Mikel Arteta: Fighting Until The End

[Mrs Bergkamp]

It's a wait and see game with Arteta over the next two crucial games. I don't want to overrate our youth, but are others relaxed at the talent we might lose for little to nothing in the name of this process? The youngsters provided fluidity yesterday and rolled back thd years for Laca. It seems to me that there are games for Bslogun to start. Nelson has been mothballed but have Willian and Pepe been so much better? Arteta talks about a long term plan but has got it wrong in the short term and is potentially damaging our youth system by blocking their progression. Edu and Per have to force his hand. Graham and Wenger aside, I don't feel I could back any manager over a host of quality youth. It's a worry.

 

[14Henry]

He is not being evaluated on a game to game basis. There is a low bar here because the season is considered a rebuilding year. He basically needs to show he can finish in the middle of the pack while overhauling the team. This is why he has not been sacked yet.

He isn't being evaluated game after game but one game against Chelsea doesn't erase the **** show we have seen all season. Remember that.

He doesn't need to show he can finish 10th. 10th is failure. Simple as underperforming. And he hasn't done any overhauling so far. He didn't sell anyone in the summer. He didn't get the board to pay anyone off. He loaned out 2 players who were better than what we have and banished Sokratis to the under 23s who's probably as solid as Mustafi and did the same with Özil.

He signed Soares, Mari and Willian. You don't do that trying to overhaul a team.

 

[Macho]

At the time Emery had been sacked and Freddie had has his little run, there were plenty of Arsenal fans on here seriously contemplating if we could get relegated last year. The same as now.

Were they?

Emery got shat on for the style of play, setting up negative against lesser teams and losing the squad. Apart from the last one, pretty much everything Arteta is currently doing.

We were 8th when Emery was sacked and we had only lost 3 of our 13 premiership matches - a far cry from what’s going on now. Emery was held to much different standards so you’ve remixed a bit of the history there, we were never under threat of relegation.

Arteta’s league form was ok last season. He bombed Europa whilst Emery got wins against Valencia and Napoli on route to the final. It was really the FA Cup run and Aubas form that won everyone over.

He did an ok job and whilst the FA Cup added a lot of gloss and got me positive for this season in hindsight it’s turned out to be a poison chalice. Arteta did a better job at maximising what he had last season for sure. Over this summer he’s lost the plot.

 

[EmeryCouldnt]

If this is how he views the situation then I have little hope that he will be able to turn things around should we be in one of those slumps relegation threatened teams find themselves in.

if he goes back to the same tactics, I’ll lose it

 

[Jack_the_boy]

It's a wait and see game with Arteta over the next two crucial games. I don't want to overrate our youth, but are others relaxed at the talent we might lose for little to nothing in the name of this process? The youngsters provided fluidity yesterday and rolled back thd years for Laca. It seems to me that there are games for Bslogun to start. Nelson has been mothballed but have Willian and Pepe been so much better? Arteta talks about a long term plan but has got it wrong in the short term and is potentially damaging our youth system by blocking their progression. Edu and Per have to force his hand. Graham and Wenger aside, I don't feel I could back any manager over a host of quality youth. It's a worry.

Balogun refused contract extensions and is leaving. Why develop a player intent on leaving? I don’t get it.
As for Nelson, he has had chances but I haven’t been impressed by him. Same for AMN. Both should’ve been sold in my opinion.

 

[Legend14]

He isn't being evaluated game after game but one game against Chelsea doesn't erase the **** show we have seen all season. Remember that.

He doesn't need to show he can finish 10th. 10th is failure. Simple as underperforming. And he hasn't done any overhauling so far. He didn't sell anyone in the summer. He didn't get the board to pay anyone off. He loaned out 2 players who were better than what we have and banished Sokratis to the under 23s who's probably as solid as Mustafi and did the same with Özil.

He signed Soares, Mari and Willian. You don't do that trying to overhaul a team.

I am not talking about how fans would like to see him evaluated. His boss has a different evaluation criteria and this is being proven. It is a lower bar, as I said.

 

[OnlyOne]

He isn't being evaluated game after game but one game against Chelsea doesn't erase the **** show we have seen all season. Remember that.

He doesn't need to show he can finish 10th. 10th is failure. Simple as underperforming. And he hasn't done any overhauling so far. He didn't sell anyone in the summer. He didn't get the board to pay anyone off. He loaned out 2 players who were better than what we have and banished Sokratis to the under 23s who's probably as solid as Mustafi and did the same with Özil.

