Sicario wrote:
Big Willie wrote:
That's the thing, if he's shown any indication that he has it in him to guide us to 4th then people might be a bit more patient. What he's actually shown so far is two 8th place finishes our first season of football without Europe for almost 3 decades.
You'd rather we ignored the last two years of utter tripe. I wish I could forget all those soul crushing, mind numbing games where we failed to score a goal at home as quick as you seem to have.
First season he came in half way and entered a club on its knees. He proceeded to stabilise and win us a cup. Were you crying when we won the FA cup? Didn’t think so.
Last season wasn’t great (Covid withstanding) but this past summer was only the second full window he’s had and we look a lot better since with our new signings
Were you crying when Auba was single handedly taking us to the trophy whilst feeding off scraps?
Anyways, I think what you'll find is that a lot of people already weren't happy with the football on show during the first season. However as he made us a bit more solid defensively and our results in the one off games against the bigger sides improved, people were willing to cut him some slack as Covid disrupted the season and he was new to the job.
We assumed that he was working on the quick wins by shoring up the back and playing on the break to ensure we didn't lose games. Many of us had hope that, although the football wasn't enjoyable, that he'd fix the attack in the same way he seemed to have fixed the back once he had a bit more time with the team.
We then proceeded to go into the next season with the same dire football, trying to make every game one decided by the thinnest of margins and unfortunately those thin margins went against us in almost every game during the autumn leading into Christmas.
Since ESR came into the team we began to have a semblance of attack but it's not been enough to make our attack consistently better because it's just not how we set up. We play to contain, probe and hopefully have something work out through one of the overloads on the flanks rather than going through the middle which could bring about more opportunities to our attackers to link up and get close to one another to create chances rather than being isolated from their team mates and surrounded by the opposition.
All because the risk that we lose possession in zone 14 is more of a concern to Arteta than the reward we could gain through the creation of chances through the middle. It's cowardly football, and not enjoyable in the slightest. In all my time watching football, I can't remember falling asleep (like literally falling asleep) while watching our games more than I have during Arteta's reign.
