and NOT predictive. If I could be bothered, I’d pull some of the tweets under the posts. But so many smart people weren’t having it.

Well, a year on, we are in 4th place with 5 games to go. That table WAS predictive of better times.

We might not break the top 4 this season, but we are very close considering the issues we’ve had.

This summer might require a bit of vision again if we don’t get top 4, because no doubt, there will be people calling for the sacking of Arteta if we miss out.

Things to remember:

We have two players in the top 5 for open-play chance creation this season: Saka (20) & Odegaard (23)

We have not had a proper striker all season (7 goals, Auba)

We are joint bottom in the top 7 for goals scored.

The vision some need is that if you put the right striker in our system, we are likely 10 points better off NOW, which makes us a top 4 team, possibly challenging Chelsea for 3rd.

Some more vision:

Thomas Partey is a big weakness in our squad. He’s too good. When he gets injured, it takes us time to figure out how to absorb him. If we had a competitor for his position next season, we’d be able to rotate him more often, and we’d be able to absorb the inevitable injuries.

The path forward for Arsenal is extremely clear:

• 1 elite young striker
• 1 elite young midfielder

Just two additional players, in this system, and we are so much better.

Now, there will be other bits of business we’ll do that might look a little cuter and be more with a view to the future. I suspect our secondary striker will be less expensive, so we might take a risk on someone with high potential. We might add a free transfer like Sanches, who had injury potential but could be good for 25 games a season.

Then think of who is coming back to the team: William Saliba will fight it out with White & Gabriel.

We’re being linked with all the right names. I don’t have the same belief others do in Gabriel Jesus. I don’t think his primary objective is Arsenal, he’s not a ‘main man’ profile, and I don’t think he’d leave City to be back-up. Regardless, he’ll cost ‘main man’ money… but I totally accept he is a level above anything we have right now. Victor Oshimen is being linked, he’s raw, but he has all the ingredients you look for in a striker in the Premier League, and he scores goals. Arsenal will be linked with a lot of strikers, that’s what the recruitment team want, so don’t fall in love with any rumours yet… just know that the club waited 6 months to make a consequential signing. Arteta wants to compete for titles, he’s going to derisk that signing as much as he can.

David Ornstein is linking us with Neves and Tielemans, I told you here we’d be interested in them, they are top, top players that make us much better.

So overall, the story of this post? Last summer, the data pointed to better times. This summer, it’s even clearer, the leap of faith is more straightforward: Do you believe an actual striker with a chance creation team behind him will score more than 7 goals? Do you believe elite competition for Thomas Partey will lesson the impact of injuries? If you ticked yes to both, then you agree that this club is going places and you should, as Josh Kroenke said, ‘be excited.’

Right, that’s me done, check out our podcast, maybe drop it a 5* rating?