He signed Soares, Mari and Willian. You don't do that trying to overhaul a team.

One thing I will say in regards to the 'overhauling' is that ideally it's a normal summer, plenty of money in football and we end up getting rid of Sokratis, Mustafi, Kola, Özil, Chambers or Holding and I think from what we've seen of Mari and to an extent Cedric is that you'd take them over those lot at least.

I know people love to hate them, but you'll always have these kinda players in your squad, but at least Mari is good on the ball unlike the others and Cedric can play multiple positions and played in the prem.

I just think they look tons worse because we also kept the crap and the talk about Arteta wanting to extend Mustafi/Elneny is a huge worry.

 

[#254]

Balogun refused contract extensions and is leaving. Why develop a player intent on leaving? I don’t get it.
As for Nelson, he has had chances but I haven’t been impressed by him. Same for AMN. Both should’ve been sold in my opinion.

I am glad you are not the boss.

 

[Lidl_Reed]

 

[Jack_the_boy]

I am glad you are not the boss.

I’m glad nobody here is the boss. Some had the cheek to say AMN had a good game against City. He was our worst player, even worse than Runarsson. Check the stats.

 

[Blood on the Tracks]

Were they?

Emery got shat on for the style of play, setting up negative against lesser teams and losing the squad. Apart from the last one, pretty much everything Arteta is currently doing.

We were 8th when Emery was sacked and we had only lost 3 of our 13 premiership matches - a far cry from what’s going on now. Emery was held to much different standards so you’ve remixed a bit of the history there, we were never under threat of relegation.

Arteta’s league form was ok last season. He bombed Europa whilst Emery got wins against Valencia and Napoli on route to the final. It was really the FA Cup run and Aubas form that won everyone over.

He did an ok job and whilst the FA Cup added a lot of gloss and got me positive for this season in hindsight it’s turned out to be a poison chalice. Arteta did a better job at maximising what he had last season for sure. Over this summer he’s lost the plot.

We were in the bottom half of the table for sure when Arteta took over I'm certain of it. I remember people panicking about relegation on here. I agree it was ridiculous. We're not going to get relegated this season either, but people will still panic about it. A bad 6-7 game run doesn't mean we're relegation material.

I agree with you that Emery was treated pretty harshly, I don't want to repeat it with Arteta particularly. I think it would be very hard to convince me that the squad didn't down tools on Emery towards the end of his stint here.

A lot of fans say the squad we have aren't great but they're better than 14th, probably 6th-8th overall with a few Top 4 level players sprinkled in. That's used to justify the notion that Arteta's a bad manager or at least too inexperienced for the job.

You can easily flip it the other way though and say that Arteta had us set up pretty effectively tactically last season, we were on top 4 pace and won an FA Cup. I can't for a second believe that in the space of 3 months he's gone from a doing a good job, tactically and in terms of player selection and giving the squad confidence and motivation to being the amateurish tactician and poor judge of player that a lot of Arteta critics on here seem to think he is.

I'm not saying Arteta hasn't made mistakes this season because he has. As much as I hate to admit it, he should have included Özil in the PL squad. Play him 5-6 times and if he was crap, unregister him in January and the fans would have backed him. It's just bad optics to be struggling for creativity at number 10 and having Özil hanging around unregistered.

My personal opinion is that the players largely did for Emery by downing tools and I think some of them have tried to do it to Arteta, to some degree. By no means all though.

 

[14Henry]

I am not talking about how fans would like to see him evaluated. His boss has a different evaluation criteria and this is being proven. It is a lower bar, as I said.

You don't know his criteria. And defending it doesn't make you any better. To say that Arsenal should be happy to finish 10th while clearing out dead wood(which isn't happening)

One thing.

Arteta will get 0 credit next summer for "getting rid" of dead wood. Mustafi, Özil, Sokratis, Luiz etc are leaving because their contracts are ending. There's no skill to that. Your making it sound like he's doing it and we should be grateful.

 

[EmeryCouldnt]

You can easily flip it the other way though and say that Arteta had us set up pretty effectively tactically last season, we were on top 4 pace and won an FA Cup. I can't for a second believe that in the space of 3 months he's gone from a doing a good job, tactically and in terms of player selection and giving the squad confidence and motivation to being the amateurish tactician and poor judge of player that a lot of Arteta critics on here seem to think

That’s exactly what has happened. You think his tactics and team selection have been good this year? Has our squad looked confident? How do you explain that? Isn’t the manager to blame?

