Last night I dreamt that I had knee surgery and during my rehab I was helping out Max Rushden and the folks on the Football Weekly podcast. During a break, Barry Glendenning and I went for a walk to a local farmer’s market and talked about the Arsenal.
I was being very measured in my replies to Barry. He asked what I thought of Arteta and I said that the match against Burnley was a great example of what Arsenal could start doing on the attacking front: that he had us playing overlaps, getting into the half-spaces more, getting deep in the box, and crossing from dangerous areas. Not to mention the more direct play through the middle.
When we got to the market there were a lot of pickle vendors. I probably need to stress that I have been sort of obsessing over making my own lacto-fermented pickles for a while. I have tried two batches and neither turned out the way I wanted, not sour enough. Next time I go to the local Korean grocery, I’ll see if they have any cucumbers for me and try again.
Weirdly, in the dream I kept seeing people just grab a pickle straight from the sample bin but I never did. I also didn’t stop and buy any, even though in real life I would have.
Barry asked me about the characters in the dressing room at Arsenal. I said that part of the problem is that the ones I think have the most fight are young (Saka, Tierney, Maitland-Niles). Though I did mention Xhaka as well. Whatever you think of him losing discipline (it was dumb) he is the kind of guy who will tackle someone hard if needed.
The conversation got a bit weird when one of the posh sounding guys from the pod showed up and just started talking over me whenever Barry asked a question. It was super annoying because I kept trying to get out that several of the top managers in the Premier League have lavished praise on Arteta’s tactics lately (despite the results) and he just kept interrupting me.
Barry then turned into a gopher and also a skink while posh guy kept just blathering on. I think that Barry’s animal transformations comes from me watching His Dark Materials on HBO where the people in the one world have animal familiars called “Demons”.
I did manage to tell posh guy that “well, actually” Arsenal’s results over the same fixtures last year (comparing home/away against the same teams) are only off by -2 points over all and that’s largely down to losing at home to Burnley. And if you look at xG we are off by -1.1 which isn’t great but the defensive xG is 4.9 goals better. So, while a lot of things haven’t been going our way lately (and this is REALLY the case: we were +5 through the match with Man U and have dropped 7 points since!) there is some evidence that maybe we could turn this around and finish in the top half the table.
This morning Arsenal face Southampton and last season that was a bit of a lucky 2-2 draw, where we allowed 2.8 xGA. Hopefully, we play a bit more controlled match and get a result. A win puts Arsenal back even with the points from last season.
I changed the comments plugin a bit. I think you can vote on comments again.
Lordy. The tyranny of the downvote 😔
Yeah, I’m worried about that a bit. It can be abusive.
Oooohhh! A throwback to 2016! Is this so we can all pile on Bill??? [JOKES, you’re cool, Bill, and I admire your willingness to take the shots over here!]
AMN at right back, Nketiah up front, Willian and Laca dropped to the bench, Nelson and ESR don’t make the squad. I’m OK with this, half surprised we didn’t go to a back 3.
I’m not allowed to upvote my own comment, what is the actual point?
I gave you one, Greg. I know how you feel. I would upvote all my comments multiple times if I could, because, as Wenger says, “everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.” I love my opinions because they’re mine.
Also, I don’t know if you or other readers know this (or care!), but Wenger’s sentiments there have a long history in similar terms:
Plautus (in “Stichus”): “To every queen her king is fair, to every bridegroom his bride.”
Aristotle (in “Rhetoric”): “And besides all men are self-lovers, and whatever is their own is of necessity sweet to each.”
Erasmus (in “Adages”): “What is one’s own is beautiful.”
Erasmus (in “Adages”): “There’s no such thing to be found as an ugly sweetheart.”
Theocritus (in “Eclogues”): “for often in love, O Polyphemus, the least fair seems fair.”
I stole all these references from Erasmus. He was writing 500 years ago, so there’s no copyright.
I gave Greg a thumbs up too.
Im going to make it a policy never to downvote anyone. So even if I robustly disagree with you (looking at you, my equine friendly friend), Im telling you here and now that none of the negs you see will be from me.
