Arteta, crumbles under pressure?: Page 2 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta, crumbles under pressure?

JazzG

Don't think it is fair to say Arteta has crumbled under pressure but you can sense the players definitely are feeling it. Yesterday if Southampton don't get that early goal I think we win comfortably but within a fucking minute Ramsdale massively fucks up and you can sense straight away the players were in a daze.

The Sporting game really fucked us up big time, losing Saliba & Tomi at such a crucial stage of the season has had a massive impact on us.

Clrnc

JazzG We are also not giving credit to our opponents. They exploited our weakness. It's easy to push the blame on mental strength or what we crumbled for, but even ignoring the goals we gifted away in each of the past 3 fixtures, the opposing manager tweaked their tactic to out fox us and we didn't do anything to counter it. From Klopp switching TAA to CM and introducting Thiago, we let it happen.

At West Ham, they switched it to long balls down the channel and we let it happen. Yesterday from the very beginning, it was obvious they were going on the high press and attacking us but we couldn't counter that. Same as Sporting match where we got out played not once but twice. We just didn't have an answer to those tactics.

Gunner89

He's made some questionable decisions which he'll learn from. Ideally EL should have been to play fringe players and youth players ONLY.

BUT- As far as what was expected this season, he's significantly exceeded expectations in terms of what we hoped for at the beginning.

The last 2 games were points dropped no doubt but 24/30 is the haul from the last 10. If city manages it with its fixture congestion what can you really say? Unfortunately the cl opponents have not been upto mark and their squad depth is ridiculous.

The position's they are lacking in is also where the club invested at least. Their chump CM (Philips) cost more than any midfielder we have. They have a good 5-6 players in defence that cost around as much as our most expensive defender.

Big Willie

Really wonder how you can walk with your knee jerking so often @Sicario2 - Tier 1? Arteta getting sacked before the end of next season? This season being a failure? Might feel that way but objectively speaking that's not the case. At least in terms of what we set out to do at the start of the season. If anything we've overperformed all season. If we don't win the title, I'll be disappointed, but I've enjoyed this season more that any season I can remember in recent past. Including those FA Cup winning seasons. We've been consistently good, almost freakishly so to the point where 3 draws and 7 wins out of 10 games is cause for hysterics.

We are currently 5 points ahead with 2 games more played so at worst 4 point behind if we lose to City and they win their games in hand. If we at least get a draw then thats down to 1 point. With a number of games still to play I'm not convinced City will get 24 points out of their remaining 24. Don't think we're gonna get 18 from our last 18 either tbh but there's still enough games left for their to be another twist or two to come.

Feel free to give up and blame Arteta, Vieira and the kit man for being bottlers. I still think we have a decent shot at it.

Sicario2 - Tier 1 Look, we had an incredible first half of the season but I think we got carried away, myself included.

More I think about it the more I think it was a perfect storm:

Xhaka purple patch
-carrying on the form from a great pre-season
-fans all behind the manager for once (all or nothing documentary helped as fans fell in love with Arteta despite most giving him stick for his first 2 years)
-Jesus inspirational form first 10 games
-having a relatively injury free squad for first half of the season
-White and Saliba being unplayable

Has our ‘quality’ actually corrected itself and we will soon see the true reflection of our side in the table?

We should have known that coming from 8th and 5th place to win the title it’s rarely been done in history.

We should have know we have a young squad that would struggle to cope with the riggers of a gruelling season.

We should have known that when the going gets tough we are prone to bottling (see last season).

We expected too much guys and got carried away, it happens

What happened to this sentiment of yours on the back of those dropped points in mid Feb? You're kind of speaking now like someone who actually expected us to win the League at the start of the season.

lorddulaarsenal

Arteta hasn’t yet had the opportunity to build / finesse the squad with the attraction of Champions League to offer potential recruits. This isn’t his final product. We are on an upward trajectory and will remain so even if we don’t win the league this season.

Sicario2 - Tier 1

lorddulaarsenal

As I’ve said recently, Unfortunately football is not linear.

We all thought our young teams of 2007-2010 had an upward trajectory but in the end they won nothing. Too many bad moments fucked our psyche and I’m worried the same will happen this time round.

JazzG

Gurgen Agreed, we have been conceding goals far too many goals, we give away too many chances every game. Eventually they would catch up with us.

Clrnc I'd like to think when we have more options he will be better at it but Arteta's subs are not always the best. Like you say when the other team tweaks we do sometimes get caught out and aren't able to respond. Problem is apart from Trossard which of our subs are fighting for a place in the First XI? They're all on the bench because they aren't good enough to be in the first team and we need to address that.

Mirth

Personally think Arteta's got the title run in massively wrong. He also got the run in to top four wrong last season and it's a red flag in his management style.

However, can't agree with the general thrust of the thread - there's little reason to think his time at the club is at risk if he's capable of a near perfect job till April. I happily take another season like this - as long as we're consistently in the mix, learn from our mistakes and strengthen over the summer then at some point things will fall our way. Ultimately, Arteta's still a very young manager going through a steep learning curve himself and we have to embrace that too.

