Arteta - one more year and that’s it: Page 81 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta - one more year and that’s it

awooga83

Qwiss premier league money has just totally killed it for English clubs most of Europe, even the top teams isn't at the same standard as the prem so it's not really a suprise.

Tam

RocktheCasbah To be honest, though, the only thing that should matter to us is finishing on top of this league no matter the standard of it.

Why? Not sure who you mean by us, if it's the team I think they should certainly aspire to being better than what they've shown this year, and as a supporter base I think we're absolutely entitled to expect better than what we've seen.

You can care about more than one thing at a time. It matters to me above everything that we win the league. It also matters to me how we win it (not a comment on the aesthetic value of the football). Point 2 doesn't detract anything from point 1.

RocktheCasbah

Tam because if we win the league, it wouldn't really matter what everyone else says.

I'm actually with you Tam, of course I want Arsenal to be better than they have been, especially over the last month. I would love to have rocked up to the Emirates on Sunday and watched us demolish United with a passable impersonation of Brazil in 1970.

But I won't be losing any sleep if we don't manage any performances like that for the rest of the season and the Premier League trophy ends up back in N5.

RocktheCasbah

Tam just to clarify, by "us" I meant us as supporters.

Burnwinter

Winning is infinitely more important than how we win.

Good news is winning will likely involve scoring a few goals and recording good results between now and the end of the season. But just win please, by any means available.

QuincyAbeyie

Burnwinter I'm not comparing Liverpool last season to Liverpool this season. I'm comparing Liverpool last season to us this season. There definitely wasn't a lot of "the league is so strong" to try to explain their relatively low points (recently) for a PL winner. More "they weren't really that good, but since the opponents shit the bed they didn't have to be."

RowJimmy

QuincyAbeyie
What people here were saying about Liverpool last year was not necessarily the correct explanation.

Burnwinter

QuincyAbeyie I'm not comparing Liverpool last season to Liverpool this season. I'm comparing Liverpool last season to us this season.

You see these two club seasons as similar? It's a strange line to take. I've said it already, but Liverpool last season were reliant on the performances of a handful of stars and luck with form, injuries and moments. Does that describe Arsenal in 24–25 or in 25–26? Who was our Salah in 24–25?

These sizzling takes confuse me at times. You're comparing a Liverpool side that overperformed on the downswing of an ageing squad to our notably stronger squad, strengthened even further in summer, as we continue to underperform in the shadow of a second place curse. To me the circumstances are starkly different.

Results to date this season have tended to confirm rather than deny my take on Liverpool's shaky overall merit last season. Surely you don't disagree?

Qwiss

I think last season Liverpool over performed due to Salahs insane form and that's why they won the league. If anything we are the opposite, winning despite our attackers under performing. So the context of everyone else being shit doesn't matter because Liverpool had no more levels to go up. That's why they tried to bring in new superstars in the summer with 2 €150 millionish players. We on the other hand are playing within ourselves and have dealt with far more injury issues than they did. I think if we get over the mental block of winning the league we'll be even better next year. No one's ageing out, loads can do better and we can strengthen if we want.

QuincyAbeyie

RowJimmy hence the winking face to Jazz..? Because the rationalization will naturally shift based on what's most favorable to us. That doesn't mean it hasn't shifted to what's true.

QuincyAbeyie

Burnwinter You see these two club seasons as similar? It's a strange line to take. I've said it already, but Liverpool last season were reliant on the performances of a handful of stars and luck with form, injuries and moments. Does that describe Arsenal in 24–25 or in 25–26? Who was our Salah in 24–25?

I'm not saying anything else than that the level we're currently delivering this season isn't notably better than the level Liverpool delivered last season, yet there seems to be an emphasis on how tough the league is that simply wasn't there last season.

Burnwinter These sizzling takes confuse me at times. You're comparing a Liverpool side that overperformed on the downswing of an ageing squad to our notably stronger squad, strengthened even further in summer, as we continue to underperform in the shadow of a second place curse. To me the circumstances are starkly different.

And I certainly don't think Liverpool had a better side than we do. I agree that we're underperforming - although I still think we'll manage to limp over the finish line ahead of City - in fact, the entire point is that we're underperforming unless the league has become much tougher than last season when Liverpool managed to deliver an 84 point season.

Burnwinter Results to date this season have tended to confirm rather than deny my take on Liverpool's shaky overall merit last season. Surely you don't disagree?

Depends on what you mean. I do think they were very lucky that both us and City had a down season and I'm not sure they'd win if we didn't, but based on what we and City ended up showing last season I don't think they were lucky. They were definitely on the downswing of an ageing squad though, the surprise this season has mostly been how little the new signings have managed to contribute.

JazzG

QuincyAbeyie Must've gotten much, much higher than last season since nobody were particularly impressed with Liverpool. 😉

Bitter twisted fans like me were saying this to be fair! Squad depth is part of being a title challenger but I think that is where we failed last year. Liverpool's key players went through most of the season injury free.

QuincyAbeyie What an odd take. So you being negative about Gyokeres means you want him to fail?

Every time we have a wobble the same suspects come in to pile in on Arteta, Nothing odd about this, once people have their minds set on something it is easier for them to stick to that position than admit they were wrong.

