• The Arsenal
  • Official: Mikel Arteta is the new Arsenal manager.

daredevil — well said!

I do think we’ll never see consistent and impressive counter attacks from this team. Arteta asks too much of the wingers defensively for them to play with the freedom necessary for counter attacking.

Take for example Martinelli yesterday who broker free multiple times and didn’t have another player within thirty yards. That’s certainly not because they’re lazy, but the impact of starting positions and the ask to retain the ball once upfield.

    MistaT Arteta asks too much of the wingers defensively for them to play with the freedom necessary for counter attacking.

    Even Saka talked about this when he was talking to Titi/Micah/Carra... He said that he wishes he could just stay up the pitch and go forward, but running back and forth from offense to defense back to offense is difficult.

      USArsenal yeah, I heard that and I don't know if I'm being over sensitive but my Spidey senses tingled when he said it. I guess the ends will justify the means if we start putting trophies in the cabinet, but even I wonder how sustainable that amount of sacrifice is with nothing to show for it.

      Saka has just said "this year's the year" and I'm damn sure the whole squad that just lived through last season feels like that ... as we all do. The best of this squad is only going to stay together over time if it happens.

        Dumb thing to say from Henry. There'll be 0 Arsenal fans out there regretting Arteta being our coach. He's been cheated out of two league titles and the fans are loving the current team. Emery is also a more negative and tactically chaotic coach than Arteta and I don't miss that.

        It always saddens me to see an all-time great player reduced to doing full-time punditry.

        Emery is a top coach but he was put into a mess of a situation at Arsenal. One of Artetas underrated strengths is that he's been able to navigate the off field side of things and develop good relationships with Edu and co. Emery was a bit unlucky in his timing that he was dealing with Raul, etc but I also don't think he's as strong with the higher ups as Arteta is.

          Sicario2 - Tier 1 Is it me or does Thierry sound bitter towards Arteta:

          He definitely is bitter and has been obvious for a while now. I think Henry's ego thought he would make a great manager and probably saw himself as the heir to Wenger. He also aligned himself with the Spotify guy and wanted to take over Arsenal, maybe he saw that as his route into the club. Those of us who have been following long enough know there is a bitter side to Henry, look at his treatment of Jose Reyes for proof. He manages his PR carefully but deep down there is a bitter twisted side to him.

          Bottom line is the club was a mess from top to bottom and needed a strong character to lead on and off the pitch. Arteta was fortunate that Raul was gone and he worked with Edu and the upper management to turn things around in a way that none of us thought was possible. Even when things looked shit from our point of view you felt within the club they could see Arteta was turning things around and he fully earned the trust of the Kroenke's. We've gone from a laughing stock to one of the reference clubs in Europe, everyone is trying to model themselves on us now.

          Emery is a good coach but that is it, Arteta is literally the face of the entire club. Emery needs a strong director of football with him and is only interesting in coaching the players, nothing else. When Emery came here he could not deal with the other side and could not deal with the difficult characters in the dressing room, Arteta came in and with the support of the club got rid of all the bad apples.

          Henry says some brainless stuff sometimes.

          Emery tends to do better in environments with low-to-moderate expectations and pressure. I don't think he has the force of personality to wrest control at clubs that come with high pressure and expectations like Arsenal and PSG, for example. His career has reflected this pattern.

          We needed an absolute maniac to come in and turn things around and even then, it was touch-and-go for said maniac (Arteta) for a while there.

          Will always maintain Emery was doomed to fail here for two reasons:

          1) he treated us like we were the English equivalent of Villarreal, not one of the three biggest clubs in English football.

          2) Genuinely appalling communication skills. I can speak Spanish, so I know how hard it is to communicate in a foreign language - and I admire him for trying, but he was nowhere near.

          I'll add a third:

          Wenger signed a nest full of vipers and chancers who shouldn't have been anywhere near the club.

          And of course, the Don Raul situation was an absolute disaster.

            RocktheCasbah I'll add a third:

            Wenger signed a nest full of vipers and chancers who shouldn't have been anywhere near the club.

            And of course, the Don Raul situation was an absolute disaster.

            I came here to post specifically this. We had a corrosive dressing room. It was a group of people whose skills didn’t fit together. And many of them at the ends of their careers, so they were not together in building towards something. Just a squad full of mercenaries. I’m glad we got rid of them before Saka developed. Unlike United who are allowing vipers to slither around Garnacho

            Fact is that what Emery has achieved at Villa so far is far, far less than two strong title challenges leading to an expectation of winning the league. Villa being a lesser club both flatters his achievements there and will forgive him for not going further. Emery's at a different level as far as managing in England is concerned.

            I also couldn't stand Emery's lack of a cohesive on-field vision. We were way too midtable in the way we played under him.

            I think with how things went letting Emery go was the right thing but he didn't get the surrounding support that Arteta has enjoyed and he was managing some poor characters at that point. I have never really had any ill will to him though and fair play on what he's done at villa and beating Bayern on their season back in the champions League is a big thing for them.

            Many ppl argue Emery is the next best manager in the league after Pep. I guess Arteta needs to win some trophies to be in that conversation, also Emery has managed longer.

            The question is if whatever reason is if Arteta left this summer would you take Emery to be his replacement if he was available ?

              Sicario2 - Tier 1 Well, thing is, Arteta's not going to leave this summer and that's the reason we want him at Arsenal over Emery: because he's good, possibly extremely good, and he built what's here and the players love him.

              Cannot excuse Emery for that match against Watford where we gave them a gazillion chances

              There's a Lee Dixon interview out there about some of the goings-on during Emery's reign.

              Emery had all displays and mentions of Arsenal's history removed from the walls and hallways of the training ground. Anything to do with 1989, the invincibles, pictures of Vieira, Bergkamp, etc.

              Clownlike behaviour.