 

[Hleb's Sirush]

Of course there are still problems, but its easy to see how moments of quality and the level of effort make a big difference in the results.

If we get a couple of quality players, we will have more consistent results.

You are really convinced our biggest issue is the quality of our players. I might have agreed with you if for example we were putting away most of the smaller sides but came unstuck against the better teams because then we could say the gulf in quality was just too big, there is only so much you can bridge with the right tactics. However that isn't the case at all. We consistently perform better against the top sides. Nearly all of our best performances have come against a big 6 side. Look at this...
You have said before that no strategies are going to work because of our lack of quality and that no manager playing Xhaka, Ceballos and Elneny could get us remotely competitive. You even claimed we couldn't beat relegation fodder with our quality. How can you explain then that we are in fact more than competitive against the best teams in the country? Surely if the quality of our players was as bad as you claim, we shouldn't have had no chance regardless of what game plan we deployed.

To me this demonstrates that Arteta isn't getting the best out of the players at his disposal except when we are playing the quality sides. The smaller teams adapt their tactics to us, this is where Arteta so far has miserably failed to find a solution when that happens. It has become incredibly easy to stop us. Whereas the big teams don't adapt to us, they stick to their way of playing, which is when we can exploit that arrogance. To his credit, Arteta knows how to match up in these games, suddenly our players look like good footballers. It is at these games were our tactics are actually helping us, getting the best of us as a collective and individually. Then we play a mediocre team and look hapless again. Will be interesting to see what we do against Brighton and West Brom.

 

[14Henry]

You are really convinced our biggest issue is the quality of our players. I might have agreed with you if for example we were putting away most of the smaller sides but came unstuck against the better teams because then we could say the gulf in quality was just too big, there is only so much you can bridge with the right tactics. However that isn't the case at all. We consistently perform better against the top sides. Nearly all of our best performances have come against a big 6 side. Look at this...
You have said before that no strategies are going to work because of our lack of quality and that no manager playing Xhaka, Ceballos and Elneny could get us remotely competitive. You even claimed we couldn't beat relegation fodder with our quality. How can you explain then that we are in fact more than competitive against the best teams in the country? Surely if the quality of our players was as bad as you claim, we shouldn't have had no chance regardless of what game plan we deployed.

To me this demonstrates that Arteta isn't getting the best out of the players at his disposal except when we are playing the quality sides. The smaller teams adapt their tactics to us, this is where Arteta so far has miserably failed to find a solution when that happens. It has become incredibly easy to stop us. Whereas the big teams don't adapt to us, they stick to their way of playing, which is when we can exploit that arrogance. To his credit, Arteta knows how to match up in these games, suddenly our players look like good footballers. It is at these games were our tactics are actually helping us, getting the best of us as a collective and individually. Then we play a mediocre team and look hapless again. Will be interesting to see what we do against Brighton and West Brom.

Great Post!!! The quality thing is a myth. As you say. Arsenal under Wenger was a quality aspect. Against Chelsea, United and City we were often miles off and those were the games we lost. Most of the time we beat the small teams at home. Won a lot away and like every team lost some tricky away games. But in general the problem was the top teams.

Now its the opposite. When we are the favourite and have to adapt and take the game to them its different.

You cannot beat Chelsea 3 1 and then say lose to Brighton 2 1 and say our team is only good enough for the championship.

 

[Hleb's Sirush]

You cannot beat Chelsea 3 1 and then say lose to Brighton 2 1 and say our team is only good enough for the championship.

The fact we keep getting results and performances against the best teams makes it much harder to argue it is just a quality issue. If it happened once you could even say it was a fluke. Take chelsea for example. We deservedly beat them in a cup final not long ago. Before that we managed to come from behind at Stamford Bridge, playing the majority of that game with 10 men to draw. And now we beat them again deservedly. If the quality of our players is indeed near the bottom of the league, I would like to see a team with poor players who are able to perform like our players did in 3 consecutive games against a side like Chelsea.

 

[Legend14]

You don't know his criteria. And defending it doesn't make you any better. To say that Arsenal should be happy to finish 10th while clearing out dead wood(which isn't happening)

One thing.

