KingslandBarge wrote:
As I recall Per, Arteta and Van Persie made a collective effort to build social cohesion and discipline among the squad during the latter's captaincy. Maybe things had loosened under Wenger's latter-day more nurturing approach. Per in particular was keen on enforcing a rule-based system. If Arteta is trying to cultivate and embed squad ethics, one can begin to think that's reasonable and a right given his perspectives and experiences of the club, of that squad and what things were like when he rejoined. I think that is just one of several considerations that should curb quick comparisons to Mourinho. There have been a fair few jokesters, wantaways, wasted youth talents to also assume a new manager may want to a discrete and harsh change with innocent casualties along the way. Not excusing the favoritism I sense and the way in which he has exercised his authority is looking like a terminal failure. For all we know Aubameyang may be a serial offender of unpublicized disciplinary breaches (be they a succession of minor ones) and it had to culminate the way it has. Don't want to dwell on this given too much unknown but ultimately he really ought to be playing tomorrow night and this month before AFCON.
thats just the thing, when you create a standard, it has to apply to everyone, and everyone has to be treated the exact same way, or the rule is meaningless. xhaka was trying to get out of the club this summer, and i think his behavior was disrespectful. he was just dropped straight back into the team though because hes an arteta favorite. meanwhile, the club was trying to sell AMN, didnt get an offer for him they liked, kept him, and hes largely been kept out of the team. if you were AMN, how you feel seeing xhaka just given his starting spot back? the rules stuff is hard to speak about, because we dont know if other players are breaching the rules and it is being kept quiet, whereas with auba it is being bandied about in the press.
the reality is, these players are not just rank and file employees. these guys are on massive wages, many of them making more than the manager and certainly more than the regular coaching staff. they arent accountants or toll takers who can just be tossed in the bin and easily replaced, and when you treat them like servants or belittle them in the media, its going to create a bad atmosphere. it also doesnt mean you let them get away with whatever they want, but this is where the respect and man management stuff comes in. given how many of our players arteta has alienated, you assume that either we've recruited all the wrong players, or there is a problem at the top. maybe its because im not reading message boards from other teams, but it seems like we have more cases of players falling out with the manager than the other big clubs.
also, its easier to sack one manager than it is to replace 20 players. though we are seemingly trying to test that theory and turn it on its head
