Arteta - one more year and that’s it: Page 44 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Arteta - one more year and that’s it

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

jones I don't care if you started watching under Graham or Chapman all of us have 20 years of Wengerball fresh in our minds, you're not telling me you're enjoying what we're looking at.

Exactly this is what puzzles me. Everyone here is old enough to have witnessed that period, so why are so many pretending what they're watching now is good/entertaining?

RocktheCasbah

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert because I understand that you can't be without Saka and Odegaard for months at a time and have no centre forward and have three left backs on the bench and have players sent off every 7 league games and expect to see amazing football.

Jones is of the opinion we've had years of shit football under Arteta (wrong, btw) having had 20 years of Wengerball. Conveniently then, erasing the 8-2 at Old Trafford, 6-3 at City, 5-1 at Liverpool, 6-0 at Chelsea on Arsene's 1000th game; a league season - Wenger's penultimate one I think - when we won just 4 games away from home; a 10-2 defeat against Bayern Munich; as well as a complete failure to deal with, well, teams like we are now and countless other humiliations over the last 7 years of his tenure.

And we're supposed to be nostalgic for those days, forgetting how hopeless we felt, whilst ignoring how close Arteta has us now? Sorry mate, I reject that hypothesis.

jones

Burnwinter If we must have these dapper fascists, better they're in football

Agree. In an ideal world they're at rival clubs ruining their weekends but I'll sacrifice myself and watch his juego de setpiéce if it means he doesn't lead the IMF or invade some unfortunate Arab country.

RowJimmy

jones Sign of a grifter isn't it.

Actually precisely the opposite.

jones

RowJimmy guess we'll see at the end of this season if one of us got scammed. At least I'll be happy if the discussion is over one way or another

Gazza M

Burnwinter as bill burr once said, be happy that lance armstrong only turned out to be a sociopath on a bike instead of a sociopath CEO dumping chemicals in the water supply.

jones

RocktheCasbah you're going to pick those results and ignore going invincible, double seasons or getting CL on a shoestring for a decade all while playing some of the best football Europe has ever seen?

All that in 20 years. Arteta had us battered 0-3 at home to a midtable Villa side which could've been 0-6 or worse, losing at home to Burnley for the first time ever, dominated by a dogshit Spurs side coached by Mourinho also at home, that Villarreal tie, God knows how many drubbings by City and Liverpool, most home losses in a season for 100 years, finishing outside of Europe for the first time in 30 years etc and your boy did it all in two years with as much funding as Wenger got in his 20.

I can see how some fall for this PR merchant because they fully bought into the idea he was broadcasting to the world that our squad was barely League Two level, rotten to the core and needed an exorcism plus a PR firm to come in to introduce a new culture.

But yea sorry mate but not having you pissing on Wenger who's done more in his first year than Arteta will have at the end of his career just to big someone up who got close after spending unprecedented amounts in football history.

RocktheCasbah

jones there's no point in arguing with you. You made your decision ages ago and I haven't got the energy to argue.

But I brought up those examples because you talk of 20 years of Arsene as if it was all glory glory great football and it wasn't. I'm forever grateful to the man for the 96-2008 period, it redefined what football could be for Arsenal fans. The next ten years, not so much.

It's also funny that you talk of "could have" lost 6-0 under Arteta. Never actually happened to him, but it did to Arsene and many of the examples you cite came in Arteta's first year in the job as opposed to after 15 of them. Funnier still that you talk about the countless batterings at Liverpool and City, ignoring that it started under Wenger and has been definitively ended by Arteta.

As I say, you made your mind up years ago. Nothing I can say will change that. I hope you can find some enjoyment out of this season though, genuinely. I know how it feels to hate what the manager's doing, because that's how I felt for Arsene's last six years.

And it sucks.