Walcott just scored!
You know, it’s only 20 minutes into the game, but right now, the way we’ve been playing lately, it’s hard not to see this game as already over for us.
Bun is right…I had the match on, a pax loaded with my favorite blend, and a pair of nail clippers in front of me. Know what I chose to watch? My one hand clipping the nails off the other.
I’m having a hard time caring about the results, or even the match because it seems like nothing has or will change until some individuals are ejected from this club.
Maybe if Martinelli had started I would find myself caring more.
I have to say, the apathy feels worse than the rage I would feel if I saw Willian in the first 11
Soton play with purpose and confidence. This Walcott fella looks like someone who could bring a lot to Arsenal. How deep we have fallen.
It’s been the worst 45 minutes of this season for me – panic throw-ins, panic passes… the middle of the pitch is so weak I can’t help missing the time we picked out from Ramsey, Cazorla, Wilshere and Rosicky.
JWP and Romeu a head above our midfield.
How deep we have fallen.
HT: If we get to full time and this scoreline stays the same or we lose, I have a feeling this will be Arteta’s last game in charge. Absolutely dreadful football.
DUH! I meant to type “or gets worse.”
The good news is that we got slightly better. Then we got bad. Then we got worse. Then we got a little better again. Overall, it was bad with sprinkles of not bad.
Im happy for Theo. Fight me. 100+ Arsenal goals, and frequent disrespect from commenters here, and elsewhere. Glad for Auba too. May this be the beginning of the flood.
Gabriel gets struck down with the red plague that has hit this team.
Nearing the 90, and it’s headed for a draw. Not good enough for Mikel and this bunch of underachievers
So funny you say that, claude. When I saw it was Theo who scored, I felt genuinely happy for him. Always liked him as an individual even if I wondered whether he was good enough for Arsenal (that’s not his fault, of course, and it’s laughable from where we sit now to think of Theo as not deserving a place in the first eleven…a backhanded compliment, of course, since almost any other player in the league would talk into this eleven!).
His post match interview was good as well, he’s just an all round well balanced bloke. Good to see him chatting with Arteta as well, I’m sure it was supportive
Thrilled with the draw! I had a dream too, that Kroenke sold the team on the back of getting relegated and seeing revenues halved. August 2021, opening day, new owner Kim Jong Un sitting in the owners box with his good friend Jeremy Corbin as they watch new players Mbappe, Koulibaly and Valverde take the field under new manager Eric ten Hag.
You have to think that if we started games as strongly as we start our second halfs we would give ourselves a bit more of a platform and security rather than all this seat of the pants, backs to the wall stuff that’s at the root of these stupid red cards. But I guess that would mean scoring goals, which is apparently to much to ask.
Great to see Auba score a good one tonight though.
Encouraging to see Auba score a goal. We will move up the table quickly if he starts scoring and we can find a way to avoid red cards
The first half was pretty bad. Marginally less bad than some of the recent matches, but still pretty bad.
Some positives out of the second half. Auba finally got back on the right side of the score sheet. Holding nearly stole it at the end.
But damn…another red card. We have enough issues without continually shooting ourselves in the foot.
Am I the only one to be appalled at this match? If this type of play, with all of the loose touches, sloppy passes, players getting in each others’ way, cheap turnovers and frustration red cards isn’t a sign of a manager who’s lost the dressing room, nothing is. There. Is. No. Way. Back. I can’t believe people are saying a 1-1 draw at home vs. Southampton is an ok result, considering. That is not acceptable for this club. I will stop now before it becomes a full rant.
I’m with you LA. It was appalling and has been for a while. The word that came to mind today was ‘disjointed’. Nothing is coming off, we have trouble keeping possession (didn’t they have more possession than us? I thought I saw that), passes go astray, there’s very little quality or end-product in our build-up play, and often we resort to hoofing it down the flank or sending in a hopeful hoof to the middle. It’s all very concerning.
