63 Comments

Talking about players carrying a big load

That’s Bukayo Saka

I find myself feeling sorry for him these days because he deserves better.

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A bit defensive. Pedro. i suppose all that halo polishing you do of Arteta is tiring and thankless for you. Of course you are right about the clowns at AFTV and other places, but as I don't pay any attention to them or watch them, I couldn't care less. I never thought they represented anyone.

Last week it was luck, this week magic and now the X Factor. You will be running out of mystic Meg tea leaves at this rate to explain our seesaw form. You are right about the work load of CL and PL, but that is why we need a good squad whose tactics and personnel can be rotated, and key people rested. But Arteta is notorious for expecting his core players to play through thick and thin.

The truth is probably somewhere in between your hype and the doomsayers. We fluctuate in form, we can be as good as anyone on our day, and then not far off the Bournemouths and Brightons or Fulhams of this world. They may have lesser players but they have good, shrewd managers who don't get the godlike treatment that Arteta gets but they know how to do their job with far lesser resources.

I don't spend my time stressing about not winning the league, we'll see where we and the others are in March and April, then we'll know our chances. Football is unpredictable, that's why we get addicted to it. But I can tell you something - Arteta is not a 'top 5' coach - yet. Maybe he will be, maybe not, but i don't see the point of hyping him so much when we haven't seen if he can get us across the line. Certainly he makes life more difficult for himself putting all his faith in long term signings like Havertz - a more ruthless coach would be moving him on and bringing in a couple of creative, mobile strikers who would suit our style better. And Kai isn't the only one like that.

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How many times have you seen old man Ashley Young on the precipice of a red card because the random winger is tearing him into bits.

On Saturday, he didn’t break a sweat against Martinelli.

Martinelli is on about £180k weekly, until about 2027.

We need a director of football before we make any more signings. The entire squad needs to be reassessed, tough questions need to be asked and difficult decisions have to be taken, at great costs.

This is not a job for Jason Ayto. We need someone of gravitas to do a hard job.

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I see Pedro comparing our performance to the rest of the big CL teams this weekend.

So, how about we do this every single weekend until the season ends? We look at how our peers performed in thier respective leagues.

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The biggest head loss on Saturday was that of Aretta

He lost his head completely

Those substitutions couldn’t have been made by a top manager

Arteta didn’t earn his money on Saturday.

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What happens if City, in their worst form since Pep joined, manage to finish above us? Do we say praise Pep for being so good or Arteta for being so bad?

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Refreshing perspective.

You didn't mention that Auston Villa also lost 1-2 to Nottingham Forest over the weekend.

This helps contain the disappointment.

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2024 and we're still using Emery's shortcomings to prop up Arteta.

Mid December and we're still moaning about red cards served months ago.

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My word, Pedro always brings the goods. Listening to Arsenal “fan channels” on the weekend showed the same characters dooming and glooming, wanting to be noticed. They’re not worth the time.

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Pedro

Aren’t you worried about the way Arteta has grabbed so much power at the club.

Now he only has the Lilliputian figure of Edu’s assistant to check his influence

Expect more bizarre signings.

Unlike Wenger who preferred not to spend, Arteta just spends big on the wrong players.

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Pedro

Seems there is nothing left in the ink tank to use to defend Arteta.

You’ve done the luck thing, the magic hat thing and now it’s using a random YouTuber who used the analogy of shooting somebody.

It was Lee Judges who made the faux pas. He’s a good guy who is every inch as supportive of Arteta and the team, as you are. You know damn well he wasn’t actually threatening Odegaard with violence.

Anyway this is a wonderful all out defense of Arteta, it’s got to be as exhausting running Arteta defense, no different from the head loss from angry gooners. We are all exhausted in different ways and our fan base is getting divided again.

I’m not the only one getting this sense of déjà vu

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There are lots of gooners who think rationally,they consider that there are better candidates for Arteta's job, they are not rabid, don't want his head on a plate or injure players. It's a concern about something about the sustainable quality of entertainment value and hopefullness over results.Let's face it -:there is only going to be one winner of the PL, so there will always a lot of dissatiisfieds out there, this is a reality. But sometimes you don't mind losing as long as you have a good time, and the team are doing their best with spurts of brilliance. But with this present set - up it has become increasingle boring, far too much emphasise on strategy and quashing individuality. And sorry Pedron- it seems that Arteta, nice and talented guy that he is, has led us slowly along that path. Also he hasn't pushed for enough cover to deal with the brutal overload of games that top teams have to deal with on a yearly basis. So, objectively, he quite possibly is not the right person for this job.

