"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025: Page 57 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025

Burnwinter

Claudius That’s simply down to defensive mindset shifting.

Well, it would be, if that weren't empirically false due to two things I have already mentioned:

The aspects of role definition and positioning (Zinchenko and Xhaka) that have come along in addition to the hard press
The great emphasis in defensive investment in our recruiting

I appreciate a good analysis in terms of continuity with the Wenger (or Cruyff, or Chapman) eras as much as anyone, but it seems like a case of protesting too much when many things are much changed from how we previously played and built the squad.

Things are not the same, and on the whole they look better now. I see this as borne out by the extraordinary happiness in the squad, though we'll get to see how long this period of success, and that contentment persist.

Clrnc

Burnwinter Agree. I would go as far to say without Saliba this season we wouldn't be anywhere near as successful.

Claudius

Burnwinter
On squad build, yes I agree. But we must also agree on coherence. It goes back to what I always said when Arteta forest started. That the goalie and the entire defense would have to go. It highlights your points that systems need fit for purpose players.

Which again frustrated fans because there was often a cry that Arteta needs to do more with what he has. Which is not how strategy works.

lorddulaarsenal

Arteta works with incredible detail. We won’t have been subject to it all, but the shorts I’ve seen online have shown him talking about how best to position your body to receive the ball, the angles to tap the ball when creating space, and the optimum time to strike a shot and where to aim (eg high when going near post but that’s it’s often better to go far post as if the keeper saves it’s likely he’ll parry it in to a position where another player can follow up).

Fascinating stuff to my mind. Burnsy you’re spot on when saying that the joy comes from the intent to succeed and win as opposed to aesthetics

Burnwinter

lorddulaarsenal That's what I mean Dules … when you hear Arteta talking about "actions" (to which he routinely alludes in his pressers—"he had a bad action" is classic Arteta-speak) that's part of where the physics, biophysics and geometry come in. And it's not solely about those body shapes and forms of mental readiness, it's the relative movements of the whole side as well.

I get the sense that when one of our lads makes a mistake and Arteta raises it post match, the inquest is into whether everything about how he attempted to execute was correct, versus whether he succeeded. Also goes some way to explain the scrapping of players like Pépé … nothing to do with output, all to do with process and demonstrating the capacity to learn.

If you've got a craft you've spent years trying to perfect, it's easy to see how inspiring this approach would be for some players.

RocktheCasbah

Big Willie no, they won't. They'd basically won it before COVID happened. I remember being at my mate Gabs place in Andover and the shock of them finally losing to (of all teams) Watford at the end of February. It's Liverpool, I'm not a fan, but that was a phenomenal achievement.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah I actually don't really remember the covid period. Who won what and what we did. It was just a terrible period all round.

Pointless football period. The FA Cup we won without fans was a shame too, did it against all odds and nobody there to see

Burnwinter

Claudius Which again frustrated fans because there was often a cry that Arteta needs to do more with what he has. Which is not how strategy works.

We're now at the point where it's clear Arteta's demands for patience and investment had a strong foundation. You can wind back into any manager's tenure and they'll be making that complaint, likely absent the evidence they have the ability to convert support, time and money into results. And very often they don't.

What we hear about Arteta is that he crisply articulates his plans upward and creates the conviction he knows what he's doing. Seems KSE were fully sold on him well before the fans were.

Don Pacifico

Claudius It highlights your points that systems need fit for purpose players.

Increasingly, I'm inclined to believe that it's players with certain capabilities (eg. Positional fluidity) rather than the specificity by position that we all originally understood. I think the fact that we've integrated someone like Zinchenko so well into the team when Martinez was our first choice for LB shows that attributes that enable positional fluidity (along with a host of personality traits) are what's important for our system rather than there being a specific template for each position in the pitch.

RocktheCasbah

Burnwinter What we hear about Arteta is that he crisply articulates his plans upward and creates the conviction he knows what he's doing. Seems KSE were fully sold on him well before the fans were.

I said it before, I think, and if I didn't I should have (great way to start a post). It was very clear, watching All Or Nothing that Arteta had built really strong relationships with both Edu and Josh. You could see it in Josh asking Arteta how he was when we had that horrible start, you could see it in Edu expressing the opinion that Mikel just needed to start building relationships with his players, "because tactically he is top". I remember mentioning that a few months back and being told it was just PR. We've seen the truth of it this season.

The problem is/ was we judge all managers and players based on what we see across 90 minutes every weekend, we don't see the hours of work and preparation that goes on behind the scenes, we don't really know, or we didn't, how things actually are. One of the things I've hated about Arteta is how cold and taciturn he's been in front of the cameras, but I understand it now. He knew where the standard needed to go, he was an Arsenal captain after all, and there was a lot of work to be done. Now he's got there he can present a happier, more relaxed image to the world. I imagine the same is true on the training ground - you can see how much of a mutual love fest is going on between him and his players every week.

Stan & Josh will have seen this (well, one of them will have) up close and personal on the regular across the last couple of seasons.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc yeah, fair enough, I was just pointing out that Liverpool had done their damage by the time covid happened.

I've got a group of mates all 15 years older than me - we ended up watching A LOT of football together via Skype calls, so whilst it wasn't exactly a time any of us would remember fondly, we at least had each other whilst the football was on. It's a habit which we've not really broken either, apart from me going to games, or if one of us actually happens to be entertaining a real live person.

