This is also my issue. Arteta's football is monotonous and one paced but I could stomach it in these circumstances if we were at least rock solid defensively and could hold on to a lead. Instead, when we go one up, any semblance of progressive football stops and we invite pressure by 1) needless time wasting and 2) becoming static.
Genuinely, I find corners the most exciting part of our football this season.
Yeah we've the best defence in the league and tbh I think Liverpool even being close is down to luck. Forrest have been great at the back but won't sustain it.
We have the two best CBs in the world and the best keeper in the league but in half a season we've dropped (I think) 10 points from winning positions. Granted we were cheated out of an extra four points against City and Brighton, but - unlike late last season - we don't play on the front foot when leading. Against Brighton, Liverpool and Chelsea the team went ahead and then let the momentum shift by dropping deep. We're on course to concede more and score fewer goals than last season.
And mostly because of injuries across the spine of the team. From Gabriel to Odegaard to Saka. And then our full back injury crisis as well.
Why are folks talking like we aren't witnessing this in real time?
seriously I know Mancs gave us a lifeline but the season is fucked. The only wonder is that we didn't capsize the way Pool did last season when they had injuries.
Dom Granted we were cheated out of an extra four points against City and Brighton, but - unlike late last season - we don't play on the front foot when leading.
Six points, don't forget Rice's absurd red card to go with the absurd penalty Brighton just received in the reverse fixture.
We've been underwhelming going forward, and there's no point griping endlessly about poor refereeing, but …
Burnwinter it’s fine to get a bad refereeing decision. Everybody Gary them. What’s annoying is those calls that we will never see again like Rice and Saliba.
Claudius Exactly. But we've had several. Rice and Trossard's red cards, this penalty … Saliba's red card earlier in the season was also very harsh.
Every single one of those has arguably cost us points, If we had all those points we'd be in pole position to win the league right now.
Unfortunately our only solutions with PGMOL are to beat them (destroy PGMOL and its northwestern corruption) or join them (fire Arteta and set up a regular cash transfer to Howard Webb).
Burnwinter true. Had forgotten the Saliba red which was then judged differently for the exact offense the next day. And everyone was coming up with reasons why Saliba deserved red but Adarabioyo of Chelsea did not deserve one. That was the worst one due to the direct comparison.
Even worse in the Saliba example, neither the refs or journalists point to the fact that the ball is bouncing in the Saliba case, which will slow down the attscker
https://www.transfermarkt.com/fc-arsenal/platzierungen/verein/11
Thought this was interesting. Wanted to see where we stood versus historical Arsenal teams.
We are doing very well relative to our own very high standards. Just frustrating that we are so close with this good performance and not able to quite get over line yet.
Claudius we’ve been upward trajectory as a club for last 8 or so years
Not to take the piss out of you, but this is very similar to my joke about you applauding "the upward trajectory of our aggregate expected major trophies per year" (paraphrasing) the other day 
It's all good how well we're doing by the numbers but we've gotta actually win something big. You've heard of "stochastic terrorism" but there's no such thing as "stochastic silverware".
Burnwinter I agree with this but I think it's become clear that the gamble we made in the summer not signing offensive reinforcements other than Sterling (and I'm not looking to re-litigate our summer transfer strategy) has not paid off. You are exactly right that we've not had injuries or refereeing go out way this season but if we had an offensive chaos merchant, that would have mitigated some of the obstacles we've faced.
Yeah, I wanted to believe we'd balanced things out, but we fucked it, in retrospect.
Trossard has declined from a heady height and isn't a great starter, Martinelli hasn't come good, Sterling underwhelmed then got injured, Nwaneri's a kid, Havertz is patchy and we can't build our attack around his space-finding, and we sold Nelson, Smith Rowe and Nketiah.
Last season's epic run tricked us into the mistaken belief all these names were as good as having one more Bukayo Saka.
With Saka now out for a couple of months, you can call that bad luck or you can call it over-reliance on an over-played star, and you can have that debate all day—but no one can deny that if you've got two Bukayo Sakas, you're just winning matches instead of having that debate.
Burnwinter yeah. We went from one of the best transfer windows ever (summer 2023) to a somewhat underwhelming one where our main achievement was sales (summer 2024).
And to your earlier post, without trophies this really strong era of football will be forgotten. We need something to talk about in 2030. I want to be able to say “remember how Rice ran through the midfield in dying minutes of the final in Munich?”
I've reached a point where if we don't win anything, then I need to at least us try something significantly different. I'm not sure I can continue to accept our 4-3-3 with so many glaring issues.
Of primary concern:
why did we sign Rice and is he living up to those expectations? if he was to be our left 8 then he needs to find another level, and that's on Arteta as much as him. I'm equally concerned if he was signed to replace Partey as a lone 6, because that is not his game.
how do we find a new attacking pattern that isn't based on us slowing the game down to make all of our chances so much harder to finish (vs defenses that have had time to get set)
Agreed we are prob around 6 months away from #artetaout chants going mainstream (if we don’t win anything). Cant be spending £700m and having not won anything in 5 years - not acceptable for a club our size and magnitude.
6 months before a potential Arsenal death spiral. Be careful Mikel. These are critical moments
I would go as far as saying this Jan is his most important transfer window to date. Don’t sign anyone and he won’t be an Arsenal manager this time next year I can assure you.
we're in the spooky hours now. the managers philosophy has been given enough time and nourishment to reach its apotheosis, and yet here we are. as someone said in the match thread, his arc of taking us from shamblolic losers to respectable losers is poch-esque
Every team except Abu Dhabi suffers from a couple of ruinous and/or malicious refereeing decisions so I'm including an acceptable buffer of a couple of dropped points.
