What and when should Arteta have done something differently?

invisibleman18

If only Tomiyasu having injury issues could have been foreseen somehow.... did we do a medical when he was signed?
Trossard has been pretty much our best player since signing but we won't now put him on the pitch until it's too late.

Clrnc

Tomi was basically freak injury. Slipped on the pitch.

I think we should have rotated to full fringe for Sporting instead of playing the full team.

But then again that has no impact on our league in general. It's the lack of rotation and bad in game management in our last 3 draws that's the problem.

Lukazan

I suppose (factoring in hindsight) I can forgive him not starting Trossard at Liverpool but not starting him in any of these past 3 I can't let slide. Inexcusable.

goon

Lukazan we scored 7 goals in the last 3 before tonight, I don’t think goals or attacking player were really the problem.

The issue is the midfield. Partey, Xhaka, Vieira and to a lesser extent Odegaard have folded at completely the wrong time. I don’t know if he would have made a massive difference, but I can’t help but feel Jorginho would have added some presence and security.

lorddulaarsenal

Moving forward we must get Saliba, Nelson and Saka to sign new contracts

naz

I picked " starting players vs sporting " just because it was so obviously a stupid decision.

Fundamentally though, I think his inability to use his bench effectively and tactically adjust to their shortcomings was probably a core issue. Saka can't play fifty games in a row. His alternative isn't going to be as good as him too but that's why you adjust. It's like forcing a square into a triangle hole. We lost Saliba and fell apart defensively. We also lost Saka (mentally) and fell apart because of it. They might be linked too.

Sicario2 - Tier 1

The moment all our players and manager got found out so the last 4 games. Are we imposters? A team and manager is judged during adversity and we have fucking failed.

We are very guilty of overrating majority of them to be honest. Saka needs to be dropped for next game.

Even Gabriel without Saliba looks like fucking Rob Holding.

The way this season has ended negates all the good work we have done to get to this point. Might as well be another 2008/2009 or 2018/2019. No BS ‘historic season’ for me.

Arteta will be under HUGE pressure next season and rightly so. His stock has fallen quite badly since Liverpool away. I think he is very naive.

There is one thing losing title to Man City if they fucking earnt it but not how we crumbled last 2 weeks. We gave up before a ball has been kicked today. Today we looked like a league 2 side going up against a top 4 side in the FA Cup.

Inexcusable end to the season.

P.S: we haven’t won an away game since we put that bloody clock in the dressing room v Fulham away. Celebrating nothing too soon.

Gazza M

I voted for the sporting starting 11 decision, but not deploying trossard more often was a big one as well. jesus come back but ultimately was a let down, and that should've been picked sooner

RocktheCasbah

I think the lack of substitutions is the one for me. You could say Sporting was the one, but if Arteta knew he'd lose two of our first choice five defenders to season enders within minutes, he'd obviously not have done it.

The bench work is more easy to look at - if he'd been less scared at Liverpool we probably win, more proactive against Southampton we might well have won and even tonight, when he made them, the subs made a positive difference (I'm leaving West Ham out cos I didn't see most of the game).

And the reduced use of Trossard, as Gazza says. He's brilliant.

Doc

People get to hung up about specific moments during the season when the overall is most relevant.. anyway, went for not adapting the formation (+in game management) from the options above, its more wider than that though

1- We haven't manged to keep our A game going throughout the season. We all know that it requires high calibre players... That's a squad issue, you can say we haven't rotated enough but personally don't think the quality is there to keep it up. We need a few more top players to be able to do that. Hopefully the summer fixes it because we should absolutely try to play that way as much as possible.. You just have to listen to the opposition teams talk about us, we have been fucking horrible to play against for most of the season..

2- Its impossible to impose it all the time though and that leads to the next point that we don't have a plan B. I don't mean setting up a totally different way, but being able to adapt in game... Arteta needs to figure that out, we need to learn how to concede more of the pitch without the game plan going to shit leaving holes everywhere, and also be able to switch between the 2 in game. This is going to be a big issue in CL I feel.

3- Young Squad - Nerves have kicked in during the final stretch and the inexperience of the players have not been able to get us through it..

Coombs

Subs are too late in every single game, Tross should never have been dropped, and Jorginho was a stupid and pointless signing - needed a real midfielder to see us through the inevitable dip.

Nelson/ESR could have been used more, but I'm not convinced they'd have altered results dramatically.

Not going to blame Arteta for Saliba.

Qwiss

Coombs think that basically sums up what I think too. Should have more rotation, more early subs and when you have a couple of players like Jesus/Trossard or both sides for the full backs that are relatively close in level just swap them around more. Make it common place and after a few weeks you don't lose anything in terms of rhythm or confidence. We are in the CL next season and that needs to be how the squad works, especially given the lack of tactical flexibility.

And yeah Jorginho was the wrong purchase. We should have had a better back up plan who could cover for Xhaka as well as Partey.

