Season Post-Mortem: Eliminations and Recriminations: Page 2 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Season Post-Mortem: Eliminations and Recriminations

Qwiss

Burnwinter Sure, but Jesus for £50m would be a deal that people would be excited about for the same player in the same condition right now

Some people maybe but people who watched him for City, like me, wouldn't be and weren't at the time.

Burnwinter Havertz for £65m was the reason we were within 2 points of City.

Are we just ignoring his first half of the season? You said we needed to take out equivalent value when talking about players we should have brought in, bullshit premise to start with but Havertz is exactly that. A £65m centre forward would have been a better investment.

They are our centre forward choices and neither have been good enough. And the choices aren't a midget or Havertz. The way game is at the moment with one up top means most strikers are units now. Even silky mother fuckers like Isak are well over 6 foot.

Burnwinter

Claudius You're telling on yourself a bit there.

The format of the review is deliberately symmetric, starting with the negatives and ending with the positives.

For every single category except "Infinite meh" there's a balancing category of similar degree.

Claudius

Burnwinter hehehehe. I'll answer more fully next year when I have had time

To keep spirits up, here's a question for you guys to think about
A team finishes the first half of the season in first place. They are in a dead-heat for first after 30 rounds but fall away by 10 points over the remaining 8 games of the season and finish a distant 3rd. They lose in the QF of the Europa League to a team that has 1/3 of their wage bill. What happened next?

Bernard Woolley

Claudius They changed their manager?

Qwiss

Everyone is thinking about the Champions League run today but ultimately your level is shown by your league performance. Emery managed 70 points in the only season he completed at Arsenal. We are currently on 67 with Liverpool, Newcastle and Southampton to play.

Lukazan

I am not going to bother with the entire list as I'd probably be repeating others but I think the one player we must keep is Saliba, and there is a real concern there with him for me. Of course Saka too but he's an Arsenal boy, I think we are good on that front for a while. But losing Saliba would be a monumental blow imo. He's a monster and very young for a CB, only going to get better.

jones

Omen of doom: Sterling signing
Terminate with extreme prejudice: Arteta
Biggest club negative: both transfer windows
Biggest player negative: Odegaard going from CL to Championship midfielder
Surprise negative: see above
Thing that seemed big but was small: Gabriel and Havertz injuries
Infinite meh: the football
Thing that seemed small but was big: depending on who you ask our piss poor attack. Loads seemed happy with us grinding out results but being outscoured by the likes of Tottenham or Brentford should have rung alarm bells
Surprise positive: Timber coming back at this level, MLS getting a chance
Biggest player positive: MLS, Nwaneri
Biggest club positive: Berta coming in. Only thing to show there's even an understanding something needs to be done - if it had been Ayto I think I'd have tuned out for good
Keep at all costs: Saka
Chink of light: the standard of football in Europe and England especially is in the gutter. Doesn't need much for us to win major honours if we just pull the finger out

Qwiss

jones Biggest club positive: Berta coming in. Only thing to show there's even an understanding something needs to be done - if it had been Ayto I think I'd have tuned out for good

I didn't think of this actually. I think it could be in the chink of light for me. Certainly I have high hopes he'll come in and sort out some of our more glaring issues in a way Edu never did.

jones

Qwiss remains to be seen as some of the comments by Arteta (along the lines of "he needs to come in and be able to work with me") about someone who's supposed to be his superior made me pessimistic but yea, getting a big name with a record was a pleasant surprise.

Indicates to me either Lewis or someone else thinks either Arteta can't be left in charge or they might even think they actually might need a successor some time soon.

Don Pacifico

Main concern with expectations around Berta is that we waited until April to bring him in. I'm not entirely confident of any groundwork that's been layed prior to him starting work.

