Official: Mikel Arteta is the new Arsenal manager.
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daredevil Or that the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea have massively overpaid for a lot of players relative to their actual quality...
That can certainly be true as well, but there is a correlation between squad cost, wages and league position.
A general correlation if you look at large sample sizes, yes.
That you can definitely say that United's squad is better than ours because it's more expensive and that we need to overperform for our squad to finish above theirs, no.
No-one would say that and United are a clear outlier. But you can see with Chelsea that if you keep throwing money at it, eventually you will fall into good decisions.
Saw the Orbinho stat about today been the 9th game where Arsenal scored 1 or 0 in the league this season and we've dropped points in 7 of them.
It's hard to look beyond the attack as not being good enough to kill matches and score enough goals to protect us from some of the variance we've fallen foul of.
It will be a terrible outcome to have wasted the chance when City have dipped not too be there to take the title. We need to try and make something from the season in terms of showing tangible progress to bring a winning team under Arteta.
We need to win something this year and need big changes in the way Arteta sets the team up. Playing low margin games is costing us big against inferior teams because it allows so much variance to come into play, bad ref, player mistake, wonder goal etc.
I don't think you will be able to win the league going about it as we are so can Arteta change his approach. I'm not convinced right now so I think there are big questions for what next if we can't land something this year.
We scored tons of goals last year. The so-called 2024 table shows us top in points and 2nd to Liverpool by 3 goals foe the year.
Our biggest issue right now is being able to field preferred lineups even just for a single game
Mirth this is true.
So we can punish teams. We can run up the scoreboard like Liverpool or Barca does on a good day.
Most of our struggles scoring come down to basically either an inability to attack the low block. Or lack of fluidity from squad turnover. We had a lot of squad availability issues yesterday.
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Mirth that's exactly it, to win a title you have to be able to consistently score many goals and Arteta's teams haven't been able to do that. In the previous 2 seasons where lots of the variance went for us and our players were performing pretty much to their peak we still dropped too many points to secure the title. If the system can't deliver the title in those circumstances I'm not sure it's the right model.
As Gazza says if you mess up a moment like this season when City are like this that is very likely the window for a team like Arsenal and if it closes it could be a very long time before we get another. Liverpool appear to have a ruthlessness that we just lack that when those moments arrive there make sure they are able to take something from it.
I do have to question the mentality when we go a goal up.
Why do we slow the game down so much?
It is costing us and Arteta needs to set it right.
Lol, Arteta is the one setting it up to be that way in the first place.
I know that is why I am saying he is the 1 that needs to change it.
Still don't think we're far off at all. It's frustrating.
The Champions League is winnable and we've got another level to unlock overall with the right signing or two. This window of opportunity isn't open forever but it's not looking like it will close in summer.