Arsenal - Aston Villa, Today, In about 3 and a half hours. : Page 16 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal - Aston Villa, Today, In about 3 and a half hours.

invisibleman18

est I see we went 2-0 up and then fucked it all up? Can't someone give me a brief summary what went wrong?

Essentially, as seen for several seasons now it's impossible to win without Saliba even with £700m or whatever is spent on players.

Mirth

invisibleman18 nothing to do with Saliba missing. We’ve dropped plenty of points with him this season - it’s 80% Partey at RB and 20% anything else

invisibleman18

Mirth essentially that still means it's not possible to win without him because being without him means having to do those multiple positions shifts. £700m spent but no trusted backup CB option that doesn't involve weakening the team at RB and in midfield.

Xcdude24

Why not play Kiwior at CB? We did for large portions of the home stretch- I know he’s not perfect but it’s surely is a better option than what we saw today

Qwiss

Xcdude24 fully agree. To me Timber - Kiwior - Gabriel - MLS is a better back 4 than Partey at RB and Timber at CB (who seemed to be awol for both goals).

Claudius

The latter part of this game was reminiscent of our end of season collapse 2 seasons ago. It’s not easy to just slot players in and out. Saliba is a massive part of how we control the game in both directions.

lorddulaarsenal

Claudius that’s why we need Araujo or someone similar

Burnwinter

This season has been incredibly painful. Even after their comeback I really felt we'd do enough to squeeze out the win but we get a tricky call to disallow a goal then we're working the post and fluffing our lines.

Feels as if we're simultaneously unbalanced, cursed with bad luck, and suffering the arbitrary punishments of the referees and the pundits weekly.

lorddulaarsenal

It does. I feel like we’re actually playing really good football. Mad negative variance. Though if we were to continue playing at this level for the next few seasons I’m pretty sure we’ll win the league. Adding genuinely good attackers will improve us further

Sicario2 - Tier 1

We really need to eliminate this ‘bad luck’ notion from our vocabularies if we really want to win things.

Bad luck is a cope mechanism at best and a kop out at worst.

Cliche aside, you make your own damn luck.

If I was Arteta I would make the whole team watch #lastdance. Especially Martin Odegaard.

Qwiss

Sicario2 - Tier 1 luck evens out over time. No one talks about our good luck, which we needed plenty of to beat Spurs last week.

Liverpool haven't been much better than us but they are winning games when things don't go their way. We are not. Sometimes we don't even win when things do go our way.

Qwiss

Coombs Everyone said we were ahead of schedule when were flying high

Its been 5 years. We are not ahead of schedule at all.

Coombs

Qwiss not now, but 2 years ago, and we haven't built on it, we've sat on it

Claudius

Qwiss have we seen that back 4?

Burnwinter

Qwiss No one talks about our good luck, which we needed plenty of to beat Spurs last week.

We'd have won the league last season if City faced up to a penalty on anything like a reasonable timeline or if they'd had any kind of decision or incident go against them.

Looking at City and Liverpool now I think it's fair to call the overall trajectory bad fortune for us, or perhaps a well rigged kayfabe drama in which we've been cast as the heel.

Qwiss

Claudius what difference does that make? We seen last nights back 4 and it was an absolute shambles.

Claudius

Qwiss agree last night’s back four wasn’t great. I keep seeing a lot of people certain that a set up with Kiwior would’ve been better without much evidence.

What I do think is fair to say is that Arsenal fans often underestimate the impact of the loss of tentpole players on the entire team. Injuries to Saka, Odegaard and Saliba specifically have been very hurtful, in addition to all the other stuff.
Watching yesterday’s game, it was apparent that Rice kept dropping into the spaces that Saliba typically occupies so that he could collect the ball and set up offense. That kind of thing messes up spacing, our distance to goal, ability to progress etc. we had big big issues without Saliba that Kiwior wasn’t going to solve.

Qwiss

Claudius usual Arteta can do no wrong stuff from you. Sometimes he gets it wrong. That doesn't mean the sky is falling down or that we need to sack him. There is ample evidence that moving Partey from midfield to right back doesn't work.

GooneriC

But in playing Partey at RB we created 2 problems , it's like Liverpool playing Trent at CB because Konate got injured and Gravenberch at RB. You would look at Slot and wonder what on earth he was smoking

Qwiss

GooneriC all while leaving Quansah on the bench. Although at least Slot didn't sign these players. Arteta signed and then wouldn't sell Kiwior yet he wont use him when needed.

Claudius

Qwiss I don’t think Arteta “can do no wrong”. He makes mistakes. The main thing I think is an issue obviously is inability to get a forward to support Saka. Other than that, I haven’t seen diabolical errors this season.

But seriously, every few days I come in here and everything is incredibly dire and negative. And then I look at the table and we are second despite all the issues we’ve faced this season. Somehow Arteta who is constantly bumbling and fumbling remains ahead of City, Chelsea, United, Spurs etc. But he can’t coach, can’t pick a team, and has wasted all his transfer money. So what is exactly is happening - are we surviving by an act of God?

Last point- on Saliba as a rock. We’ve had the guy out 3x this season. We’ve conceded 2 goals each time. There is a massive game management risk when he’s gone.

awooga83

Qwiss yeah and I find comments on the squad not being big enough. If the suggestion is Arteta hasn't got what he wanted I don't think that's credible as it seems to me has been very much in charge of the transfer strategy so the limitations and lack of depth are all on him. He needs to take accountability for the way we've got it wrong this season or how can you have any hope he's capable of changing.

Agree on the talking about luck, there is plenty of talking about it now but when things go well we bet rarely come out and say that we had good luck and that boosted us. The previous two seasons we avoided significant injuries to our key players alongside very high level performances from most of the squad which gave us the circumstances to be in the title race but nobody really says we were just really lucky. If you can't win when the luck is with you then that's a pretty bad sign.

Football doesn't work in a planned manner so the idea that we have a project and we'll get the benefit at x time doesn't really occur. You get the opportunities when the things fall for you and the 2 previous seasons we couldn't make the most of it when we got it. We also didn't sufficiently prepare for if the variance went against us Arteta gambled too much on his 11-13 players repeating their form when for many of the forwards there were major red flags about them and what they were likely to achieve consistently.

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