Just tons of mistakes everywhere, and it feels like we’re averaging a red card every game, too. Is it nerves? Auba said as much after the match. There may be something to that because we have talented players out there who look like they’re on a skating rink for the first time.
Exactly. This is a team that looks like it doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do. Every touch of the ball is played with a question mark hanging over it. When a team plays well, they don’t have to think about what they are doing with each pass, or play. It’s one touch bam bam bam. This team is the antithesis of that, and guys who used to look very confident, like Auba and Gabriel, suddenly are on a skating rink. There is no way this should be the case 1 year into a manager’s tenure. The players have lost confidence in the project, and it’s not coming back.
I have regularly – dating back to Emery and Wenger – said the squad is just not strong enough. And that is still true. But this roster is not 15th level bad. No way can I accept that. We’re underperforming and a draw at home isn’t “stopping the rot.” It’s delaying the inevitable. That’s not to say it’s all on Arteta. Far from it. But at this point he can’t pull us out of the downward spiral. The window has closed on that opportunity. Arteta and Edu need to go and we need to start over with this January window. We can’t wait till the summer.
I understand your frustration but here are a few things to consider:
They are one of the best pressing/tackling teams in the League and their opponents have the 2nd lowest passing% of any team in the League. They have some of the lowest long passing against rates, and the lowest short and medium passing against rates. They do this with a huge variety of tactics: pressing, playing the passing lanes, and just gumming up the midfield which forces teams to go long, where they have one of the most aerially dominant players in world football. So, they are exceptionally good at some rather interesting defensive stats. I get that it’s frustrating but this is what they do and they do it VERY well.
Arsenal fell into that buzzsaw, honestly.
Now, where I think you make some good points is that Arteta has been in the job for over a year and we are still bad at a lot of different things. It’s quite disheartening. For example, we tried to press and play proactive defense today but because we have so many players who really can’t do that we got opened up when Gabriel made a single bad challenge. And with Elneny also on the ground (he was diabolical on defense today, often switching off and realizing the threat far too late) we then had Tierney not knowing how to react and Saka switched off as well. Then to make it all worse, Leno cane out and did nothing to stop Walcott.
I also thgought that the attitude of a lot of the players was just wrong today. So many guys were walking, Holding let a guy just run past him – he pushed him but just didn’t even follow him, it was really shocking. I don’t know what the answer is here. I think we are in far deeper trouble than people may realize and that relegation is not unrealistic.
However, how do we sack Arteta and keep all of these dud players? We also need to sack Edu who is equally as much of a problem as Arteta is. But all of that is just not going to happen. This is what you’re going to get. Kroenke isn’t going to change ship again because who on earth would he get in who could do all the jobs that need to be done?
And all of that said?
Remember that we drew 2-2 to this team last year in this fixture and that they really tonked us. We saved a pen and they missed two more big chances. We easily could have lost that one 4 or 5 to 1.
We also lost 2-0 to them last year in the away fixture.
We are a realyy bad team, folks.
Great perspective, Tim. And you’re right, this is what we have. I also keep coming back to the conundrum about whether a new manager right now would even solve much…maybe a little new manager bump, but over the course of a season we’re a ramshackle club at the moment in terms of squad.
yeah, it’s so fucked. Think about how many of the Southampton players who would walk into our first team right now:
Vestergaard
Romeu
Ward-Prowse
Armstrong
Walcott (ffs Walcott would start over almost everyone at RM right now)
Danny Ings
Plus manager Hasenhuttl, their scouting team, their entire front office staff, and their academy.
Hahaha! [sobbing]
And this is the same manager and the same squad (minus Hjojbjerjg) that lost 9-0 to Leicester
All very true. The Kroenkes have gutted the club to where it’s in dire straits. But does anyone honestly trust the guys who picked Luiz, Willian and Cedric this summer to have a vision for the January transfer window? So is KSE going to shut off new acquisitions and believe Arteta will somehow make this work? No one is minding the store.
I think they are going to buy an AM. Edu seems to be staking his job on it.
Fernandes turned around Man Utd and save Solksjaer’s job. Who’s out there that can do the same? The Hungarian kid? Aouar?
