Ricky1985 wrote:
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.
im going to start cataloging your condescensions, which is what you accused me of. hes achieved exactly one thing since he came here: that FA cup run, which was basically auba singlehandedly winning us a cup. last season he engineered a big collapse at the end of the season that saw us miss out on 4th. previously, he took us to an 8th place league finish and out of europe entirely for the first time in....i dont even know how long. his results have been below the expectation, on balance. its hard for me to say that hes had a huge positive influence on the club off the pitch, because we are only seeing the propaganda perspective in the documentary. id love to hear auba's thoughts on how things are going at arsenal
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?
so the "general mood" is what i am supposed to use to calibrate my feelings about the club? what you, or people from the comment section online or reddit thinks about arsenal as a whole has nothing to do with how i feel about the club. we were "on our knees 3 years ago" and in my view, not a lot has changed from a bottom line perspective. last season we finished 5th. which was basically right where we were when wenger left. i know that now, we score less goals and we still commit a lot of the dumb mistakes on the pitch as we did at the end of the wenger era. what has changed? well, we are now spending man city money every transfer window, which is something we did not do during wenger's era. we've tried to spend our way out of a bunch of mistakes, and if we hadnt done that, the club would be in worse shape obviously, no matter who the manager is.
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.
hmmmm...
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.
this is condescending nonsense. people are wrong all the time. you were the sunshine kid constantly in the past, projecting huge things for arsenal that never materialized, and when they didnt materialize, you just moved on to the next positive thing you were forecasting. i dont play the gotcha game on here (or anywhere) with predictions, because its really difficult/impossible to predict the future.
So much nonsense. And with the passing of time that is no longer just my opinion, it's fact.
because a majority of the fanbase believes something doesnt make it a "fact"...your feelings and opinions are your feelings and opinions. stating that 2 x 2 = 4 is a fact, stating that arteta is a brilliant manager is your opinion.
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.
nearly every aspect has improved massively is another opinion of yours, one that i can disagree with. our style of play is still, on the whole, pretty difficult to watch. last season, which was supposedly a huge step forward for the club, was marked by long spells where we didnt score any goals and barely created any chances. we do have a lot of young talent, but saying it is "the envy of most other clubs in europe" is again just your opinion. do you think juve would swap their entire first team for ours? we do have a lot of good young talent in the team, and ive never stated the opposite. but they are still just young and unproven talent until they win something, or at least show some level of consistency across a full season. im also not sure we can say that our club structure is geared toward winning and high performance. we finished 5th last season and cocked it up during the run in. the squad that won that FA cup is largely gone. the current crop of players that have been at arsenal havent won anything, bar jesus and zinchenko, and they havent won anything here. is there more promise now that maybe 2 years ago? sure. does it mean that this club is now in pristine shape and shouldnt be questioned by anyone? thats a reach to me
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.
this is a ridiculous statement and its out of line. i am free to dislike arteta for any number of reasons, and that doesnt make me less of a person or less of a supporter of the club and it doesnt make my opinion of him wrong. note, my OPINION, because thats just what it is.
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.
i have supported arsenal through multiple managers and will support them when arteta is long gone. i care about the club. we saw the cult of wenger when he was at the club, and we're now seeing the same thing with the people who think arteta is a football genius. the difference is, wenger developed his reputation after winning doubles and going a season undefeated. areta has that FA cup (with basically an entirely different squad now) and a few 8th place finishes on his ledger and a calamity of a collapse last season. i think its odd that arteta has turned into a cult like figure despite not really having the track record to even come close to justifying that level of status. if we win the europa league this year and finish third, that will be a good result for the club, obviously. and as a fan of arsenal fc and not arteta fc, i will be happy about it. that also doesnt mean i was wrong about every thought ive had about arteta. the counter to this, of course, is that when we get knocked out of europa and when/if we dont finish in the top 4, the arteta fc folks will again shift the goalposts, talk about all the other tangible progress they can "feel" and how things are so positive and optimistic. you'll just hand wave away anyone pointing out that we failed to achieve what should be the goals for a club of our size and stature.
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?
i dont question myself because ive been supporting arsenal for almost 30 years and because i can separate things out, and not everything goes into one bucket. i never expect that 100% of my predictions will be right, because we base it on incomplete information. i thought arteta was the wrong choice for arsenal at the time. i think what hes shown in the last 3 years does not convince me he is going to be the person to get us winning the league again. the standards around here for what a successful arsenal season is have absolutely plummeted in the last decade. we used to mock the idea of top 4 being a trophy because we felt we should be reaching so much higher than that. now, an 8th place finish coupled with a late season collapse to miss the top 4 is something i should be amazed by and in awe of? nah. yes, the league is competitive, blah blah fucking blah. ive watched lots of teams around us in the table consistently punch above their weight and do more with a less talented, less expensive squad than we've had in the last 4-5 years. we do not have to relitigate every signing again. but some people here have come to expect so little from arsenal that any flicker of competence is treated as if its moses parting the red sea. i can say and feel that i dont think arteta is a great manager, and thats my opinion, and if you look objectively at the data (goals scored, goals conceded, red cards, shots on target, expected goals, etc) i think its hard to make the counterpoint that he has done a great job. you might look at him and see all of this potential and that might be all that matters to you.
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.
funnily enough, reality isnt what you want to debate. the reality is that we crashed out of the fa cup at the first turn last season, we collapsed during the run in and missed top 4 when we were in prime position to secure it, we again paid money to make players go away, players who then played well at new teams. yet from reading your posts and those who think like you, we are on top of the footballing world right now and things couldnt be going better.
i think your post here was really sanctimonious and uncalled for. your comments in the partey thread really rubbed me the wrong way, so maybe that is why i reacted the way i did. i just refuse to live in the clouds and ignore all of the red flags and warning signs just because i want arsenal to be great again. again i think people are treating arteta like hes a tech startup. they want to buy stock in him now so that if he does pan out, they can tell everyone "i was in on the ground floor, i knew he'd be great!" just like early investors in facebook did.
this is a forum for sharing ideas, and it would suck if everyone agreed with everyone else. there wouldnt be anything to discuss. just as you think some of my opinions are off the mark, i feel the same about yours. and the loudness of the crowd or the number of positive/negative comments on an internet article about arsenal arent going to sway my opinion. the only thing that impacts my opinion is what the club actually does, how it behaves, and how the team performs on the pitch.
when burns insulted me a few months ago, i just logged out and took a break from this place. it actually did make me feel better. maybe i should have applied that lesson and just stayed away permanently.