If nothing else, Pep has to fuck off at some point.

Clrnc

Mirth We should be allowed to think that he is the right man but also the man who got it wrong for the run-in. I agree. It's pretty obvious when things keep happening the same way, similar to Wenger's blind spot in the past. Predictable collapse.

awooga83

Clrnc agree with that, there were plenty of poor decisions the reaction to the Liverpool match with negative subs, his unswerving loyalty to players to and unwillingness to rotate zinchenko a case in point and not utilising Trossard despite him having a very positive impact since we signed him.

Just plenty of errors in the crucial moments and we've seen that before and I don't feel he's learnt in relation to the impacting the game with subs and adjusting tactics.

While there are lots of things that he's done well this season there are still lots of areas he's not necessarily that great. He was anointed this season as if he's proven all he needs to but I think if we fall short I need to see him replicates a title challenge over consecutive seasons to know if what we've seen this year it's real and not a purple run that's propelled us higher then normal.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Just got to hope he learns and prepares the squad for a killer preseason like he did last summer.

I want to see new/alternative tactics explored so we have an answer to these wastrel teams.

Gunner89

I think we can definitely challenge next season as well.

The forward line is good, maybe needs one addition.

CM we need 2 and one CB.

That'll have us compete on all fronts.

Burnwinter

Gunner89 We've got issues that plague us in both fullback positions, need to strengthen at least one of them this summer.

Since Zinchenko is a pretty ideal utility player, my preference would be to let Tierney and Tavares go and bring in a young left back with elite potential.

Gunner89

Burnwinter

I think RB is ok. Right now it's just that Tomi is injured.

LB- Tierney's stock is only going to go down if he doesn't play and we can make a profit there for sure. Same with Tavares.

In's- LB, CB, CM, CM, and one attacker
Out's- Holding, Tierney, Tavares, Mari, (One of Nketiah/Balogun will go), ESR (Darren from twitter suggests some attitude issues with ESR which is why he isn't playing)

Burnwinter

Gunner89 Right now it's just that Tomi is injured.

He'll be badly injured again, and whenever he is we lack cover at centre half.

We can't be saying we need a CB really unless the verdict is in and is negative on Kiwior.

Gunner89

Btw- City vs brighton finally rescheduled midweek before last pl weekend

So something like midweek brighton away and weekend brentford away

those are not easy games

Burnwinter

Gunner89 Madrid away, Everton away, Madrid home, Chelsea home, Brighton away, Brentford away … might not be any dead rubbers in it, even Everton will still be facing the drop. They are seen by statisticians as likely to drop at least some points in the league.

Clrnc

Gunner89 we need to make sure we are even in the running and put pressure on them

Gurgen

I don't think this collapse is all down to pressure. Since the WC we've simply been awful defensively. You can't score last minute winners in every game, you can't be chasing every single game. That shit has caught up with us.

Claudius

Gurgen
Good observation. Since World Cup our xGA is up. And even higher since Saliba got injured. Part of that was driven by an out of form Saliba, and then he got his shit together and we looked better. But we need to be operating at a a +1 xG Diff if we want to be secure.

I’m really finding it hard to be overly mad at the team and manager though. There are some boneheaded things we have seen like Ramsdale, and then there are other mistakes like Partey’s 2 giveaways and Zinchenko leaving the door open that I think are literally just a result of us being deeper and opening ourselves up to more risk. But that’s a structural thing that we will find hard to adjust with our personnel.

lorddulaarsenal

Gurgen absolutely. The way we play is reliant on physical centrebacks with good recovery pace

jones

QuincyAbeyie Klopp had CL experience prior to going Liverpool. His first few European years with Dortmund were dreadful compared to his domestic form

Arteta has been shit in the EL too, could be that he learns from it though tbf. Virtually impossible to make any predictions about next season though, think both the "never get another chance like this" and "young team + coach will 100% improve" are nonsense.

Remember how Chelsea had outgrown the league couple years ago after winning it? I was certain Liverpool would fall off after finishing 2nd with 97pts because their roid cycle would have to end at some point, then they win the title instead and after strengthening the summer they somehow finish midtable

Burnwinter

jones Remember how Chelsea had outgrown the league couple years ago after winning it? I was certain Liverpool would fall off after finishing 2nd with 97pts because their roid cycle would have to end at some point, then they win the title instead and after strengthening the summer they somehow finish midtable

Our run at the top this season has if anything been even more unexpected, at least a few of the pundits have had the good grace on occasion to admit they predicted we'd finish 7th with 55 points or whatever.

They have no idea, honestly.

Gunner89

jones I think they're very reliant on VVD

His presence, absence, and decline have influenced Liverpool significantly.

Also, their midfield needs a complete overhaul. Fabinho isn't that old but he's done. They put all their eggs in the bellingham basket once tchouameni rejected them.

Klopp got lucky as some of the players he wanted rejected them and he ended up signing better players- They definitely wanted Goetze, Depay, Xhaka and some others. Can't believe Wenger just let them get a free run at Mane/Salah.

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