Burnwinter

jones We had, what, 14 seasons without a major trophy under Wenger? The season was usually a dead letter by March. There was systematic underinvestment but Arsène Wenger, a man I still admire by the way, allowed himself to be the fig leaf covering our absolute humiliation through that period, a banter era where we relied on bacterially infested lasagne for the Prize™. The guy was too smart not to know why the money wasn't flowing, but also too discreet ever to throw those responsible under the bus.

Today we're competitive and the question isn't "How the fuck are we going to make the Champions League this time?" but "Why haven't we won the league?"

Arteta is without a doubt the person most responsible for taking us back to the brink, followed by Stan's bag man Tim Lewis. Having seen a credible manager such as Emery tinker us to nowhere, and having watched United fail and fail again to move on from Ferguson, we know that progress wasn't locked in.

Arteta's had a lot of help. Maybe he's had too much help for us to regard his work as superhuman or even elite, but he's still done it. He doesn't actually need to be a genius to win: I'm pretty sure Arne Slot isn't.

I enjoy that we're competing for victory each season a great deal. It's not that complicated, we all know we had a lot of years without this. Arsenal is at the start of a new season with bright prospects, and a lot of the fans are just hoping the wait for a league title can be ended, or we can triumph in Europe for the first time in Arsenal's history. Bring it on eh?

jones

RocktheCasbah It's also funny that you talk of "could have" lost 6-0 under Arteta. Never actually happened to him

He lost 5-0, is that much better? Wenger wasn't without flaws and literally every manager has those and bad losses on their CV, the great managers have great successes as well usually.

I didn't make up my mind years ago, there's no need to act like you're talking to someone irrational like your unconditional love of the man was any more reasonable. He should have been sacked twice at least before turning it around in 22/23 which to me was his peak in football terms. He followed up with a 23/24 season which was peak Mourinho football and while it was ugly to watch it almost yielded results. We regressed severely last season and it's not only because of the injuries we had, I went over that before plenty of times.

Think it's weird you podcaster lot who always praise the guy for being ruthless with perceived bad apples or underperforming players are not as ruthless when it comes to the man himself. Five years and a billion pounds and we've won jack shit and most importantly play eye watering football in the process. We've seen the likes of Conte and even Slot come in win major honours immediately but there's always another reason to add a season for our manager while he's burning through cash and players.

Qwiss

Burnwinter Arteta is without a doubt the person most responsible for taking us back to the brink, followed by Stan's bag man Tim Lewis.

They've done a good job but I'm giving the "most responsible" crown to Bukayo Saka.

RocktheCasbah

jones Think it's weird you podcaster lot who always praise the guy for being ruthless with perceived bad apples or underperforming players are not as ruthless when it comes to the man himself

"You podcaster lot"? 🤣

If you'd actually listened to any of the podcasts I did around the time Arteta was clearing out the likes of AMN, Pepe and Auba (we'd stopped by the time the bell rang for ESR) you'd know I expressed deep misgivings about all of those decisions.

So, unconditional love? No. I've had doubts. And, fwiw, I literally said yesterday that the football was crap last year. I can see that perhaps Arteta has overindexed the need for control over playing, but I think the signings of Zubimendi and, in particular, Eze should be a step back towards the light. And we'll look different with Saka back in the team.

Does that make me irrational? I don't think so. If you do, well, I can't do anything about that.

Qwiss

Klaus In the end a billionaire put his thumb on the scale and that's why we are where we are

Sort of. We are still running a profitable club though and we need to remember it was the same billionaire that had us in the doldrums for years. They've invested a bit now because they feel they need to to protect their investment but I still have no good will toward them. They're the ones who screwed Wengers last 10 years. They are the ones who allowed Sanlehi to fuck Emery while he was here. That they've finally done their job and backed Arteta properly is a relief but not worthy of any real praise. They are now doing what a normal owner does, its better than the shit they were up to but nothing special.

