Arteta - one more year and that’s it: Page 41 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta - one more year and that’s it

Tam

JazzG think our fans are living in cuckoo land if they realistically think we should be going to their stadium and taking them apart especially when you consider the calibre of players we had out going into this game

Nobody said that or even suggested anything approaching “taking them apart”.

Losing Saliba five minutes in is a red herring, another strawman argument. The team was set up and decisions were made long before Saliba stepped on the pitch never mind hobbled off it.

JazzG

Tam People have said we should have gone for it. Liverpool were set up to play defensive and make sure they gave nothing away. This is one of the top 3 teams in world football and we went into the match with three of our most important attacking players out. Saka, Odegaard and Havertz. I have no doubt Havertz would have been a much better option ahead of Gyokeres in this game, he's shown previously how he can disrupt their CBs.

Fair enough if you don't think losing Saliba is a big deal but I think it is. Mosquera handled himself very well but there is no doubt in my mind that the team would be subconsciously more conservative knowing we have a rookie CB.

Burnwinter

JazzG Fair enough if you don't think losing Saliba is a big deal but I think it is. Mosquera handled himself very well

Thought we did a wonderful job as a team of settling Mosquera into the game, particularly Rice and Zubimendi tracking back at several opportunities to cycle the ball with him. But surely one of the reasons we took up very deep positions while we "controlled" the game in that first half.

Such an impressive debut for him, which was also a credit to Berta (who had talent-spotted him at Atletico according to reports), and to Arteta for creating the tactical regime that allows us to exchange one player for another without heavy reliance on the acumen of the one coming in. It's a situation that could've gone badly without the attention to detail that's now a trait of our club.

awooga83

JazzG you were saying In the general football thread Liverpool had no hope of the league because they didn't have a great defence and the attack isn't enough. So presumably now you've revised that to Liverpool actually have a great chance because they have a good attack and shown they can also be hard to beat?

The risk reward was there against Liverpool play a bit more attacking you get beat it's 0 or maybe you can get the goal to win. Try and be cautious you get a draw and 1 point. Last season we were on the wrong side of that risk reward too worried about not losing an getting 1 point then trying to kill the games. We need to shift that mentality. We heard plenty about how poor United and Liverpool had been defensively so why aren't we able to steal m attack those teams effectively.

Burnwinter

Klaus I really think people need to have a bit of patience

Sicario2 Goodwill is finished son

Through the summer and even last season the line has been "Arteta gets one more season". For all the criticisms I didn't hear many shouts of "Arteta out", not even from the haters. Maybe I missed them?

If the Project™ falls short again this season, it seems to me that'll be a black mark against the judgement of the club and nearly all the fans, even those already assuming the worst and beginning to inoculate themselves against the implications of their own folly, in all because we're 6/9 points after two tricky away matches instead of 7/9 or 9/9.

6/9 points all season is itself a 76 point season. 7/9 is roughly where we'd like to be, that's an 89 point season. If you're calling it now, you're calling it far, far too early. And if Arteta cost us a point at Anfield in your blessed judgement, who's to say he doesn't win us three points in a week? It has happened.

I'm also in the "Arteta gets one more season" camp, and if we don't have a major trophy in the cabinet in a year, I'll have spent next summer saying we should sack Arteta.

But unless that is inevitable, I'd rather keep good faith with my own judgement up to this point than lapse preemptively into a grumbling resentment, pretending I declared something other than I did heading into the season. Failure certainly doesn't appear to be inevitable at the moment.

Goodwill for Arteta? If I say he gets one more season, I want to give him his season. So let the man cook, I want to taste victory.

invisibleman18

awooga83 Last season we were on the wrong side of that risk reward too worried about not losing an getting 1 point then trying to kill the games. We need to shift that mentality.

This. It's a bit simplistic but Alan made the point on the Tuesday Club last week that if we had won just 5 of the 14 draws last season, that's more points even if we lost the other 9. Could 5 or more of those 14 games have been winnable if we went for it a bit more?

JazzG

awooga83 I don't recall saying they had no hope but if the way they defended in the first two games continues they won't be champions imo. Now last season they showed they could be defensively sound and attack well, they'll need to do the same again if they want to win the title.

