mdgoonah41 wrote:
Row Jimmy wrote:
Is this really your feeling about our current team at this point in time?
I would find that really sad.
yes, that is how i feel. i like a bunch of the players in the current squad. i loathe the manager and think that hes been given way too much latitude and freedom to turn this club into his little dictatorship. ive watched the first four eps of the documentary and its basically just propaganda, which is what youd expect given that arsenal consented to be part of the project. arteta seems like a pretty miserable person to be around, and honestly, a bunch of the players look scared/passive and you cant blame them given what has happened to half the squad in the last 2 years.
maybe im the one living in another era, but it just hurts me to my core seeing arteta as the manager of this club. maybe i'll be proven wrong and we'll regain our spot in the top 4 and make deep european runs and he'll go down as a super successful manager here. id bet money against that, but maybe i will be wrong. in the interim, reading the over the top, joyous praise of a guy who has basically done nothing as a manager other than exile and devalue a ton of players in the squad and play, at times, some of the worst football ive ever seen from an arsenal team is just bewildering. i think the pro arteta people are like the shareholders of a tech startup, hoping they are in on the ground floor of the next revolution, and they will go to any length to convince people the sun is shining even when its pouring rain. some people here, arteta could murder their parents and they would say "look, you have to trust him, im sure he had a reason and it will all make sense when we see the big picture"...its honestly pretty scary shit.
Is your loathing of Arteta because he is a "miserable" human being, tyranising the poor young men of the squad or because he's a bad coach that isn't achieving the results you expect of an Arsenal manager? Because it certainly seems like the former to me, and I think the strength of that feeling severely impacts your ability to gauge the latter and see the clear progress that has been made right across the club during Arteta's time here. Am I wrong when I suggest that the general mood amongst Arsenal fans is more positive than in a very, very long time? That the fanbase is absolutely buzzing because of the team Arteta has built? If you conclude I'm not wrong then does that not make you question the position you have taken on Arteta's management ability? Arsenal were on their knees 3 years ago, how on earth has he achieved the current positive situation if your assessment of his character and coaching qualities is correct?
That you're so offended by Arsenal fans forcing you to read "over the top, joyous praise" about the manager of Arsenal football club that you feel justified in posting with such distasteful condescension does you no honour, sir. What makes it harder to swallow is you, and the other doom-mongering nostradamuses, post without a hint of self-awareness or recognition at the non-materialising of all the nonsense forecast and peddled on here in the last 12 months - we're in for a relegation battle, a million miles from the top 4, the manager being sure to lose the squad, sure to lose the fans, the club being set back for years because Arteta was wasting money on crap players, that there was no recruitment plan anyway, that Arteta hated youth and wouldn't play them, that he hated Saliba and wouldn't play him, that players don't improve under him, that we had no clear style beyond Arteta revealing himself to be a knock-off Diego Simeone all along, and on and on and on.
So much nonsense. And with the passing of time that is no longer just my opinion, it's fact.
Here we are 2.5 years after Arteta became manager with nearly every aspect of the club improved massively, a style of play almost exactly like that which Arteta spoke of in his first press conference, with a constantly improving and evolving young team, perhaps the most exciting in the Premier League right now, bursting with talent that's the envy of most other clubs in Europe, and a connection with the Arsenal fans that is becoming more special by the week. This alongside the overpaid and underperforming players being shown the door, and a structure at the club from the owners to the techncial director to the training staff/medical team/recruitment team/academy that appears by most measures to be excellent, and from everything we see and hear the club seems geared towards winning and high performance. Quite some turnaround from the clusterfuck of a football club Arteta walked into.
I really think some of you guys need to take a look at yourself and your position on Arteta and Arsenal because the passing of time has not favoured you, and I suspect that's only going to become more obvious as the season plays out. What I see from some on here is a growing frustration at the predictions of Arteta's incompetence continually failing to manifest, and I reckon there are a chunk of fans on this forum that loathe Arteta to such an extent that Arsenal doing well under his leadership would stick in their craw. That even if we, say, won the Europa League and finished 3rd this season - to them Arteta would still be a horrible bastard that didn't do the x, y or z thing that you expect and demand an Arsenal manger do.
Surely you've gotta ask yourself at what point am I going consider the possibility that I got Arteta wrong? That maybe he is in fact a very good manager. And the same would apply in reverse if we do not make progress this season. At the moment the disconnect between the attitude of some of the posters on here and the wider fanbase, especially fans in the stadium, is staggering. I mean, how do you watch that Leicester game and not question yourself?
None of us are footballistically omniscient, as Wenger might put it, we all get loads wrong and talk shit, but at some point reality has to kick in and be the arbiter in all this.
