Ricky1985 wrote:

Making the wrong call on Martinez, renewing Aubameyang and retaining Xhaka, are three decisions that I think call into question Arteta's potential as an elite manager, that's if you make allowances for the struggles we've had on the pitch (which I do).

I think Martinez is something you can make an allowance for, Leno was great before his injury and didn't look as cumbersome or insecure as he does now. The struggles on the pitch are much worse for me because after so long at a club you have to either get the players to play according to your ideas or you adapt your ideas to the squad you have. We've done neither and we look the part.

Remember how Villa were cheeky enough to bid not once but twice for ESR? They're a shithouse club, fuck them with a rake but why wouldn't they after they ridiculed us on our own pitch and left us sore with 0-3 home loss that could've easily been 5-0 or 6-0? That's unacceptable under almost any circumstances and definitely under the circumstances Arteta had after a full year at the club.

If they thought they could buy one of our best players because they beat us up in one game at our stadium then they thought wrong. I know what you mean in terms of how it impacts our standing and prestige, but it is just one game all the same.

And I disagree with you on Leno/Martinez for the reasons I mentioned and even moreso for the reasons Quincy states above. If Arteta had a clear vision of the team and style of play he was trying to create, what on earth was he thinking selling Martinez? £50m shouldn't have been enough to part with him.

Martinez played 10 good games in ten years and gave the club a decision - guarantee me minutes or sell me. The club actually made the right choice on that for once. Don't know why it keeps getting brought up - he's a no-mark in terms of Arsenal.

A no mark in terms of Arsenal, he may be, but he's also a homegrown goalkeeper that was statistically the best in the League last season and a big part of Argentina winning their first trophy in 20 years. He also, as Quincy says, excels at exactly the things Arteta says he wants from his keeper. And we sold him for £20m.

It would be a big fuck up even if Leno's form hadn't tanked and he just carried on being an excellent goalkeeper that is terrible passing out from the back, but given his form is so bad we've had to go out and buy another keeper that's not half as good as Martinez, and for more money to boot, it's a really big fuck up by Arteta and the club.

I really don't see how it can be argued otherwise.

You are making the mistake of mentioning everything after the fact.

That is true, and I said that in the post before, but I'm arguing Arteta should have known better.

There is no hindsight bias here. Several members said that selling Martinez was a huge mistake at that time. And we are right to demand the best decisions by the manager; this is the best league of the world and arsenal is one of its biggest teams. There is no place for guys learning coaching 101, but here we are, with Arteta as coach.

I'm with Capi on this one. Given the data available at the time, it wasn't a bad decision.

That's a fair opinion, but like AAStyle said plenty wanted to go with him so the "hindsight is 20/20" argument seems misplaced.

Good job nobody made that argument then.

Sure, nobody has talked about the benefit of hindsight here when the only benefit has been that those who still held the opinion then have been proven right now. I bet if you searched for hindsight in the forum most of the posts the last year would be about Emi. And if you're going to reply "but they didn't literally say word for word that hindsight is 20/20 so you're wrong" well then that's pretty much what I'd expect.

What are you even on about at this point?

Can't be bothered with your pedanticism.

I find it interesting that Martinez is the one stick people often choose to beat Arteta with, because I think that's one of few perfectly justifiable and logical decisions he has made. Based on all we had to go on it was the right decision, and I still think it was good. You had Martinez who, during a three-month spell where he played the best football in his life, matched the level that we had gotten consistently from Leno for two years, and he didn't want to sign a new contract unless he was guaranteed to be the first choice.

We could have bet on him instead of Leno, certainly, but the issue isn't really that we sold Martinez. It's that Leno then wasn't as good last season as he had been in the two previous years. Which of course begs the question whether Emi himself would have looked any better during the total team collapse that we experienced.

The failure in our goalkeeper situation lies more in the fact that after selling an equally good keeper we managed to piss off Leno by hiring a goalkeeping coach he doesn't like, sacked the one he did rate, and it seems like we also hadn't checked with him whether he wanted to commit his future to Arsenal or not. That's the part that doesn't reflect well at all on the management, whose literal job description is to get a feel of the room. But then again, if Arteta could read the room he probably wouldn't fall out with everyone all the time.

Getting rid of Martinez was justifiable and made sense at the time. The clusterfuck management afterwards and the overall strategic direction is ridiculous. Like Ricky and mdg said, Arteta and Edu look like idiots because of it.

I question a lot of their decisions... If I was the owner and had these clowns managing my money, I'd be a bit miffed

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Sure, nobody has talked about the benefit of hindsight here when the only benefit has been that those who still held the opinion then have been proven right now. I bet if you searched for hindsight in the forum most of the posts the last year would be about Emi. And if you're going to reply "but they didn't literally say word for word that hindsight is 20/20 so you're wrong" well then that's pretty much what I'd expect.

Yep. It's not so much about I told you so or not, but like what Ricky said Arteta trains with them daily and should have known better. He wanted a commanding keeper who can pass superbly, there's almost no one better at that bar the top few unattainable. Like I said at that time, I felt probably the GK coach was the shithead who made the wrong decision.

They got it wrong in hindsight, not because Martinez maintained his form through last season but because Leno regressed badly. Arteta, Emery and their coaching staff, all saw both the keepers in training everyday and until Leno unfortunately got injured, still picked Leno to start. This whole exercise is being made to sound very simple and obvious because a few fans also thought Martinez should have been retained over Leno. I don't think it works like that though. At no point in Cup matches in front of full stadiums had Martinez ever displayed the kind of form he did over that period. He really grasped his opportunity. Leno had been extremely solid until his injury, arguably our player of the season with Aubameyang. Martinez has recently and before spoken of his mental struggles too. The staff bet on their more consistent performer over a player with previous frailties who had been on a hot streak. It's not that shocking. I agree with Klaus. The real question to be asked is what happened with Leno. Keepers get better with age. That's the real question needed to be asked of Arteta and his staff.

Clrnc wrote:

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Sure, nobody has talked about the benefit of hindsight here when the only benefit has been that those who still held the opinion then have been proven right now. I bet if you searched for hindsight in the forum most of the posts the last year would be about Emi. And if you're going to reply "but they didn't literally say word for word that hindsight is 20/20 so you're wrong" well then that's pretty much what I'd expect.

Yep. It's not so much about I told you so or not, but like what Ricky said Arteta trains with them daily and should have known better. He wanted a commanding keeper who can pass superbly, there's almost no one better at that bar the top few unattainable. Like I said at that time, I felt probably the GK coach was the shithead who made the wrong decision.

He’d done it for 3 months though. He could have just as easily gone for Emi and sold a tried and tested Leno and it could have gone horribly wrong. I thought Emi was the better keeper but I thought it was the right call to back Leno, would have been a huge gamble to do otherwise.

official.