And the FA Cup win was still an FA Cup win. 😃

Burnwinter

Don Pacifico Feel that's how we approached the defensive rebuild: no glaring technical deficiencies, youth, quality and attitude. Whole back five is decent on the ball and the preferred fullbacks are shapeshifters who can do a job in midfield or at centre half. As an approach it has great alignment, because it made overall squad spending more efficient as well as maximising what can be done tactically.

Clrnc

Don Pacifico Don't you agree that both Martinez and Zinchenko have things in common? Playing out of their best position and having certain qualities that Arteta specifically wanted for that position? White and Tomiyasu are CBs as well, but playing at RB for our system demand.

Both Pep and Arteta requires very specific players to fit their ideology. There are other managers who are more versatile and still can get success. Football have more than one way of winning

Don Pacifico

Clrnc to a degree, yes but I also don't think that Martinez could have done the job that Zinchenko does in our team nor do I think the way we play now, is exactly how we'd play if we'd have bought Martinez.

The main thing on my mind is that the positional specificity required is not as rigid as we'd first thought and the capacity to be positionally fluid is as much a proof point of that fact as much as it isn't (if that makes sense 😛).

goon

Clrnc There are other managers who are more versatile and still can get success.

Not convinced this is true, at the very least it's becoming increasingly rare. Virtually all the top managers need specificity. I reckon the hardest part of being a manager these days is getting enough time and trust to be able to get your ideal team.

lorddulaarsenal

I don’t think I’ve been so excited and optimistic about our future prospects.

Maybe in Wenger’s first few years but, always felt other teams could close the gap and replicate the edge Arsene had. With Arteta mind I don’t think his style is straightforward to replicate. Also feel he’s more driven to reach the very top.

flobaba

He’s still an extremely young coach. I’m interested to see how he develops. Top, experienced managers have struggled to get their players to maintain the levels of focus and discipline needed to remain at the very top consistently.

Also, what do you do when it’s not working. For all the talk in the Sporting game about how we were missing a couple of players here and there, Sporting also showed a blueprint of how to really take a game to us if a team wants to. I thought they were tactically superior on the day. He has to be able to look back on a game like that and see the potential shortcomings of controlball and learn how to adapt or react quickly to scenarios where it’s clear things might not be going our way so we don’t leave critical games (which we should be winning) to the lottery of penalties.

est

flobaba To be honest, I just think we were poor and sloppy in execution. The play was not up to our standards that we've set in the League. You're going to have bad games here and there and obviously Sporting proved to be an uncomfortable opponent for us. We created loads of chances that we didn't take, it took a freak goal from the halfway line to take the game to overtime where we missed some more chances and then we went out on penalties. I'm glad we got (two of those) performance(s) out of the way in the cup competitions rather than getting a game where we're firing blanks in the League.

I don't think Sporting showed anything to really expose Arteta either. Obviously little changes can and should be made to our approach in dealing with opponents like that, but given our current standings the League was always the priority(hence resting Partey and Odegaard).

Burnwinter

We are playing absolutely brilliant football currently, despite occasional setbacks.

We're producing some of our best ever and most consistent league results, best goal pace, best goal difference too so we're not sacrificing defence, can't really argue with that. And doing it all with a side packed with young talents several of whom have started to look world class because of how well they have understood the system.

And it's not like the Premier League has gotten any easier, although I suspect it is becoming a more homogeneous competition over time.

Even just looking at it, the rate at which we create meaningful combinations and passes in opposition penalty areas feels like the highest I've ever seen for an Arsenal side by some distance. Against Palace yesterday it was absurd.

It's a style of play that does go better when we've got a full complement of the Trossards and Jesuses of this world, in form, to join with Øde and Saka. When it was Martinelli – Nketiah – Saka up front, we did well but were relatively far more toothless.

If Sporting was a bit of a wake-up call, it's certain the Champions League will be an even bigger one, playing in unfamiliar settings against top sides, or even just eccentric ones very unlike the run of the Premier League.

I think we'd benefit from a top class striker who belonged to a different tactical template—eg a target man or a Sanchez or Suarez style pirate—someone who can be a true, deadly focal point on set pieces, play with back to goal or both create and score on a regular basis. Saka already is in that "difference maker" category and maybe Martinelli can get there, but I do like the idea of having someone central (could even be Gabi himself) who can't be stopped from scoring as an individual.

Qwiss

Burnwinter I think we'd benefit from a top class striker who belonged to a different tactical template—eg a target man or a Sanchez or Suarez style pirate—someone who can be a true, deadly focal point on set pieces, play with back to goal or both create and score on a regular basis. Saka already is in that "difference maker" category and maybe Martinelli can get there, but I do like the idea of having someone central (could even be Gabi himself) who can't be stopped from scoring as an individual.

Yeah I think after that 3rd midfield role is sorted thats what we need (bar replacing exits). Someone who can give you some brilliance when the teams not quite clicking. Arteta was talking about this being stage 3 of his plan but we've already moved into 4 ahead of time. For stage 5 its quality like that you need to be a truly elite European side.

Claudius

I honestly think we shouldn’t dwell at length on the Sporting game. Sporting scored a goal from the hallways that landed just perfectly in the goal. We had a number of good chances in injury time. All this with a mixed team that was disrupted by two first half injuries that also meant the striker had to be hauled off at halftime.

I think we are conditioned to be fatalistic after everything we’ve experienced post Paris. This is a good team that’s going to win the league. And we will retool int the summer

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