Yup. COVID has been a boon for Arteta’s work. Less distractions. I betcha folks would’ve been out there booing Leno soon as he face planted in the last game.

We wouldn’t have managed to implement our counter pressing attack style. Flobaba-types would be in the stands shouting for players to clear when they’ve been instructed to commit the opponent before making a pass. It would’ve been too stressful.

Nah. I’m happy to watch them work it out. Heck I didn’t even mind much when Cech was doing his peg legged one eyed pirate impersonation in the Emery era. I only get frustrated with the ones that don’t make the smart play consistently (AMN pre Arteta, Kola), and nowadays most of our players do.

Arteta really deserves credit for his defensive work with this team. We can press the hell out of anyone. It’s time to put Liverpool through another Leeds-like nightmare. We just need to make sure we aren’t conceding silly goals and penalties like Leeds and that we are creating high quality chances. They can really vary their approaches and tempo now. Will be such a defining game if we can beat them.

Defensively there has been a massive improvement but now the real test is keeping defensively solid but adding much better attacking play.

Claudius wrote:

Arteta really deserves credit for his defensive work with this team. We can press the hell out of anyone. It’s time to put Liverpool through another Leeds-like nightmare. We just need to make sure we aren’t conceding silly goals and penalties like Leeds and that we are creating high quality chances. They can really vary their approaches and tempo now. Will be such a defining game if we can beat them.

We're going to get picked off by Thiago.

Captain wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Arteta really deserves credit for his defensive work with this team. We can press the hell out of anyone. It’s time to put Liverpool through another Leeds-like nightmare. We just need to make sure we aren’t conceding silly goals and penalties like Leeds and that we are creating high quality chances. They can really vary their approaches and tempo now. Will be such a defining game if we can beat them.

We're going to get picked off by Thiago.

My biggest worry as well. Our lack of central penetration will be contrasted by his variety of balls.

Never know, really. We had an unconvincing win against them, and then a pretty comfortable win in the charity shield. It's clear that Thiago has been bought to counteract teams who play deep and try to attack on the break (or for the draw), but we haven't actually seen what that means in practice.

Overall, it's probably a decent time to face them before they work it out.

As for Arteta, the jury is still out for me. He's had a mixed start; FA cup was brilliant, but the football leaves plenty to be desired. He's lucky to have followed Emery.

How much is it Arteta and how much is it the players? I love that the team is winning but I’m struggling to be excited by these guys. You get past Aubameyang, Saka, Tierney and Leno and it it’s just like yeah they’re guys playing for us. The rest don’t leave you with either a sense of expectation like Ozil or Cazorla could at his peak or a sense of comfort that there’s a grown man on the ball.

We still have a mostly crap squad and crap players. Until we refresh things via the transfer window we aren’t going to be easy on the eye.

We have a practical team now, and a hardworking one. That’s a solid foundation to begin with. Flair and flamboyance we will have to search for and add over this and the next couple of transfer windows.

I've made this point before but which one of the top 6 or 8 plays consistently good football? Liverpool-Chelsea was an atrocious game of football.

I'd say City are the only ones who produce anything remotely attractive with some sort of regularity, and it's not hard to see why when you look at the makeup of the squad.

Agree, our squad is fundamentally full of average footballers bar 2-3. We've made a significant amount of progress but I don't think this group is capable of doing more than what we've seen. We're certainly not going to be dominating midfield and playing pretty patterns until we actually have a midfield.

Ultimately, good football is whatever wins you games, and helps you score goals. The more goals, the “better” your football is seen to be. Liverpool plays good football in my opinion. As do City. But Liverpool are more direct and more dangerous.

No it isn't. I watched Graham's latter years years and we won plenty of games and trophies - the football was hideous and unenjoyable.

Well we probably weren’t scoring many goals then, were we? Also what was the standard of the English game in general? Which teams were most appealing to you then?

Claudius wrote:

How much is it Arteta and how much is it the players? I love that the team is winning but I’m struggling to be excited by these guys. You get past Aubameyang, Saka, Tierney and Leno and it it’s just like yeah they’re guys playing for us. The rest don’t leave you with either a sense of expectation like Ozil or Cazorla could at his peak or a sense of comfort that there’s a grown man on the ball.

Well, there are teams playing decent football with average players all over the world.

It's not a stylistic thing either; couterattacking football can be just as thrilling (and for me more so) as possession football. Playing at a medium tempo, playing deep and struggling to put more than 3-4 passes together is horrible to watch.

I'm not expecting anyone to agree, it's subjective, but for me Arteta is 50/50 with big questions still to answer.

flobaba wrote:

Well we probably weren’t scoring many goals then, were we? Also what was the standard of the English game in general? Which teams were most appealing to you then?

Why would it matter? You can watch an exhilarating 0-0 full of fantasy, pace and verve. You can also watch an absolutely hideous 0-0 where the ball spend most of the time in the air or somewhere near the halfway line pinging between blokes in different coloured shirts.