Lukazan

goon Trossard is one of those invaluable sort of players that is able to give a 7/10 (atleast) performance in a number of positions. In saying we misused Trossard I'm not really talking about in an attacking sense or position, he can play midfield and should have last week instead of Vieira. He passes the ball well and is able to hold it under pressure, two things we've seemed desperately incapable of doing for periods in our last handful of matches. Pretty much every time he's been introduced we've looked better for it.

Agree on Jorginho though, he absolutely should have come on instead of Kiwior against Liverpool too, imo.

MistaT

In the absence of Saliba, it does feel like a Partey-Jorginho pairing may have enabled us to player further upfield and still control games.

Don’t think it would have come at much of a loss with Xhaka off form. Though perhaps a 4-2-3-1 (Ode or Trossard central) would have some unforeseen consequences I’m not wise to.

Burnwinter

It's been a good season by any reasonable measure.

Problems?

Signings, inflexible selection, inflexible preparation, inflexible on match days, motivation and leadership.

I don't think there's any one of these alone that's the remedy, but if you manage to sign that dynamic starting midfielder in January (a difficult one to see the priority of at the time, arguably), and you're giving the second-stringers a proper run in the Europa League, and you loosen up on match days and imagine different possibilities for how things might go with the players, and you don't stink the joint up with whatever corrosive motivational stuff seems to have been happening, then we're still in a better position to win the league by maybe 6 points.

Fine margins. He's been doing a good job.

Gurgen

Yeah cut the drama. It’s a miracle we’ve been competing with the oil state for this long. We’ve overachieved hugely. Be grateful for what we have. If someone told you start of the season we’d be top after 31 games you’d have bitten their arm off.

Claudius

There’s no pressure now and a week before our next game.
I would try something completely different. Go 3 at the back. 5 midfield, and two forwards. It will take a few games to settle but would be better than continuing on this path

Kel Varnsen

Sometimes the manager gets too much blame (or credit). This is one of those times. Players like Ødegaard, Saka, Jesus, Zinchenko, Xhaka and even Gabriel and Partey have not played well lately. Earlier this season they were all among the best players in the league. I don't think that the drop off is Arteta's fault.

Is it acumulated physical fatigue? Doubt it. We've seen other teams play the same 11-15 players an entire season. Have we "been found out"? Doubt it. Teams knew long ago what we were doing. It was how we were doing it that created problems. Not what we were doing. I think it is mostly a combination of pressure getting to a young team, some "unlucky" situations going against us (var, conceding easy goals, missed chances etc), and a City team that looks insanely strong.

Arteta should have rested players against Sporting and dropped Jesus for Trossard. Doubt it would have made any real difference though.

HomeSteak

The problem was going for all competitions, we were just not there yet. I know, people & Arteta said the same thing, great players play 2 times a week, and they do it well, but the truth is, the players are not there yet. And to be fair to Arteta it's hard to rotate to much when you don't trust the players...but still, it was too soon for us. Hell, we played first team players in the group stages of the EL. We played Saka, Martinelli in the FA Cup against lower league opp. And yeah, they did not get injured but it did took a lot out of the players. I mean Saka had some insane numbers this season, something like 80 games in a row started...it's just too much and you can tell that it's too much, look at him now. And it made no sense to play him that much considering how well Nelson has done in the time he was given.

Next season we will be even better, CL money will get us 3-4 new players - good ones, that I hope Arteta trusts....don't know, we will see. But in term of title, it will be very hard for anyone to win it in the next few years. City will be much better next season.

Still, credit to Arteta, one hell of a season, I had fun watching us for the first time since 2014 probably.

Segway

He should have rotated more. That has been Arteta's biggest fault this season by far. Huge mistake to take Trossard out when he's been so brilliant since arriving.

However, I don't think it should be underestimated how the pressure of the title race affected the players. How else can you explain Saka's and Ødegaard's sudden sharp decline in performances and the way we just froze in fear last night, at Anfield and vs. West Ham? The pressure for this young group of players to win the club's first title in 19 years with the league position we were in and to win it for the club's tens of millions of fans with the City behemoth snapping at their heels must have been suffocating. That has been the turning point more than anything else in my opinion and I don't think we could blame Arteta much for this.

Bernard Woolley

I entirely agree but that's where a manager earns their stripes. A combination of mental work and tactical adjustments were needed (I can even forgive the blip at Anfield but not WHU and Southampton) which were completely lacking. Will have to wait and see next season now if this one was a flash in the pan or whether we can continue to finish top 3 consistently.

Qwiss

Bernard Woolley I do agree that the mental side is on the manager too but I think what goes on with Arteta and the squad in that regard is a double edged sword. I think much of the way he built them up earlier probably added to the pressure towards the end of the season. If he hadn't built that up would we have ever been top for so long in the first place though? I'm sure Arteta and the players will all learn from it. I think its very unusual that you win a league title without a season like this first. I hope this adds some steel to the players mentally, many of them are very young.