RowJimmy

Burnwinter Omen of doom: Odegaard ankle injury on international duty
Terminate with extreme prejudice: Partey
Biggest club negative: Failure to sign attacking player in winter transfer window
Biggest player negative: Collectively, dropping points from winning positions
Surprise negative: Decline in Odegaard's leading of the press
Thing that seemed big but was small: I guess Gabriel's injury since Kiwior did very well, but I think we missed him a lot on the offensive end
Infinite meh: Angsting over rivals winning Conference Table coffee pot
Thing that seemed small but was big: Everything is so blown out of proportion, nothing qualifies here.
Surprise positive: Merino's play out of position
Biggest player positive: MLS
Biggest club positive: We're the fucking Arsenal
Keep at all costs: Saliba is the one at risk of leaving who needs contract extension
Chink of light: Saka - MLS - Nwaneri - Dowman - who's up next?

Coombs

Omen of doom: Digging through Chelsea's bins as the transfer deadline approached.
Terminate with extreme prejudice: Partey, Jesus
Biggest club negative: transfer activity
Biggest player negative: Fielding a rapist
Surprise negative: Odegaard's form
Thing that seemed big but was small: Partey's quality
Infinite meh: Mikel Merino
Thing that seemed small but was big: PGMOL
Surprise positive: Beating Real comprehensively
Biggest player positive: Miles Legend-Skelly
Biggest club positive: Going further in the CL
Keep at all costs: Gabriel and Saliba
Chink of light: New DoF

Qwiss

Coombs Thing that seemed small but was big: PGMOL

We could actually put that in the seemed big but was small because at the start of the season those calls seemed like they could cost us the league but in reality they cost us being 10 points off instead of 15

MistaT

Bernard Woolley -- spot on. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Coombs

Qwiss I think it derailed us early on.

RocktheCasbah

Coombs Massively.

The four points we got done out of when at City and home to Brighton would have been a bit of a cushion going into the Liverpool game - had anyone else forgotten Kai Havertz late goal disallowed for a spurious foul given against Kiwior?

We didn't have it. Drew that game and then we had the lovely week that was a fruitless road trip from Newcastle to Chelsea, with a stop in Milan in between.

samthegooner

Omen of doom: Merino and Odegaard's early injuries along with the unprecedented red cards against Brighton and City
Terminate with extreme prejudice: Partey - good riddance
Biggest club negative: Inability to address the attack in the summer and winter windows
Biggest player negative: Continuing to play an alleged rapist
Surprise negative: Odegaard's form
Thing that seemed big but was small: Thumping City at home and Merino's production in the 9
Infinite meh: Trossard's form
Thing that seemed small but was big: Ben White's injury - took away more CB and RB rotation options and overtaxed Timber down the stretch while also probably leading indirectly to Gabriel's overuse and hamstring tear
Surprise positive: Beating Madrid twice in a week and Declan's FK heroics
Biggest player positive: Lewis Skelly and Nwaneri taking another big step in their development
Biggest club positive: Did not fall apart when injuries stacked up and progressed one stage further in the Champs League
Keep at all costs: Saka, Rice, Saliba, Gabriel
Chink of light: Dowman's emergence as a genuine top prospect who could step up sooner than we thought

jones

Yea completely forgot about PGMOL antics earlier (really throughout) this season, that's probably another thing that seemed bigger than it eventually ended up being. Still absolutely disgraceful but unfortunately you've come to expect it in England, only thing novel about it is this time they literally invented rules and dropped them immediately after to fuck us over lol.

Panda

Omen of doom: Brighton at home
Terminate with extreme prejudice: Partey
Biggest club negative: Poor transfer windows
Biggest player negative: Odegaard
Surprise negative: Inability to hold onto leads
Thing that seemed big but was small: Playing at the toilet bowl without Odegaard and Rice
Infinite meh: The way we attack
Thing that seemed small but was big: Odegaard penalty miss v United
Surprise positive: Knocking Real out + Rice's free kicks
Biggest player positive: MLS + Nwaneri + Timber
Biggest club positive: Going 1 step further in the CL
Keep at all costs: Gabriel, Saka, Rice, Saliba
Chink of light: New season = new chances to win

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