Arteta will get 0 credit next summer for "getting rid" of dead wood. Mustafi, Özil, Sokratis, Luiz etc are leaving because their contracts are ending. There's no skill to that. Your making it sound like he's doing it and we should be grateful.

Then why is he still here if the bar is as high as you state? We have reality and we have your hope. Which do you think is more accurate? Any other Arsenal manager would have been sacked sitting at 16th. Its obvious the owners have a more nuanced evaluation criteria. In the end, I’ll guess we’ll see what the owners think because they are driving.

To me, the win does not change the Arteta and Edu equation. There is much to do and we’ll see if they get it done.

 

[Arsenal4life14]

Özil, Willian, Mustafi, Kolasinac and Xhaka should go before Arteta.

There is no doubt there is some dressing room division going on and some players are causing problems. It happened with Emery too, look what hes doing at Villarreal now, with you'd say less quality players.
The club clearly looked to get rid of some players this past summer which didnt happen. Our best players this season have been the youngsters and the newer signings, the ones who most likely arent involved in the dressing room antics.

I watch the games and a lot of the senior players dont seem interested at all, Is that a managers doing or egos taking over? I can understand a bit if they were actually trying, but most of them walk half the games.

Arteta is making a lot of mistakes which im sure most figured would happen, But at some point were going to have to let a manager build his team at the club and its never going to happen in 1 season because we dont have 200m to splash in 1 window.

Whatever manager comes in will struggle until we get rid of the bad blood within the dressing room. We desperately need a leader in there a proper leader as well. I really hope Tierney could step up and perform that role one day.

 

[14Henry]

Then why is he still here if the bar is as high as you state? We have reality and we have your hope. Which do you think is more accurate? Any other Arsenal manager would have been sacked sitting at 16th. Its obvious the owners have a more nuanced evaluation criteria. In the end, I’ll guess we’ll see what the owners think because they are driving.

To me, the win does not change the Arteta and Edu equation. There is much to do and we’ll see if they get it done.

Firstly he is still here because the club made a huge mistake promoting his position after an FA cup win. If they sacked him so soon after they look stupid. It looks bad on them.

2nd reason. They never in their worst case imagination expected they would have to look for a new manager before Christmas. They hadn't planned for it. Nobody had.

If you honestly believe at the start of the season the board and the owners said to Mikel just finish somewhere between 1st and 12th and we will be happy? No chance.

His aims and objectives would have been.

Top 4 excellent season but if missed out no worries.
5th,6th,7th would have been the expectation.
8th- Acceptable but showing no improvement on previous season.

9th-10th. Bad season.
11th downwards terrible season.

You keep arguing with me talking about what Edu wants and what the board want like it makes your views right and mine wrong. It doesn't. Stop defending stuff and backing it up with boring repetitive arguments like.

We haven't got the quality of a top 8 team or no manager in world football could get better results with this team.

Arsenals performance this season has been horrible. That is a fact. That cannot be argued or debated.

Who is responsible to win football matches and have us in an acceptable position in the league? The manager.

 

[14Henry]

Özil, Willian, Mustafi, Kolasinac and Xhaka should go before Arteta.

There is no doubt there is some dressing room division going on and some players are causing problems. It happened with Emery too, look what hes doing at Villarreal now, with you'd say less quality players.
The club clearly looked to get rid of some players this past summer which didnt happen. Our best players this season have been the youngsters and the newer signings, the ones who most likely arent involved in the dressing room antics.

I watch the games and a lot of the senior players dont seem interested at all, Is that a managers doing or egos taking over? I can understand a bit if they were actually trying, but most of them walk half the games.

Arteta is making a lot of mistakes which im sure most figured would happen, But at some point were going to have to let a manager build his team at the club and its never going to happen in 1 season because we dont have 200m to splash in 1 window.

Whatever manager comes in will struggle until we get rid of the bad blood within the dressing room. We desperately need a leader in there a proper leader as well. I really hope Tierney could step up and perform that role one day.

Who is the bad blood?

Willian? Arteta signed him.
Luiz? Arteta extended his contract
Xhaka? Arteta picks him
Mustafi? Arteta has him there over Saliba.
Özil? Arteta has him training with the first team.

Its the managers job to get rid of bad blood. He isnt. He's signing them and renewing their contracts. He's picking them over young hungry players.

He has problems but he is the cause of some of them.