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You have to decide what you want this season Pedro; good stats or honours. What do expect from Arsenal this season sir?

A lot of what people say is pegged on their expectations this season. And most people expect a major trophy coz we've spent quite an amount for a while now.

A lot of fans have seen his movie twice now. Only difference now is, apart from us, we have 2 teams chasing No1 ; Chelsea and a struggling City. Once we know those are not giving us any pressure and LFC are out of sight, we'll be wiping the floor with everyone. Why? Coz we work well when there's no pressure. Just look at our CL performances - no pressure at all, yet. Let's see how we'll do when we move to knock out.

Anyway, I'm just going to enjoy football now, with zero expectations of a trophy. My worry now is Man City catching up with us when they're having a dreadful season. That'll be embarrassing

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Again - a completely disingenuous post, full of paradoxes.

You agree that Arsenal need something special when it comes to attacking talent. You agree that sticking with Jesus and Eddie was a mistake. You agree that Merino and Sterling were conservative and unimaginative acquisitions. But you won’t place that blame on Arteta.

The way I look at it, we seem to be very much in the Wenger territory. Or the Southgate territory. Or the Jesus / Zinchenko territory. People, who raised the standards but ultimately had a key weakness, not allowing them to goto to that next level. Southgate got England performing admirably. But everyone understood his system was flawed and wasn’t good enough to WIN. Jesus and Chenko raised our level. But they could neither sustain not being another level on top of that. Arteta made us competitive. He raised our level. But his continued blind sightedness towards attacking talent, his commitment to a very conservative style of play, his unwillingness to bring in special talents or superstars, are costing a team which is almost ready to win.

No one is calling Arteta a dud. But serious people with higher aspirations will now look at this pattern, and will wonder, how long are we going to make excuses for this guy. Unjust referees, red cards, teams parking the bus against us, all sounds very Wengerish to me.

You don’t buy pace merchants. You don’t buy fancy dribblers. You refuse to play through the middle. You confine your talents to hugging the touchline. You stick with non-clinical strikers (Eddie, Jesus and Kai are so blatantly wasteful infront of goal), your key competence requirement remains duels whether in MF or attack. Then my man, if then, if after spending $1bn, you don’t deliver results, then it’s on you. Is Arteta a top 5 manager in the world ? After this season, if Slot wins, and Maresca comes second, with Flick at Barca, Xabi Alonso for last year, Carlo just for his history, Pep and Klopp, who TF are you kidding with that chat. And please stop calling this team the best in the league. That’s literally looking into your readers eyes and lying to their face. It’s slap worthy. Call a spade a spade !!

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We are a very expensive version of David Moyes’ Everton

Plenty of hard work, power, aggression, tactical knowledge and discipline woth some very talented players sprinkled in the team but not enough variety to break down the deepest most hard working defences

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Are we really the best team in England this season?????

Performance and points doesn't support this I'm afraid

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We’re behind pool in the league and CL and our performances have been worse if you go with the eye test.

Safe to say we have not been the best team in England

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This whole players are overloaded is a self-made problem

There are lots of games, yes. There are also lots of players in our squad. We (like most teams I should add) simply don’t like using players who aren’t liked

We’d rather saka play 100 games this season than play Sterling. Is Sterling as good as Saka? Ofc not. But Sterling is definitely better than a Saka who picks up a long term injury due to playing in the red zone for months on end

Ode is tired or thinking about his baby? Understandable. Ethan has been sitting here collecting dust all season tho… no sympathy from me.

Martinelli and trossard rotate all the time so neither should be knackered

Jorgi barely kicked a ball until about a month ago. Between him rice and Partey we’ve got loads of options to manage the load at 6-8.

Calafioris knees can’t handle 2 games a week? MLS is here to help with that. We’ve got LOADS of players who can play fullback and CB so no excuses for us having knackered players there either.

The only position where we are a totally lost cause is CF because we can rest Havertz but Jesus would struggle for goals in the conference these days so he’s literally unstoppable. Havertz aside, we ALWAYS have options. We just don’t want to use some of them

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I think Jesus needs to be rebirthrd on left wing and focus on getting in another creator at left 8 and a striker who runs behind and scores goals while being able to link

Not many out there

It’s very hard to even name many strikers out there who could do the job but Thats what we need

The only I can really think of is Isak Sesko and vlahovic and all of those are far from safe bets

Isak prefers the left

Sesko looks like the brightest up and comer as an out and out striker but is still as of yet a flash in the pan

Vlahovic flopped at juve but has all the credentials to be a really effective no9 when his strengths are played to

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Actually even CF could be managed by rotating with trossard or even Sterling.

Again no excuses

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