RocktheCasbah I can see that perhaps Arteta has overindexed the need for control

I think this is a weakness he falls back on when we have set backs. You can see with the signings you've pointed out that he recognises the need for more attacking guile but when we miss players or suffer in other ways his instinct is to go back to safety first.

jones Wenger wasn't without flaws and literally every manager has those and bad losses on their CV

Especially in 22 years at the club. Recently someone on here brought up a big loss from the early 00s. Would you really avoid a 6-0 for years but win nothing vs Wengers 2000 to 2005?

Klaus

Arteta's had more help than any new manager I can think of, but he has improved things for sure. In the end a billionaire put his thumb on the scale and that's why we are where we are, but as we've seen with (for instance) United that's not always a guarantee that things actually improve.

The question is whether we've rebuilt the club properly; i.e. in a way where we're not still reliant on a single person to keep it going. The worth of any organisation is measured by its ability to stand on its own two legs in the end: a football club can't be dependent on a specific manager, owner, player, etc in order to function.

If we've rebuilt correctly then it will probably end up being a more important legacy of the last 6-7 years than any trophy Arteta wins, because he will be easy to replace and improve on if our fortunes don't change.

This season Berta came in and showed us what a functioning sporting director looks like. Now let's see if we have a functioning manager. I believe we finally have some clear roles and responsibilities at the club, and with those come accountability.

jones

RocktheCasbah You podcaster lot"? 🤣

If you'd actually listened to any of the podcasts I did around the time

I've never listened to any podcast in my life. Just something I noticed without trying to compare you to gunnerblog, it's weird how the buy in with everything Arteta does is massive compared to the actual yield.

Fair play if you expressed your grief about how Arteta cleared out the Francophone bunch, his zealots online usually call them all sorts of names which I've a bigger problem with than Artetas disgraceful treatment of them in the first place.

Burnwinter

Qwiss Fair play. We should ask Saka what he thinks of Arteta, I guess—I'd love to hear an honest and unfiltered answer to that one from Bukayo.

Qwiss

Burnwinter I don't think any player is going to come out and say a bad word about Arteta. I think the squad buy in a lot but there are going to be doubts too. I want to hear very soon about Saka and Salibas contracts too. Every hold up like that worries me. We need them sorted before the end of the year.

RocktheCasbah

Qwiss Would you really avoid a 6-0 for years but win nothing vs Wengers 2000 to 2005?

Of course not. I remember us losing 6-1 at United, but it's forgiven (and largely forgotten) because I think the very next time we went up there, we won 1-0 and, in the process, sealed the double. Just in case I need to clarify this, this game was one of my proudest 90 minutes as an Arsenal fan.

The issue for me then became the regularity of the big game beatings post 2011, with very little to show for them.

Was it our last home game before Arteta came back, we lost 3-0 at home to City in front of a half empty Emirates? I know that was under Emery, but I don't think we should forget how bad things had become before Arteta's return.

Burnwinter

Qwiss That they've finally done their job and backed Arteta properly is a relief but not worthy of any real praise.

I've got no great love for KSE, but as full owners of the club they could be a lot worse. A quick glance around the upper end of the league—Newcastle, Forest, United—tells you that. They've got deep pockets and they're not complete lunatics, debt speculators or sportswashing monarchs, they're sports businesspeople. Foul, but fair.

We can infer the timing of KSE's return to spending had a fair bit to do wtih two things. First, finally squeezing out Usmanov as a minor shareholder, or rather David bloody Dein. Second, Arsenal's decline out of Champions League contention.

Since then praise for the cadence of KSE's investment has to go in significant part to Arteta, who seems to have a knack for upward management so far. Even during the last window I was quietly surprised KSE stumped up for Eze after the rest of the outlay.

Klaus

Qwiss They've invested a bit now because they feel they need to to protect their investment but I still have no good will toward them. They're the ones who screwed Wengers last 10 years.

Definitely, I don't like them either. Fucking pricks would have us playing in the European Super League with every odd matchday outsourced to some two-bit ground in Miami and LA if they could.

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