109 Comments

Pedro “Arsenal operate as a brains trust”….then writes enough stuff to clearly show “it’s a brains we shouldn’t trust”. This all comes back to our owners who don’t have the ambition for the club. Most sensible fans knew Saka was overplayed but Arteta thinks it’s good to make him do an Iron Man trial in between games. Our squad injury record is terrible. What is going on in training? So far Arteta has taken us to second twice and blew it with poor decisions. We will finish 3rd or 4th at best this season. Our fans need to stop blaming luck and other teams for NOT beating our competition. Out crap fans rinse and moan about Spurs not beating Liverpool. Like they did last season when they flopped again City. What sort of fans do we have who think it’s up to other teams to win the league for us? These fans make Arsenal a banter club.

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27mEdited

Its brains rust

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Saka had to be over played unfortunately as tross, Marti, Havertz and sterling have been sub par this season unfortunately. Not sure what choice Arteta had.

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Great opportunity to rebalance the attack. Play Nwaneri on the right. Easy

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Another square peg round hole type situation?

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Another thing ti bear in mind, without Saka’s delivery, the corners dry up as well as his open play goals and assists

I really hope this allows the rest of the team to step up and take some responsibility but also that Arteta abandons his rigid addiction to overplaying players and his safety first football

Hes over reliant on Saka but losing him, I fear, will only see him double down and become more negative

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That's my first instinct as well

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https://m.youtube.com/shorts/XN8DE4HpfYE

Utter disgrace

Still bothers me

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Not forgetting Wio Ferdinand barging over Freddie when he was clean through and Riley not giving him a red in the same game

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Thats in the video clip

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don‘t forgrt he‘s the guy who ran PGMOL for a decade. his hatred towards us (and south england as a whole I guess) and his love for manchester lead to this mess we are in right now. though I would argue that today the problem is more locational bias combined with freelancing (money at the end of the day) while in the riley days it was down to an actual conscious hate

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A part of me feels that this Saka injury, whilst terrible short term, could have been a lot worse (torn ACL or Achilles). The guy just turned 23 and has played high level football for club and country every 3 days for 5 years. It was not sustainable. I personally would not rush him back as hamstrings are notoriously problematic (ask Reece James). The goal is to have him peak over the next 4 years (when he's 27).

People might not want to hear it (including the manager and player) but I would keep him out the entire season. He should not play football until September 2025. Let him rest, eat Jollof every day, and just sit in the sun. Time for Martinelli, Trossard, Sterling and Nwaneri to step up.

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I wouldnt recommend jollof. He needs fufu and ifokore

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Arsenal have not been unlucky. In fact we have been the luckiest for 3 seasons. We've just exhausted our luck bank. We can pretend but it won't change a thing. Saka is our messi but we use his like dani Alves. Shame.

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How have we been lucky? Come on

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Come on we went through last season largely unscathed, without properly upgrading the squad and leaving as thin as we did, we were bound to run out of luck

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How

We lost Jesus

We lost timber

We lost partey

We lost martinelli

We lost tomiyasu

Esr was not fit for the whole season

Saka was overplayed and tired a lot

Kai needed time to bed in

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8hEdited

It is unacceptable to let Man c catch up with us from 6 points behind or Villa from 5 pts behind.

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“It makes me sick. The second time City dip in the last 8 years and it’s Liverpool catching all the luck”

This made me chuckle.

Thanks Pedro, I think we all needed some comic relief having heard the Saka news.

Pool really fluked that title on 99 points in 2019, just one year after they stumbled on 97 points also purely by blind luck.

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Come on, Pedro, this childish snark of ‘luck’ at Liverpool is weak sauce. Top of both leagues they are competing in is sheer luck? What are you smoking? Slot inherited a good squad and has stabilised and calmed them down from the hyperactive peaks and troughs of the Klopp years, which is smart management. Their squad has depth and breadth, giving them options for injuries and tactical switches. Ours is far more uneven and often forced into Arteta’s micromanaged structures with less flexibility . Two days ago he was on the top five managers, now he is what, for over dependency on the most creative powerhouse in our side?

Still, he could learn from the unexpected bonus of Jesus sparking to life because he wanted to rest Kai. Not just because of his uptick in form, but more for the fact Jesus creativity and pace has shown how deadly dull Havertz is, and how unimaginative he is. So maybe there are other combinations he hasn’t tried which will equally enliven us, now Saka is having the enforced rest he probably needed. That is what I would like to see, shaking the dice and refreshing our stale tactical approach. We badly needed it anyway, so let’s see what Arteta can come up with - the ball’s in his court now. I believe our players can be more creative and exciting when they aren’t so stifled by the control freakery of his approach. I want to be surprised by him - can he do it?