Coutinho probably. Client of one K. Joorabchian. Brazilian. Edu.
This ^^^. We weren’t great yesterday. There was some improvement, particularly in attack either side of half.
Soton is a pretty good team right now. So us not getting something out of the match is less concerning to me than us failing against the likes of Burnley.
But Soton was also playing more open, which I think helps us. Likely Everton and Chelsea will as well. It will be interesting to see what happens next time we see another team sitting in, and if that continues to be a problem.
What a pleasure it was to see Liverpool grab a last-minute winner! Very enjoyable indeed.
“The best team lost” said the happy one to Klopp after the final whistle.
What a duche .
The players touch and making simple passes are skills the players have been working on since pre-teenage years with dozens and dozens of coaches over dozens of years. . If these players haven’t mastered basic skills by now then there is nothing a manager can do. The idea that a manager is responsible for every touch or pass on the pitch is unimaginable to me. There is no other sport where the manager or coach is considered responsible for every dropped pass or fumble or dropped fly ball or misplay on the field. The players have to take some responsibility. No?
I guess we see two sides of the same coin. Yes, they all know how to make a good touch. But they are either so confused about what they are supposed to do, or so lacking in confidence that they are making these bad mistakes. Both of these speak to me of a team that has no belief. Their frustration with red card fouls etc shows this too. They are definintely capable of better, but this manager can’t get it from them.
Players like Pepe, Ceballos, Willian and Aubemayang have immaculate first touch and technical ability. As does The Exile.
Touch and the ability to make simple passes — learned as youths — is not the problem.
Claude.
I should have made it clear that I was responding to the first post by LAgunner 4 hours ago when he talked about loose first touches and sloppy passes
LAGunner.
I am not sure what we think the team does in training sessions. I suspect they spend more then enough time looking at films and analyzing where they should be positioning themselves and passing the ball in certain situations and I am certain the coaching staff and players run various scenarios and how to deal with a pressing opposition over and over on the practice pitch. However, once they go out on the pitch at the start of a game the manager has no real control over what they do. If we had Ozil from 5 years ago, Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey and Rosicky on the pitch they would handle pressure without much problem no matter who their manager was, but we don’t have any players like that in this squad. I agree with Tim’s assessment in his comment 2 hours ago that we are just not a good team.
Interesting quote from Arteta in his post game media session when he was asked about Auba scoring a goal and if it might get him going.
“Hopefully it’s going to change everything dramatically and he’s going to score every game because this is what we need at the moment. We need the points and in order to do that, we need to score many more goals and be more efficient when we have the chances. I think it’s going to make him really good.”
Arteta understands how important Auba scoring consistently is to this squad. Its clear without him scoring we are bottom half of the table team. I don’t think this current squad would ever compete for the top 4 but If Auba scores regularly I think we will move up the table
Yesterday was not good, but Auba’s goal and our resilience after the red card were both big positives. I understand where LAGunner is coming from but I feel a bit differently.
There’s a reason why our quality is bad and why we keep getting reds – players are trying to overcome fear and low confidence with a mix of caution, haste and aggression, and that doesn’t make for good football. I don’t see it as Arteta losing the dressing room, so while it’s obviously not good enough, I don’t see it as terminal.
To some extent anyway it’s a dressing room that has already been lost under previous management and is being rebuilt. Arteta and Edu are trying to change the culture, and that’s a root-and-branch process, and we’re at best about halfway through it. I count at least 7 senior squad members who will not be here next season if all goes to plan.
The question is at what point do you start to think there is no path back up the table? At what point does someone else have to come in to try and guarantee that we stay up? I don’t know the answer but I’m not there yet. There are 25 games to play, the squad is still good enough to finish in the top 6-8. They just have to do it, and yesterday was a step in the right direction at least.
One last point, it’s almost been refreshing to see that reputation means nothing in this league, that just because you are Arsenal you can take nothing for granted. Drawing against Southampton at home is a failure, but the quality of the league is something else these days, and that makes our challenge that much harder.