Liverpool were set up to be compact and give us little to no room, what if we had been more attacking and then got picked off? Liverpool's main threat is in transition so you are playing into their hands and then people on here will call us naive. One thing we should have done is bought Eze and Odegaard on earlier, they should have been on ideally right after half time or between 50-60 mins, that is where Arteta needs to be a bit more on the front foot because we are in control of the game and bringing those two doesn't mean we need to go more gung ho but give us a lot more individual attacking quality compared to what we had on the pitch.

invisibleman18 Did they also talk about the fact that our squad was down to our bare bones last season hence why we drew those games? In the two seasons prior we drew 5 and 6 games so our issue with draws was mainly last season where we also had an unprecedented injury crisis. Those games we drew weren't down to us being conservative but down to only having players like Sterling on the bench!

jones

USArsenal Did Slot have a complete squad last season? Who were his backups for Salah VVD or even he likes of Gravenberch?

USArsenal

jones

Well, TBF, i specifically said 'other than last season'. Last season, we all know what happened with our squad. And Pool were incredibly lucky with their lack of injuries.

Burnwinter

invisibleman18 It's a very reasonable point but the counterpoint is that with a similar attack and tactics the previous season, we pushed City to 2 points and were somewhat unlucky.

Last season we were punished for a lack of investment in forwards as we know, but we also suffered from refereeing decisions and injuries which if they'd afflicted Liverpool instead could have seen us win the league.

The claim Arteta is a failure at building and coaching goalscoring strength isn't really supported by the last three seasons overall. We've scored a lot of goals. My criticism is that he's over-dependent on Ødegaard and more broadly, doesn't evolve quite enough tactically. My fear is that despite our great squad depth we've already got all these key players with injuries again.

awooga83

Burnwinter It's a very reasonable point but the counterpoint is that with a similar attack and tactics the previous season, we pushed City to 2 points and were somewhat unlucky.

So that's fair but my question to that kind of analysis would be, how do you know that wasn't just an outlier and a result of a perfect storm of availability and all the key players performing to their upper limits. Just because we saw that outcome doesn't mean that's the average level or that we can replicate it consistently. As i of now our record says we can't replicate it and you can say last season we suffered for various reasons sure but you at least can't say that you know that the season we hit 89 wasn't a one off.

It's a bit similar to Martinelli in that he had that great breakthrough season and the view was he'd continue when when he had his first quite season the fall back was but he did this before that's his level. Rather then maybe that was just a very good season for him and his average is below that. You have to show consistency in the delivery to support and element of your performance being the norm.

jones

USArsenal where did you say that?

There's always some excuse, we were incredibly lucky with injuries in the years before last and Artetas lack of rotating is a major reason for the injuries that struck in 24/25.

Again if we need a perfect squad to compete we don't need a manager. Arsenal were never a club that had top tier backups now it's a prerequisite to judge the guy in charge. He's spent a billion pounds ffs.

Qwiss

awooga83 So that's fair but my question to that kind of analysis would be, how do you know that wasn't just an outlier and a result of a perfect storm of availability and all the key players performing to their upper limits.

Because it was similar the season before where some players played above their 23/24 form. And we didn't have great availability with Timber missing the entire season and Party missing most of it. Aside from that there were plenty of other injuries. Just because Saka and Odegaard stayed fit doesn't mean we had no injury issues. Jesus, Tomiyasu, etc all had serious injuries, just because we've written them off now as a result doesn't mean those injuries weren't an issue then.

That we were lucky with injuries that season is a persistent myth that really bothers me. It was the same last week when people were saying Arsenal and Liverpool both had injury issues. They were missing Frimpong and Bajčetić(?). We were missing Saka, Havertz, White, Jesus, Noorgard, couldn't start Odegaard, lost Saliba 5 minutes in. And these 2 situations have been presented as equal.

flobaba

JazzG Liverpool were set up to be compact and give us little to no room, what if we had been more attacking and then got picked off?

Then we'd have lost 3 points. Oh wait. 🤔

JazzG

Qwiss That we were lucky with injuries that season is a persistent myth that really bothers me. It was the same last week when people were saying Arsenal and Liverpool both had injury issues. They were missing Frimpong and Bajčetić(?). We were missing Saka, Havertz, White, Jesus, Noorgard, couldn't start Odegaard, lost Saliba 5 minutes in. And these 2 situations have been presented as equal.

Spot on there.

awooga83

Qwiss but we didn't achieve that points tally so it didn't get the same outcome. I'm not saying we aren't a good side but picking one season and projecting that's what we can achieve any given season is not right. That could be the best season Arteta achieves and included a near perfect second half of the season these are rare outcomes even city can't maintain that forever.