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@Pedro Auba hit the ground running at Arsenal, scoring at least 10 goals in his first few months from memory. Arshavin had a more transformative impact having joined in a January window, however, he did play in a prime banter years Arsenal side. Elsewhere, Liverpool probably have the best record of bringing players in during winter transfer windows. Suarez, Van Dijk and Coutinho all joined in the previous seasons. Suarez was very effective in the backend of their season and VVD also slotted in very nicely. Despite my feelings towards him, Bruno Fernandes deserves a special shout. Having joined United from Sporting, he hit 8 goals and 7 assists for United in the league, 3 goals and 1 assist in the Europa and a cup goal. Probably the last good signing United made… so there could be hope. Depends how much money we have available - maybe Lookman is gettable (best form so far this season and playing at a high level. Kudus should be motivated to jump ship but the Gs and As aren’t there right now. Signing Isak at this stage with the form he’s in and consequently the fee that Newcastle would demand seems almost impossible.

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Also complaining that we have the thinnest squad after selling and loaning out a bunch of attacking players is lame as hell

ESR, Vieira, Nelson, Eddie were all offloaded.

Arteta needs to stop making excuses for a situation he has guided us towards and put his money where his mouth is and guide us successfully past this hurdle until Saka returns

Zero sympathy from me. In fact less than that, he is in no small part accountable for it. He needs to stop moaning, get his head down and manage it. Starting immediately

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Pedro pretty sure you wrote in the summer that the window was a success and those of us who thought letting three attackers leave without replacing them was poor business were wrong. And that Sterling was a stinky piece of panic business.

The injury is the injury, they happen but having an able deputy is our own fault. Whether it be teta, edu, the board whatever it’s our own fault that our only option is Sterling who’s now injured. So teta is gonna have to figure it out.

And agree you don’t really buy squad enhancers in Jan, you either buy damaged or potential. I would always go potential. Plenty of players have moved in Jan and improved teams. Diaz, rogers, trossard, Gordon, madueke, gusto, cunha. There’s deals to be done

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I’ve never noticed Rodgers at Villa before so I’ve no idea how reflective it is, but his performance against city was fabulous. IF that was his level, wonderful player. Since I’d not noticed him before I get he isn’t normally that brilliant tho?

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This will bring Pedro down mightily on my head..but Villa and Rodgers have a very good manager. Just saying.

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Yh I don’t think I phrased it well reading back, final long shift before Christmas 🤦🏾‍♂️ I just meant that it’s really rare to go out and sign a proper ceiling raiser like a leao or kvar in Jan but you can definitely find a player with bags of potential who improves your squad and gives you options. I’m an FM geek so knew about rogers from his city days and have always been “he’s gonna bang!”. Tbf I say that about all the FM finds but he has really kicked on.

I just can’t get on board with the mindset of we’ll only do business for the perfect player. The transfer market is trial and error. Even with how good we’ve been you still get duds. You just have to fail fast and go again

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I sympathize totally with Starboy who is phenomenal and it’s obviously not his fault at all

But I’ve no particular sympathy for us as a club

Arteta has been playing this fools game of overburdening Saka every season since forever. Everyone and their uncle knew this was going to happen the only question was when. We refuse to ever buy a proper backup and we refuse to use the existing options in the squad. This has always been inevitable sooner or later and Arteta deserves 100% of the blame

I also won’t stand by and see this get used as a convenient excuse for us to derail our season. It’s artetas fault this has happened and it’s his job now to guide us out of it. Whatever the solution looks like, we’ll see. But this idea that we should just have Saka play basically every game all season was always dumb as hell and here we are now.

If we do start dropping more points I don’t wanna bear this getting wheeled out as a well timed excuse because this is a self inflicted problem. It’s like when manager moan there are too many games in the season which puts pressure on the players’ fitness - whilst simultaneously playing the fools game of beating their best players for almost every match. Save a penny, spend a pound. We’d rather avoid the cost of having to utilize a weaker player here and there and just hope that Saka never gets hurt. But doing that has had him in the red zone many times this last few years and now the consequences are those backup players which Arteta doesn’t trust MUST play for months now. It’s a total false economy

Let’s also not use this convenient brain trust excuse for why Arteta hasn’t taken this seriously Pedro. We all know this is artetas call. You really think in the summer Arteta was desperate for a forward but his hands were tied? Then the club went against his wishes and bought an injury prone LB instead? Give over. That signing had Arteta all over it. Meanwhile Arteta CHOOSES to beast Saka. It’s 100% on him to own this situation and show his managerial nouse to manage it

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The other thing with Saka, that Arteta seems to studiously ignore is that the PGMOL refuse to protect him in any way. Why couldn’t Arteta just rest his best player when we have been 3-0 up at half time? Baffled by it to be honest , Arteta has his qualities, but seemingly serious blind spots as well . I hope he learns from this season

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It also means the guys incharge of transfers are incompetent or Generational is Not listening to them, just like the fitness guys

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