"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025: Page 70 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025

HomeSteak

Qwiss At this point you can just say that he is shit in cups. That win was the odd one out.
Regarding the CL, just a nice little stat, we haven't won a European knockout game at home under Arteta.
He is shit in all cups, the last games in the FA Cup:
❌ 1-0 Southampton 20/21 - fourth round.

❌ 1-0 Nottingham Forest 21/22 Third round

❌ 1-0 Man City 22/23 Fourth round

❌ 0-2 Liverpool 23/24 Third round

EFL:

❌ 4-1 Man City 20/21

❌ 2-0 Liverpool 21/22

❌ 3-1 Brighton 22/23

❌ 3-1 West Ham 23/24

Europa League

❌ 2-1 Olympiacos 19/20

❌ 2-1 Villarreal 20/21

❌ 3-3 Sporting 22/23

Porto will be a very hard tie for us. He has an abysmal record.

Lukazan

HomeSteak 'kin hell.

Clrnc

Qwiss

Clrnc it's like that winter before ESR saved him a few years ago.

JazzG

Clrnc If you look at those 7 games the only real bad performance was against Fulham. Against Villa we created more than enough chances but didn't take them, PSV was a dead rubber, at Anfield we were solid and resolute, West Ham again we created more than enough chances and the same against Liverpool again.

Last season these same attackers were a hell of a lot more clinical than now, I would be a lot more worried though if many of those 7 games we performed like we did against Fulham. That is the only real bad performance, the rest we have got our tactics right and created chances but been wasteful. Eventually imo that will correct itself, bad performances on the other hand are a lot harder to turn around.

We have 2 weeks off, boys can have a breather and work hard on these issues and we go again.

Daz

Lukazan
More like Ken hell 😉

RocktheCasbah

Qwiss is history gonna repeat..?

Qwiss

RocktheCasbah have to give him a run out first.

RocktheCasbah

Qwiss need Kai Havertz to come down with an illness maybe...

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

It's not only the terrible attackers we have at our disposal (yes, all of them are overrated by Arsenal fans beyond belief).

We are still second best physically to Liverpool it's actually frightening.

A huge portion of the blame goes to Arteta for running them into the ground, because he hasn't invested properly in the attack so we're utterly dependent on them. But I'm sick of watching our 22 year olds and any of the three "strikers" we have struggle to control passes and get shots off properly.

Dog shit and fuck the manager for not learning.

Don Pacifico

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert We are still second best physically to Liverpool it's actually frightening.

...based on what? We lost the game today but we weren't bested physically, quite the opposite.

awooga83

It's a big mistake as a manager to make two 22 year olds so critical to your attack success particularly needing them to score the goals. I think that's a terrible decision and bad for those players. As has been mentioned many times most of the top players today we would like them to be were not fulfilling that role at the same age. You need to do something about that and the answer cannot be just okay them.

Mirth

Agreed - we were more than a match for them physically in both games this season. The goal from a set play was bad coaching, no one was out muscled.

awooga83

This run has pretty much put us in a crisis moment for the season. In danger of things falling apart in early January which is a flash back to the bad times we've been used to more recently. Definitely giving me latter Wenger era vibes today where I already feel we aren't going to win any trophies this season. The team just doesn't look like it has what it takes looking at things as they stand.

Gazza M

let's see if mikel can reset the boys. I've underestimated him more than once and he's proven me wrong, although I would say Ive been sceptical about how we were setting the team up since pre-season, and one could argue we haven't actually got going at all so far as a result

if we're still looking lost and scrapping for a top 4 spot come march/April, then mikel has gotten things pretty emphatically wrong

Burnwinter

Gazza M let's see if mikel can reset the boys

Optimistically, the fact we're not getting a replay after that late collapse means the Dubai trip is on. The break and opportunity to confab has been useful in the past, after the Auba saga we came back with pretty good morale and conviction, so I hope El Jefe has his plans for it well prepared.

I feel for Arteta, he's been blocked from some of the main innovations he wanted to try this season, but you don't get time and good luck in management generally.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

They have tonnes more power, agility and speed than us up front. And Konaté is a mountain.

awooga83

Last season was the one that looked like maybe we'd broken through and taken that step forward. But it also included the 50 point half season pace which is clearly an anomaly and then the pace in the second half of the season of 34 points was much more in line with what we'd been achieving before.

This season has to be in the title race and within 3-4 points going into the business end for me or its a massive failure and if we get sucked into the best of the rest battle for the top 3,4,5 then that's a big regression. It would make me think that we didn't actually make the progress it had appeared and with the resources and time Arteta has had we should be expecting more at the end of this season.

Clrnc

JazzG

Didn't realise we hasn't lost consecutive home games by 2 goals for so long

One more incredible stat

Daz

JazzG
In terms of the actual primary object of football as a sport though (score more goals than the other team) I find it highly problematic when finishing chances is somehow seperated from the assessment of a team's performance.

awooga83

I've said it times already and it's not necessarily something that people don't know but Arteta and Edu choose to go into this season not recruiting any forwards and we've criminally taken our focus off that element of the team. Before last season I thought it was a big ask for two early 20 year olds to have to carry the attacking burden as we knew Jesus wouldn't be able to. They did manage to produce an exceptional season but it's still a massive mistake in my view to take that and assume we don't need to do anything there to build our options and support young players. People are saying you couldn't predict the drop off I don't agree with because that's fairly common with young players and we have put two such players key elements of the first team I think there is a decent chance of that.

That is on Arteta and Edu that they choose not to reinforce us with that and bought Havertz who for all the off the ball stuff he may do is not good enough where it counts and we spent big money on him that very much looks like a mistake. Then going for a goalkeeper tying more of our resources before giving new contracts to Eddie and Nelson for decent money when we knew they weren't at the level required. I don't think you can look at that and not say bad decisions in our recruitment choices are costing us.

Meatwad

awooga83
in fairness to arteta and edu, martinelli and saka are paid commensurate with expectations.

Claudius

Daz tell me something. If we have such in inherently bad finishers on our team, then how did we manage to score 9 goals over xG last year?
And this season, top of the table Liverpool who are constantly lauded for being great are, like is, 3 goals below xG this season? What does that all mean?

goon

Daz

I mean if you follow this argument all the way through, then technically any team who beats another will have had the better performance.

Difference is finishing chances is pretty easy to fix given a bit of time, the problem is we don’t have much.

JazzG

Daz I'm not separating it but you also need to look at the bigger picture. If we keep playing like this we aren't going to end up losing the rest of our games this season.

On every single metric we are performing well but not putting away our chances. The way to score more goals is to keep performing like this, there is no magic to turn around their bad finishing. We know Martinelli, Saka & Odegaard can score goals, right now we are just in an unusual position where all three have lost their goalscoring touch.

I look at teams like Man Utd who up until recently were only 6-7 points off top but you could see what they were doing was not sustainable. Performances are much harder to rectify than not scoring.

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