Good post Sicario2 - Tier 1.
It's mixed feelings for me. I think we've obviously been below our best for most of this season, so I'm glad we remain in touch with the league leaders. But those leaders are an upstart Spurs side so I'm much less glad.
Arteta's been more adventurous, but also made dodgy decisions quite often. To his credit he's also done a fair bit of quiet course correction. It's good in the end that we've tried more different things. To me our squad feels deeper with the likes of Havertz, Trossard and Smith Rowe to call on. All three show varying form, but also make an impact and can make us less predictable. Experience, continuity and sangfroid are giving us the resilience to evade the worst results.
Rice is a part of that. He's immense and I stand by what I said earlier this season: he is offering genuine leadership where Xhaka offered counterfeit. Great signing. I don't think we'll see the meltdowns of yesteryear any more.
We've wasted every point we've dropped. Arteta can be blamed for almost all of it. But you can see how we can improve: reactivate Martinelli, Ødegaard and Saka, all three of whom have dropped away in influence for now. They'll come on a bit if we don't run them down.
We have a superb defence. Rarely have we seen better at Arsenal. But we are tactically odd. We take risks to build from the back, then work the ball strangely once we manage to progr ess. Going by intuition, the naked eye and the numbers, we need to create more chances and score more. I feel we should know by Christmas if that can happen. If it does, with this defence I'm confident we'll be in the title mix then.
Weirdly enough, at this exact moment it feels like we could win it. I'll feel differently if we get tonked away to Newcastle. Big match that.