The difference between Arteta and Gyokeres is one took us from nearly becoming a mid table team and a laughing stock and made us challengers in every competition we enter. Now his crime is we have got to 2nd place and stumbled 3 times for that extra step. Gyokeres on the other hand has come in with plenty of hype and so far not lived up to that hype. You comparison would make more sense if Gyokeres had done well, the likes of me had gone quiet and when he hit a bad spell I start putting him down again.

QuincyAbeyie

JazzG I just don't think being negative about something means that's what you want to happen, or vice versa. There are people on this forum who don't think we'll win the league, but if you'd offer them to push a button that guaranteed us to do so they'd obviously do so.

Tam

JazzG Every time we have a wobble the same suspects come in to pile in on Arteta, Nothing odd about this, once people have their minds set on something it is easier for them to stick to that position than admit they were wrong.

What do you mean by that? Wrong about what?

As far as I see it there is a few subsets of fans who would broadly fall as 'suspects'

those who think we'll win the league but have been critical of performances despite the success of leading the league and more notable successes and improved CL performances (where I sit)
those who have been explicit they would like Arteta gone now with much of the rationale being unrelated to footballing decisions (eg Gurgen)
those who think recent results have indicated another bottle job and don't think we will do it (eg Panda)

Who do you think wants us to fail just to be proved right at the end of the season?

Burnwinter

QuincyAbeyie I'm not saying anything else than that the level we're currently delivering this season isn't notably better than the level Liverpool delivered last season, yet there seems to be an emphasis on how tough the league is that simply wasn't there last season.

Cool. If you're not claiming any of the things I've mentioned are very different are the same, leaving aside your denial of Arsenal displaying a "notably better level" (does this mean that Liverpool won the league in 24–25 and Arsenal is merely currently leading it in 25–26?) ... then we should agree it's no surprise when all these different conditions invite different judgements.

Thing is, the league is rather tough this season. Firstly the adoption of competent compact defending and pressing is nearly complete through the league. Secondly it's been slim pickings and hostile conditions for strikers, with the exception of Haaland. Thirdly promoted Sunderland and Leeds look likely not to be relegated. Fourthly the whole "peloton" of the table has been compressed into the range of a few points nearly the whole season.

These observations align with broader comment on this season and are backed up with numbers in the media regularly ... albeit, yes, cherry-picked numbers.

Consider the widely reported recent struggles of every club near the top of the league table to string wins together.

On your view despite this we should still question the "emphasis" of onlookers on "how tough the league is"? Why? Is it a problem to emphasise measurable, evident features of the state of affairs when talking about it?

Claudius

This post is worth a read. On how hard it is to score these days. For people decrying that we don’t look like swashbuckling pre World Cup Arsenal, this post explains why…

Meatwad

Claudius
and even with all those reasons, we can see with our eyes that if vik had a little bit more class about him he would have scored more.

MistaT

Some good stuff in here.

Arteta open at times, gated at times,, but also defensive of the team, and performances to date.

Burnwinter

Couple of interesting bits in there, he claims Eze's defensive error against Villa wasn't anything special and says Kepa was an Iñaki Caña pick.

I think it's fair enough the way he dismisses some of the criticisms of our style. As he points out to the bloke who asks about it, we don't define where matches go alone, we have to stop the other lot, so style criticism has to be specific to a match to be taken seriously.

Claudius

Burnwinter the Eze error leading to goal is a classic example of supporters with incomplete information just making an assertion about a manager. We've been through this with Arteta hates Saliba, Arteta hates Martinelli, Arteta hates whoever. There are so many moving pieces in selection choices. One defensive error against Villa is unlikely to be the thing that moves a top class player to the bench. One who by the way is still amongst top 10 outfielders for total minutes on our team.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius One who by the way is still amongst top 10 outfielders for total minutes on our team.

Lol, you love bringing this up without context. Nobody's complaining about the period where he actually played, are they? it's about how Arteta went cold turkey on him after gw16.

Burnwinter

Claudius the Eze error leading to goal is a classic example of supporters with incomplete information just making an assertion about a manager.

To be fair, just because Arteta said it wasn't a factor doesn't mean it wasn't. It's not as if Arteta would say "yes, I dropped our £70m signing for months because of one error."

Tam That somewhat correlates to Odegaard’s availability.

An Occam's razor-ish theory of Arteta's use of Eze:

Eze was preferred to Nwaneri as Ødegaard's alternate while the Norwegian was out.
When Ødegaard was fit to start (his first 90s were Brentford and Villa away) Arteta tried Eze at LW, aiming to keep both in the XI.
When that didn't go well, Eze got dropped at LW for Martinelli or Trossard. Arteta persisted with Ødegaard trying to play his favourite back into form.
We ended up in a limbo during which Ødegaard hadn't returned to his best but Arteta was having trouble dropping his captain.
Arteta dropped Ødegaard versus Leeds, but with Havertz back from injury he ran another experiment trying to fit his forwards into the line-up instead of dropping Gyökeres.

In Eze's preferred central role it's only Ødegaard or Havertz that has been preferred to him at different times. Not so vicious from the manager. In the meantime Eze has been preferred to Nwaneri all season whenever Ødegaard's not available, and to Martinelli and Trossard on the left then dropped when he did poorly.

Looking at the timeline Eze got a run in the side due to Øde's injury and then didn't do enough to keep starting elsewhere on the pitch when the latter was back. The two players have managed the same GA per 90 this season.

banduan

Claudius remember "Arteta never trusts youth"?

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