like someone mentioned the other day (was it klaus?), i think maybe i just need to check out and stop caring at this point. i come to this board and i sometimes read the comment sections of articles about arsenal and i see the people defending arteta and where we are as a club and i literally just feel like im going crazy and that something is wrong with my brain. in the last year and a half, our results have been poor on the pitch. beyond just wins and losses, we have played some truly disgusting, awful football. going entire games without getting a shot on target, putting together feeble efforts against teams literally at the bottom of the table, conceding dumb goals, the xhaka red cards, the missed sitters. its just been bad. really bad. i literally cant think of more than 2 or 3 matches we've played since the FA cup win where i thought "hell yeah, we look so good out there"
and the rough results didnt just start this season, or under this manager, but it seems like as we've descended further into the abyss, the talk about how we are right on the cusp of greatness, and that arteta is conducting some sort of masterful symphony have gotten louder. people applauding the club for this transfer window, happy we've gotten rid of the last scraps of depth we had, happy we've paid for our best striker to leave the club, happy that we didnt try to add now, for fear that might scupper our plans of signing some mythical brilliant #9 or midfielder in the summer. no matter how bad it gets, there are people withn this fanbase telling us the sun is shining brightly, and we're obviously just missing it and not seeing it. the desire to be right about arteta, that hes some brilliant pep jr and we're so lucky to have him, has just distorted reality for so many. i know its not everyone here that feels that way, obviously, which is the only reason i havent gone completely insane.
the part that i find really troubling is just all of the excuses, and the way history is being re-written every day to try and prop up this arteta is a secret genius narrative. people talked about the squad arteta inherited as being mid-table (which is flat out wrong) and saying he didnt have anything to work with. which ignores the fact that wenger finished top 3 in the league relying on jokesters like gervinho, vermaelen, andre santos, jenkinson, chamakh, denilson, squillaci, bendtner, eboue, and almunia.
people want to blame our problems on everyone but arteta. during wenger's years, he dealt with some of the biggest egos in the league. i literally never remember arsenal players being banished to the shadowlands under wenger for any reason. players might have fallen out of favor and weren't being picked for the starting XI, but our issue was players wanting to leave because they felt the club wasnt spending enough money or didnt have the right ambition. they didnt want to leave because wenger targeted them and tried to humiliate them. and wenger dealt not only with experienced, older players, his whole calling card was unearthing young players and getting the most out of them. do you think he'd have exiled saliba to france because saliba looked at him the wrong way in training?
people want to blame ownership. i agree, i blame them for not bringing in a proper director level person with deep football knowledge and experience at a top club. edu is in way over his head, and it appears arteta has more power at the club than edu anyway. but if we'd spent in the last 5-6 years of wenger's tenure like we are spending now, i wonder how things might have been different. we went from bargain hunting and patching the gaps in the squad with mediocre (or worse) talent, to spending £25m on goalkeepers and £50m on centerbacks. imagine if we'd spent that summer when we literally only signed cech.
i guess it just blows my mind that the standards for this club, what fans expect, has dropped so much in the last decade. i found arsenal in the late 90s, so i havent been around as long as some of you. but to even contemplate being okay with just a europa league spot, or somehow trying to rationalize finishing 8th...fucking 8th, in the premier league, is just something that i truly struggle to comprehend. this doesnt feel like the dawn of a new era to me. it feels like arteta is waterboarding us every day in service of his own ego and inability to handle the scope of the job. and so many people keep saying thank you, another round please.
