Arsenal got knocked out of the Europa League at the hands of a Villareal side which is among the bottom third worst teams Arsenal have faced this season, coached by the worst manager Arsenal have had since the 80s. And they went out with a whimper, barely testing their defense in the first half, and only managing two shots on their floppy keeper in the whole match. But despite some of the folks I’ve heard in the broadcasting booths decrying the “effort”, his wasn’t a failure of the the players.
It’s not just that the squad isn’t good enough when Arteta goes into the first leg and decides to be extra clever and plays Emile Smith Rowe as a false nine. It’s not the players’ fault that Arteta chooses to play a 4141 in the 2nd leg, isolating Thomas Partey and making it look like Francis Coquelin bossed him for 90 minutes. It’s not the players’ fault that Arteta’s system tells the players to play wide, then slows down play, and has them pass back, so that players can get into position to defend against a possible counter attack. Meanwhile, up top, Aubameyang is literally screaming in frustration at not getting the ball after making his 1000th run.
This team has players who are dying for balls in behind, this team has players who want to make those runs, but Arteta’s game plan in that first half was so intentionally turgid that the only dangerous shot we managed to create was off a corner, which Villareal failed to defend properly and which luckily fell to Aubameyang. And that’s not a one-off game plan. That has been his game plan for most of this season. He’s been intentionally trading off attack for marginal gains in defense. We have seen this exact limp display in almost every match that Arsenal have played this season. It ain’t no new thing.
That first half was not the players’ fault. Watching them make the same patterns of play over and over again was clearly down to direct orders from the guy who rules the dressing room with an iron fist. Either they play his slow, methodical, football, or they don’t get on the pitch. It’s as simple as that and everyone in the squad knows it.
He must have told them to go ahead and try some overlapping and runs in behind in the second half, because the whistle had barely stopped echoing around the empty stadium when Thomas clipped a gorgeous long ball over the top for Bukayo Saka, who drove into the Villereal defense and made them shit their pants. For the next 30 minutes, Arsenal tried many variations of getting in behind, and while we didn’t score the all-important goal we needed we did create 10 shots compared to 4 in the first half. That, plus an entire season of playing football this way, is all the evidence you should need to see that this was 100% intentional by Arteta. He wanted to “keep it close” in the first half and “go for it” in the second half.
It’s not Partey’s fault that Arteta took off Odegaard for Martinelli, stripping the midfield down to just one guy. The incredible thing about that is that one of my most vivid memories of Arteta playing for Arsenal was a match in which Wenger left him all alone in midfield and he was swamped, dispossessed, harassed, time and again by the opposition. The thing I remember thinking was that Arteta was like a castaway on an island in midfield, and how no matter how good the player is, that’s such an unfair thing to do to them. And he did it to Partey, who suffered the exact same fate as he’d done those years before.
No, sir, the substitutions are not the players’ fault and no amount of transfer money this summer is going to fix the problem that Arteta has making logical substitutions. Arteta took off his best goal threat and put on Lacazette and Willian. Sure, Lacazette has scored some goals this season, let’s put Lacazette on. But Willian? Willian has been the worst transfer I’ve seen since Squillaci. Bringing him on – so that he could do that thing that Arteta loves, collecting the ball wide, stopping play, and passing back – and taking Aubameyang off in a game where you need to score a goal is unacceptable. I’m actually stuttering thinking about this, my mind just starts jittering at how unbelievable that substitution was, my eyelids flutter uncontrollably, my jaw drops open, and all I can do is shake my head. And you could see the look on Auba’s face as he sat on the bench: I’m pretty sure he’s done playing for Arteta. Yet another big salary player Arteta has managed to waste because of his inflexible football.
“But” you say “we need to give him time to get better players.” Sure, Arsenal could use better players. We have massive holes in this squad as I’ve detailed here many times: left back, right back, goalkeeper, midfield, and the fact that we have two guys on loan who got significant minutes and played a significant role this season just more evidence that this squad needs investment. But Arsenal have invested in this squad, a lot, over the last three years: over £200m net spend, £290m gross. Not all of that is on Arteta, he was “coach” for the first 6 months of his job, but the last year has been on him.
