Qwiss! wrote:
Saka and ESR saved him this season. That doesn't mean he's done a good job utilising other young players or that they haven't been kept out in favour of sub standard older players.
Aye. When you look at some of the decisions this season has come down to it's not hard to think that Quincy has a point.
I'm not going to say at every turn, but in many instances Arteta has been quick to put faith in experience and it has lead us nowhere. Luiz over Saliba; Cedric and Bellerin over Maitland-Niles; Elneny over Willock and AMN; Willian and Lacazette over players like Nelson, Pepé and, for a long time, also Saka. Arteta deserves some credit for trusting Saka with minutes, sure, but he also played him as a fullback for half the season because Willian needed a chance to fail. What a pointless waste of time that was honestly.
We're being kind here and assuming that there were medical reasons why Martinelli couldn't play for the last 6 months, but that's been a big red light too for me personally.
When you look at these instances with the benefit of hindsight it's not really surprising that we are where we are. You can make an argument here and there that it benefited us in some games, but on the whole we've just lost further ground. In many ways we've done the opposite of what we set out to do when we started to rebuild: we've prioritised experienced short-term solutions over youthful enthusiasm, consistent averageness over inconsistent talent. It has done fuckall for us in the here and now - we're pretty much guaranteed our worst league season in the Premier League era - and we've wasted time that should have gone into developing players and finding new solutions.
Saka and Smith-Rowe have played a fair bit this season, but then again any manager who can't see their talent doesn't belong in one of Europe's 20 top leagues. A lot of the time devoted to youngsters has come in the Europa League, and that's because it's so ridiculously weak that we can afford to play a second string there.
