Everyone knows we didn't buy the finished product in White, but there's no doubt he's already a good player. He has shown this at other clubs already. Other (better) managers like Bielsa and Potter have gotten a lot of football out of him and they both sang his praises when he left them.
Leaving aside the questions of where his ceiling is and whether signing him was the best use of our transfer funds, I think it's fair to say that if we can't find a way to use his strengths at Arsenal then it's an indictment of the people who bought and manage him first and foremost. They've invested a lot of money and future stock in him.
I don't think he's been stellar so far but there have been glimpses of genius, like against Spurs. The biggest issue at the moment is that Arteta is as bad at defensive football as he is in the attacking end. His only trick is to drop the whole defence and midfield into our own half and that just puts a lot of pressure on our goal area. It's how we threw away the game against Palace yesterday. He gets one goal going forward and then he immediately deflates the whole team structure because he can't think of any better defensive patterns. It's fucking amateur hour on display every week. There were ten men behind the ball and a lonely Aubameyang running a marathon up front.
I don't think that kind of football plays to White's strengths at all. We didn't buy him because he could man-mark opponents, we bought him because he can push up with the ball. You can't do that when you fall back as deep as we do. There isn't a single great side in Europe that sits as deep as us. None. I thought the whole idea of investing in guys like White and Gabriel was to avoid this.