Believing that we could is in thing but on what we've seen there is only one season we've got those numbers under Arteta so I don't think you can draw a conclusion from that personally

awooga83

Qwiss That we were lucky with injuries that season is a persistent myth that really bothers me. It was the same last week when people were saying Arsenal and Liverpool both had injury issues. They were missing Frimpong and Bajčetić(?). We were missing Saka, Havertz, White, Jesus, Noorgard, couldn't start Odegaard, lost Saliba 5 minutes in. And these 2 situations have been presented as equal.

The point about the fixture last week is absurd but it is luck to have your key players fit and performing at their top level as their is so much variance in that in seasons. If the luck stuff is not a factor then we need to stop talking about Liverpool being lucky last season as well.

RocktheCasbah

awooga83 but we didn't achieve that points tally so it didn't get the same outcome. I'm not saying we aren't a good side but picking one season and projecting that's what we can achieve any given season is not right

This is fair, but we did also get 84 points the season before. I think when you've gone 84 and 89, the 76 which follows is clearly the outlier. And what happened last season? Saka missed half the season, Odegaard missed most of the other half. We had no forwards and three left backs on the bench for ages.

And that's where my frustrations with the discourse around last season is - there seems to be a "well, we should be able to deal with it" viewpoint. We did! Given the circumstances of last season, we did really well - 2nd in the league, last 4 in the Champions League.

We just didn't win the league. And the football was rubbish.

Qwiss

awooga83 we had an 84 point season the year before, that's how many points Liverpool got last season. We dropped off badly last season but it looked more like the outlier. And its not like we haven't significantly upgraded the team this summer. No one is guaranteed a title but its looking like its going to be between us and Liverpool and they seem to have as many problems as we do so far and they've not had the injury issues we have. And they are adding Isak but we still haven't really added Eze to the mix and we have Hincapie coming in. They missed the defender they need. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic, I don't understand how people can enjoy football if they abandon all hope so easily.

Burnwinter

awooga83 If the luck stuff is not a factor then we need to stop talking about Liverpool being lucky last season as well.

The luck is certainly a factor. It's not that we've been persistently unlucky: we were very lucky in the back half of 23–24. Still one or two moments of better luck, within normal variation, could have brought us a league title already.

Those seasons have now gone by, we didn't win the league, and we have to hope we haven't missed all our future chances rather than dwelling on those we had in the past.

Facts are we're still in a very strong position with the depth, the average age and experience, and the quality of our squad and first XI. We have no worse chance and perhaps a better chance to thrive than last season. We can put a degree of hope and faith in that, and frankly everyone does: after all, even Arteta's critics steadily acknowledge he's been given all the opportunity he needs.

My hope is if Arsenal falls short again, KSE has the courage to persevere and embark on a further renewal that includes parting ways with Mikel Arteta, despite my admiration for what he's achieved within the remit of his control.

If we don't fall short, we could be on the brink of a historic dynasty for Arsenal, one to make our club look as inevitable as City did for many seasons.

daredevil

The concerning thing about the defeat for me is the downward trend that we're experiencing in our matchups against Liverpool. Matchups in a single campaign may not tell you a lot (Brentford beating City twice in the treble season) or it may just be a bogey team (Spurs always beating City), but over a larger sample size you typically beat or gain points against teams you're better than.

Pool used to always beat us, until we surged up and surpassed them which culminated in 4 points in consecutive seasons which solidified our strength over them. Last season they closed the gap which led to both games being draws and that included finishing ahead of us. This season, they've already beaten us so it may very well be a sign that they're going to start pulling away.

RocktheCasbah

daredevil or that in at least two of the last three games, they've played an Arsenal team missing some pretty heavy hitters. They wouldn't have got that draw at the Emirates if Gabriel doesn't get injured in the second half imo.

Qwiss

daredevil Matchups in a single campaign may not tell you a lot.... This season, they've already beaten us so it may very well be a sign that they're going to start pulling away.

Isn't this doing exactly what you are saying? If they'd out played us I'd get it but they got very lucky with a wonder strike. It happens. If your theory was true then we shouldn't be criticising Artetas selection because they were destined to win anyway. I don't believe that, I think Liverpool were there for the taking and if that's true then how can we also act like they are some incredible machine that can't be caught?

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