Official: Mikel Arteta is the new Arsenal manager.
Last season we were incredibly fortunate with injuries. Saka, Odegaard, Rice, Saliba and Gabriel were never rotated last season so it's hardly surprising most of them broke down this year. The injury list is only one of three equally important causes for the subpar season, the other two being the aimless, slow football and a disastrous summer.
MistaT All this to say, I'm having a hard time believing that a brilliant LW signing will take us up a level unless Arteta also loosens his demands.
It'd have to be a player with Martinelli's attitude and workrate but just … better. At ball striking and close control. That player's always been bloody hard to imagine.
Burnwinter its stochastic squad-building. It's about probability of form, injury, combinations, balance, etc. It's not about guaranteed, direct upgrades in this case.
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Bukayo Saka when asked about the defensive work he is doing for Arsenal: “It’s good that you noticed that because the attackers are doing a lot of work for the clean sheets. But, of course, we have to do our job to help out the defenders, it’s not easy, as an attacking player, I want to be up the pitch and save my legs for the transition, but when I look at the results this season, we have a lot of clean sheets and it shows that it’s working.”
Ancelotti: "If I have Modric & Kroos I can't expect to press high. I'd be an idiot if I didn't counter with a forward like Vinicius, who has a motorcycle under his feet. I'll give you one last example: if I have Ronaldo, I work on how to get the ball to him often, not exhaust him with tracking back"
Martinelli gets a lot of flak but I wonder whether adjusting our approach in attack could make him more effective. This is a guy Klopp used to fawn over constantly, almost to the point of blatant tapping up.
I suspect Saka would have even more goals and assists with less defensive responsibility.
Even Henry would find it hard with the traffic we allow the opposition to build up at times.
Arteta needs to adjust and quickly.
SimplyThePest I remember Henry talking about how Wenger told him not to work back as hard as he was. That his finishing would be sharper if he wasn't exhausted from running up and down the pitch constantly.
It's 2025, every winger tracks up and down the flank. Newcastle just beat us playing a 5-5-0 where they had every player tracking back and behind the ball.
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Not that I disagree with the notion we should be able to allow our forwards to relinquish defensive duties from time-to-time but Martinelli's inability to finish isn't because of tracking back. For one thing, Saka can finish fine and for another thing, we've seen Martinelli finish fine in previous seasons. So I don't think it's workload that's the problem, it's more a confidence issue I think.
Don Pacifico tbf Martinelli and Saka have scored the same number of league goals.
Martinelli is outscoring his xg. Saka isn't. Both on 5 league goals.
Qwiss fair do. Either way, I'm not convinced tracking back is the main reason we're all a bit fed up with Marti.
Don Pacifico Not that I don't disagree
That's a head scratcher 
Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert whoops...
What now then, genius?
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He’s 2nd in league. 3rd in champions league. We’ve been here before. This isn’t terminal.
But the squad is beat up and we seem to have picked up 2 more injuries, and we still have six more games this January. So the solution is clear. We need to to force the issue in transfer market. Or risk serious cascading effects with Martinelli, Odegaard, Timber etc
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Claudius So the solution is clear. We need to to force the issue in transfer market. Or risk serious cascading effects with Martinelli, Odegaard, Timber etc
Imagine all we end up with is bringing in another defender to cover the departure of Tierney and/or Zinchenko?
Edit:
Didn't realise this when I made the post. Arteta probably thinking "All hands on deck then Josh, we got a priority signing to make."
Wenger used to be great at changing things up and getting new combos to work when we were in spells like this. I fear Arteta is too rigid to pivot like that.