I really struggle to read some of the excuses conjured up for our inability to win against Everton at home, a team that just shipped 4 goals at goalshy United 2 weeks ago.
Every season the same few excuses will be made for our team and manager, as if we live in a vacuum and these same reasons does not affect other teams. I remember vividly when we went out against Sporting Lisbon few years ago, some mentioned that because we lost Saliba through injury, there's no way we could play well against them at home. Completely ignoring the fact that Sporting was missing half of their entire first team through injuries.
It's the same now, because we are missing Ben White, and also missed Gabriel for 2 games, it's understandable we can't score or create chances much. Completely ignoring the fact once again that our inability to create much chances in open play has been a constant under Arteta's reign. Our structured and controlball is the main reason we generally don't pepper opponents goal and often struggle to score, not some contrived reason like missing one defender or that we don't have enough training time. When we were flying after Dubai, we were also playing midweek and you don't hear these excuses ironically.
Also, people like to big our manager and team up and keep saying next year is our year, it's okay not to win this year again because the process is right, the boardroom is sound, structure of the club is good etc. Shit on Chelsea's joke transfer strategy and horrible boardroom and they will never win anything. Suddenly they change a manager and is firing now, so narrative became "Chelsea has the deepest squad and best attack, we can't compete. They have signed many brilliant players". The same players that was shat on just weeks ago in the summer.
If Liverpool or Chelsea win it, they are lucky, despite the fact that their xG shows that are not lucky to win. If we win last minute games through set piece or penalties, we are not lucky because our set piece xG proves we deserves to win. The hypocrisy is really funny. How's it that every team can change it up and not affect their performances but we miss one defender or midfielder and then "theres no way we could win, our injuries are horrendous"? It was barely 1 month ago we were so happy with the our squad depth and how many different midfield permutations we could change for games.
Every year we need new players, our players ain't good enough. We can't expect Arteta to do much more than that. For 5 consecutive seasons now. From ""inherited terrible players > not his squad > not fully his squad > squad depth not good enough > his squad but we have injuries > Edu's fault"". We need to be real. Stop with the excuses, the real reasons we always falter is far simpler than that.
