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.
Dom We should really have an xF per 90 ("expected fuckery") for each club measuring how refereeing decisions (cards, penalties, goals subject to review) are influencing xPPG.
Dom agree with @flobaba. Go week by week and look at our squad turnover versus Liverpool. It’s been quite significant. We’ve had various players coming and going due to injury and suspension all year. Relationships aren’t built on the spot. They need to be nurtured over time.
The collapse of the White-Saka-Odegaard triangle has been massive, but we’ve just never had anything constant out left this whole time.
True we have had issues getting our best "relationships" humming due to disruptions, but Occam's razor is only getting sharper.
The simplest theory: Saka, Jesus, Martinelli, Trossard, Havertz aren't a good enough crop of forwards to win the title, even with our set piece prowess, and especially if Saka goes down.
Five out of six of our forwards are in poor to okay season long form and the only true star is now out injured.
Liverpool have Salah, Díaz, Gakpo, Núñez, Jota as well as some shot merchants in midfield. They have more form, energy and cutting edge among those forwards than us, and they set up to exploit what they've got.
Sterling and Chiesa mean we're level as far as backup signing nonentities goes.
We need another truly elite forward who can play with Saka. Granted it is hard to find a player that good, but we have one and Liverpool have one. If Salah breaks a leg we would be right back in the title race today, but then if wishes were horses …
Claudius 5 years in and plenty spent, Claude. We shouldn’t be in a situation in which the whole thing falls over when one bloke gets injured.
What are the conclusions for Arteta?
I'm still really happy with what Arteta's achieved and fully back him.
Arteta's job now is to use all of his influence with KSE and all of the available resources and knowledge to get us a truly elite forward who can play with Saka, making any judicious sacrifices necessary to get this done, all while keeping the rest of our squad signed up, content, balanced and motivated.
Edu has left us and has not been replaced, so there is no one else to carry the can. Arteta's the one.
Signing a true superstar striker is a hard task in winter, but if we haven't got our player by the end of summer, Arteta will have let us and himself down badly.
Burnwinter based where we've come from and where we currently are - reasonably comfortable in the top 4 - I'd give him 1 more season to right the wrongs of last summer. that would mean serious acknowledgement of the shortcomings of our attacking structure, to be reflected in a recruitment drive that focuses on nothing else but improving creativity and goalscoring
if we decline to the point that top 4 becomes a skin-of-the-teeth proposition this season, I'd want him gone ASAP because regressing at such a late phase would be indicative of deep-lying, likely unsolvable problems with this managers philosophy that will only worsen with time.
I know what I'm like: petty and impatient.
If we haven't had one or more transformative signings and we're trailing a way behind City, Liverpool or worse yet some other scrubs this Christmas, I'll have turned on Arteta.
Arteta's just gotta sign us a magic man without taking his hands off the wheel. If he can't do it soon then he'll have to go. The club doesn't pay him to fuck spiders.
Burnwinter I still continue to take a glass half full view. Even with this first loss in two months. My view is that a single signing will have a really big impact on this team. A forward (left or central) who can create high value, high volume chances for himself like Isak goes a long way. We saw even with Nwaneri, despite his flaws, that decisiveness makes a big difference.
Despite the gloom, I want to shout out MLS. This kid is going to go stratospheric
Claudius My view is that a single signing will have a really big impact on this team.
Yes! I think all else (including luck with injuries and justice from referees) being equal, one more top drawer forward would mean winning the league.
But it's the obviousness of that which tells us Arteta has to get that player or get out of the way.
Burnwinter this, this, this.
Our lack of forward options is both a reason to believe we will get better and solve many of our problems (if we bring players in) as well as a threat to Arteta's job if it doesn't get fixed soon.
Any whispers of #artetaout are pretty petulant at this stage to be honest but things do have to change this summer. My main concern on that front is that we won't have Edu's replacement in before then but the club have afforded themselves faith that they will fix the situation.
Edit: what Burnsy said in his follow-on posts.
Yeah look, hats off to the folks (I particularly recall Sicario and Qs) who insisted we were short of a top striker in summer. I trusted the process and I thought we could get away with a few quality additions and still move forward, but I was wrong.
The people who said Martinelli was going to need upgrading (particularly recall Dules and RtC saying this) were also on the right track.
We skated by with Havertz and Trossard during the second half of last season and achieved an amazing run, but they're not up to it now despite being good players. Jesus has to be sold and Sterling is irrelevant.
Burnwinter it’s always been obvious the team needed another top forward who fit the system for over a year. But one assumes these are works in progress. The balance is how do you build as quickly as possible while ensuring you get the right players. I’d like to think Arteta tried to optimise both of these as much as possible - particularly given rumours around Vlahovic, Williams, Raphiña, Sekso and others.
