Arsenal — Mid Table Realism: Page 15 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal — Mid Table Realism

Gazza M

Qwiss! wrote:
Anzac wrote:
TBH I don't think they had much option due to the lack of funds, other than to not bring anyone in at all which in hindsight is perhaps the way we should have gone. That said I don't think the youngsters would have fared any better under the current system.

I find it hard to imagine AMN getting Cedrics minutes, Pepe getting Willians and Nelson getting Pepes would have hurt is in anyway. In fact that sounds like a preferable scenario to me.

Agree with this. Part of you wants to believe there's some 4D chess behind these decisions, but they look like rookie botches tbh

Claudius

I do think it doesn't help when he has this big team.

I suspect at Leicester, Rodgers is told, "we are selling senior players and you're going to get this really good kid from France. Best of luck!" Arteta might have too many degrees of freedom given a squad where Sokratis and Ozil can sit home playing PS5 all day.

Qwiss

Absolutely. Any manager is going to say he wants to keep most of the players but someone above him needed to say no. 2 obvious examples I can think of are AMN and Luiz. A couple of players who most managers will want to hang onto if you ask them. However we have about 8 centre halfs and we've 3 right backs. When they signed Cedric in January that should have meant the end for AMN. Or if AMN had won Arteta over then he should have had to sell Bellerin. Instead we get no decision. Luiz could have walked out the door and we'd still have had 7 centre halfs. Instead he's let keep Luiz and deregister Sokaratis and just not bother blooding Saliba in the Premier League.

Same again with Auba and Laca, no way they both should have stayed this summer. You sell and replace one and maybe keep the other. You don't hang onto 2 expensive ageing strikers.

Then we sign Willian with no plan for Nelson other than to get even less minutes than last season. Its poor squad management. Tough decisions need to made and they need to made from a higher level than the manager.

Meatwad

Claudius wrote:
I do think it doesn't help when he has this big team.

I suspect at Leicester, Rodgers is told, "we are selling senior players and you're going to get this really good kid from France. Best of luck!" Arteta might have too many degrees of freedom given a squad where Sokratis and Ozil can sit home playing PS5 all day.

that was suppose to be the structure we were implementing and then went away from and "promoted" arteta to manager. irrational exuberance led to him having more say than he should.

Meatwad

the less stability we have in the squad the better. I subscribe to the Daryl Morey philosophy "If you're not a good team, why have stability?"

Anzac

Qwiss! wrote:
Anzac wrote:
TBH I don't think they had much option due to the lack of funds, other than to not bring anyone in at all which in hindsight is perhaps the way we should have gone. That said I don't think the youngsters would have fared any better under the current system.

I find it hard to imagine AMN getting Cedrics minutes, Pepe getting Willians and Nelson getting Pepes would have hurt is in anyway. In fact that sounds like a preferable scenario to me.

Only if it is the players at fault and not the system as I alluded to in my post.

Burnwinter

15th in the table after 11 matches and into December, hoo boy this is quite the season we're having.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Morale is at rock bottom and we really should pick up quite a few points, maybe as many as 12, from our remaining Premier League fixtures in 2020, but you wouldn't bet on it.

flobaba

Lol.

Says the passively observing observer.

Burnwinter

I am so detached from this shit show it's almost unreal. Glad I started cultivating a massive emotional hedge early, I will retract back into it now, lulz.

Anzac

TBH I don't see any real sustainable progress being made in regards to the football until we complete a purge of the playing squad. However I don't see this taking place whilst we prioritise club profitability and structural efficiency ahead of the football product.

IMO the only way we break the cycle is to break with our 'traditional values' regarding financial self sustainability, and now is the time to do it.

Burnwinter

I definitely don't think money is the only, or the main problem here.

The main problem is what the players expect and are promised, and what the Board expects, versus the reality of our situation.

This should be a top half of the table squad. We're playing like a bottom of the table squad due to our patterns of recruitment on and off the pitch, attitudes in the squad, and the false expectation from the top down we could be challenging for the Champions League places.

I just re-read my opening post in this thread and it still rings true to me.

Until we change our mentality throughout the club and accept we are now (as others have put it) about the level of Allardyce's Bolton, we will struggle to make progress back to a position of greater strength. We the fans also contribute to the problem.

Anzac

Agreed the recruiting is a major issue in terms of performance and capability, but IMO the financial structure and priority of the club are a major contributing factor to that same issue = we can't afford who we want or need, so we compromise.

Burnwinter

Can't say I agree, at least as far as the question of why we're languishing in 15th place with deep-seated morale issues that will probably end in Arteta getting sacked instead of "challenging for the Prize™™™" (Europa League) is concerned.

Qwiss

Midtable realism is starting to look like the we fuckin win the league threads.

Struggle to see us getting anything out of the next 3

Rohit

If we get nothing from the next 3 we will firmly be in a relegation dog fight. I don't think I have ever seen a top club even through their worst struggle as much to score as we have. This is dangerous.

Coombs

Qwiss! wrote:
Midtable realism is starting to look like the we fuckin win the league threads.

Struggle to see us getting anything out of the next 3

Seriously. The title has become aspirational.

mentalvortex

We are definitely getting pumped by Southampton and Chelsea.

Hopefully we can get a point from Everton and Brighton.

Claudius

mentalvortex wrote:
We are definitely getting pumped by Southampton and Chelsea.

Hopefully we can get a point from Everton and Brighton.

Everton are going to teach us a lesson. Usmanov will be laughing like Jabba the whole time.

Qwiss

Claudius wrote:
mentalvortex wrote:
We are definitely getting pumped by Southampton and Chelsea.

Hopefully we can get a point from Everton and Brighton.

Everton are going to teach us a lesson. Usmanov will be laughing like Jabba the whole time.

Just to rub it in that we went with Arteta instead of Ancelotti.

IBL

Our target is now 40 points, how times have changed.

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