Expectations - 2023/2024 Season: Page 39 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Expectations - 2023/2024 Season

Burnwinter

It's a bugger we conceded some bad points earlier in the season, but fact is (as the stats show) we have been grinding out points better than our rivals so far in 2024 (difficulty of fixtures aside etc).

It's not been a run of jammy wins either—we've been the robots.

Things look messy after this Villa loss, true. But at baseline form, it looks to me about a coin flip that we can accrue sufficient points in the coming matches to keep the burner under City and Liverpool's backside until MD38.

We gotta reset mentally and go for all 3 points at Wolves in the same spirit we did at Brighton.

Panda

The fact that we have looked better than our competitors in 2024 is what makes it harder to deal with but then again we weren't great in December and gave ourselves a mountain to climb to even get back into this position.

We have now given ourselves another mountain to climb. City will drop 2/3pts maximum. So we need to win every game left. Chances of that happening are slim.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius Imagine that in the Wenger/Ferguson era, living with the expectation that you could not even drop a single point.

How many points you can drop in the last few games of season will be based on how many points you dropped earlier. We're not playing a January-May mini season here.

Claudius

QuincyAbeyie all im saying is it’s harder. If we take 10 year increments since the start of a 38 game season, this is the average points haul of the title winner

1996-2005: 84 points
2006-2015: 87 points
2016 on: 92 points

(That 92 point average includes Leicester’s 81 points which is the 3rd lowest total in the 28 years under review. Sir Alex has two 80 point title wins).

Gurgen

You just take it one game at a time. You can't look at a fixture list and make plans or predictions. That's a sure fire way of losing the plot. The only way to win matches and titles is to focus 100% on the next game. The game after that comes when the next game is finished.

flobaba

Issue for me is we look like we are out of gas. I don't know if it's our style of play and the demands of defending as a team. But it's evident we have dropped off in power.

Look at Rice, he had those explosive legs and recovery ability and tackling. Gone.

Saka, same. Ben White, same. Gabriel making more and more errors.

It's not just that we lost. It's that we lost while looking vulnerable and like we are flagging, not as sharp anymore. We are not rotating or choose not to rotate adequately. I think you start the weaker team yesterday and bring on the big guns in the second half, but as always, hindsight is 20-20.

Anyway, we lose / get eliminated against Bayern on Wednesday, and I think that mentally as well as physically, the team is done. We need to find some extra energy from somewhere, desperately.

Gazza M

flobaba this is where I'm at. my early warning system was tingling a bit in the last few games, just from eyeballing our energy levels and effectiveness of our pressing. villa ruthlessly exposed what was percolating for a while

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius it's much harder. But does it matter? We can't change the competition, it's what we have to deal with.

If we get 85 points, will you celebrate like we've won the title because in another year it could've been enough? I know I won't.

Clrnc

QuincyAbeyie Exactly. We can't be moaning about the points tally. You are only as good as your competition. The exact amount of points is completely useless.

City could have won all their matches, but they had such a handy point lead over us they checked out and dropped points last season. All these little things will skew the points tally. Previously 80 points is enough for United. If they needed more points, they probably won't lose so many of their matches after they won the league

Claudius

Guys, it really does matter. A lot. Our teams are expected to do more than Ferguson, Wenger etc’s teams were doing. The only way you can do that in a league season is by having more quality. I’m not even hating on City. It’s as simple as that.
@Clrnc mentioned that City rotate well. When you go down and look at their minutes and lineups, you find that they’re putting winning lineups every game out. A few time they have one moderate player, but he will always have 10 remarkable players around him. We can’t rotate our best players to the same extent while achieving the same quality day-in and day-out. Over 38 games, this is a big difference. It’s like running a factory and just keeping it purring at 6 sigma levels.

What do you guys notice about the post Pep era? Only one team is consistently banging out these ahistorical 90 points seasons. Yes they’re well managed, but the resource factor is significant

QuincyAbeyie

I don't see how it matters in terms of reactions to the result. If City and Liverpool were 10 points behind we would have another reaction to the Aston Villa result. But they aren't. City are what they are, and it doesn't help us that a loss against Aston Villa would've been less dramatic if City weren't there.

goon

I reckon the points tally will drop off a little and I wouldn't be surprised if we hit sub 90 again this season. What City and Liverpool did was unreal and never sustainable. If nothing else, there's just too much competition for the best players now, so for you to build such a dominant team will require unbelievable recruitment or luck with a youth intake.

Claudius

goon they’ve done it for several years. It’s not just the 100 point season. It’s the 90 point seasons too. All their finishes are outliers.

awooga83

I read a point which is something I've felt a little with the team, essentially those games which don't work out how we've hoped, we struggle a lot in those matches to score goals and really to create enough chances to accommodate are less clinical goalscoring ability.

There was a comment on a podcast by Michael Cox from thel athletic pre villa that we'd failed to score in 4 fixtures which was a high number for a title winning team and he thought it was likely to happen again due to the way we sometimes are and I think there is something in that. We still do struggle a little attacking at times which just costs a few too many points. I saw people point to Havertz and Jesus chances but neither are great finishers so as it stands they will need a lot more chances to just get one goal in some or Indeed a few matches

Claudius

awooga83 it would be comforting to have a Salah. I just don’t know if we have a forward who gets on the field and feels stronger, faster, trickier more agile than every defender he faces. And then in those 50/50 moments he just does a little more to create a good shot for himself. Basically a striker equivalent of Odegaard. See how he always seems to have more time than others or see plays before everyone

Qwiss

Disappointing to go out there night but if someone said out in the quarters vs Bayern you wouldn't call it a disaster. Just need to right the ship in the league and push City all the way and we can it a season of progress if not of glory.

Sicario2 - Tier 1

Qwiss
Depends how you look at it. In isolation maybe but not in reality. We played Bayern first leg when we were in our best ever moment in 20 years. Had momentum, a full squad bar one player.

If I told you when we were 1-0 up against them that we would lose the tie you would be very disappointed.

We have to save the season from being another embarrassing end to another business end Arteta disasterclass.

Wolves really is Arteta’s biggest ever game as manager now given the context.

daredevil

Gazza M .

Good post. This is exactly where I landed.

awooga83

The worrying thing is we are establishing a detrimental culture with a new group of players that we can't get over the line when it counts. You only get small time frames where circumstances mean you rise as a team and opportunities to potentially win trophies come about. We were awful at converting those with Wenger and massively underachieved for the quality we had.

Now we are 4 years into Arteta's time and we aren't going to have a limitless timeframe to achieve things. You only have to look at Spurs rise so we need to start banking stuff and the managers that people look at did as having shown something more special did achieve quite early. Look at Klopp or even Alonso this season in his he's managed to push a team that is not a traditional winner to break a seemingly impossible dominance. Right now it's hard to see evidence that we will come back next year actually learnt the lessons of using a full squad, changing the playing style to one that allows greater attacking creativity or allows and environment for it and proper player recruitment to address are major attacking flaws.

We misallocated funds in the summer when it was clear we had attacking deficiencies and while Martinelli, saka and Ode had very good goal scoring seasons it was unknown if they could repeat that as such young players so it's a high risk to not try to bolster that and gamble it'll just be okay. That's not some aspect you couldn't forsee, young players are erratic and you don't know what their consistent level is at those stages. So if you do nothing that's not proper squad planning that's gambling it goes okay.

Sicario2 - Tier 1

Whatever happens, let’s take the title to the last day of the season. That in itself is actual progress.

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