Under his watch, he cleared out 11 players he didn’t like – most of them have already cost Arsenal in paid off wages or will cost Arsenal in decimated transfer value. As he cut the squad depth, he failed to replace key positions: left back we have just one player, we went 6 months without a backup keeper, and right back he brought in Cedric Soares who has some of us fooled into thinking that he’s a good player – that’s how far our standards have fallen. And not only on transfers, we’ve sunk massive wages into players like Aubameyang and Willian and we’ve desperately clung to players like Xhaka. Arteta is the manager now. He’s the one who’s in charge of what’s been going on at the club for the last 12 months and it has not been good. I like that we signed Partey and Gabriel but I have to question his judgement on Soares, Runnarson and Willian. It’s not just that we signed them.. he loves Soares and Willian.
Don’t be mistaken. This is his team, playing football the way that he wants them to. Anyone who gets out of line at all gets dropped. And if they speak up afterward, they get ostracized and traded. These are his non-negotiables. This entire season – finishing mid-table, out of the Europa League – is his fault. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that Thomas Tuchel would go 18 months playing this kind of football and not know what his best lineup is? And even if you tried you certainly can’t tell me that that Villareal squad are better than this Arsenal squad. Get out of here with that. The only player I would remotely consider for Arsenal is Pau Torres. Maybe their left back I guess, since WE LITERALLY DON’T HAVE A BACKUP AND OUR STARTER IS CHRONICALLY INJURED.
Ok, so that’s my venting. All done now. I feel better. When I take a deep breath and look at the reality of Arsenal’s situation here’s what I really see:
It.Doesn’t.Matter.
Not in that abstract way that “football doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things”. That’s of course true. I mean in the very specific football world of Arsenal. It doesn’t fucking matter because Enos and Josh Kroenke aren’t going to fix this, not in a permanent, sustainable way. Maybe they will fire Arteta. So what? So, we will get in another coach? I’m not saying not to fire Arteta, I’m saying I don’t care because it doesn’t matter.
Maybe firing him fixes the immediate problems of team selection, playing style, and substitutions. Maybe we then get back into top 6. And then what? If you think that Enos is going to put any money into this club to make us a top four or title challenger I’ve got a stadium in St. Louis to sell you.
Everything that the Kroenke’s are going to do is debt loading on the asset that is Arsenal. They took a club which had a surplus of cash, larger than all of the other clubs COMBINED, which routinely made the Champions League and turned it into a club with massive debts which routinely finishes 10th. Maybe relegation would shock the system? I don’t know.
I do know that under the ownership of Enos Kroenke Arsenal are the new Everton: doomed to finish between 4th and 14th every season forever. Once in a while we will get a good coach and we will overachieve and that will be what we celebrate. And I will finally get to answer the question that I’ve wondered about for years “why exactly do fans of clubs with no hope of winning the league or getting into Europe still watch their team?”
folks, i’ve been touting the value of experience for years. everyone wants to see the next young hotshot prodigy come through, including me. however, that prodigy needs experience to achieve greatness. i love mikel arteta. he’s a consummate pro and one of the smartest players i’ve ever seen play the game. however, as a manager, he’s a nymph. just because he assisted guardiola at man city doesn’t mean he can achieve the same result at arsenal.
first, and foremost, guardiola has been coaching since 2007. second, guardiola inherited a very good barcelona team from frank rijkaard; it would have been very difficult to screw that team up. third, guardiola has never taken a bad team and made them good. these were three challenges that arteta had that guardiola didn’t. arteta had zero experience and he was asked to transition a team with a ton of problems into a good team. its not an emotional thing; you need experience, not just intelligence and desire.
bottom line, this job was too big for an inexperienced arteta. i said it when wenger left. even though i was happy to see emery get the sack, i wasn’t sing the praises of arteta. just because you worked with a great surgeon doesn’t mean you’ll be a great surgeon.
bottom line, arteta has coached arsenal to an 8th place finish and they are currently 9th; that’s unsatisfactory for arsenal. the worst thing that could happen to arteta is that he continue in the job. he’ll believe he can still do the job, but he can’t. he needs the humility that comes with getting the sack. likewise, he needs some time to reflect on the errors he’s made as arsenal manager to help him move forward…or his progression as a manager will be stunted. he can be a great manager, it just won’t be at arsenal any time soon.
another point, guardiola came from the barcelona reserve team…meaning he knew what was going on with the first team. zidane came from the real madrid reserve team and was actually the assistant coach for the real madrid first team before becoming manager, so he also knew what was going on with the first team. however arteta, with no coaching experience at any level, was a young man coming back to a completely different arsenal to manage, after years away, where he had little clue as to what was going on.
a third point: arteta’s gone on about xhaka being injured in the warmup. why did xhaka play on sunday? everyone got a rest…even bernd leno; everyone except granit xhaka. my question is who are the players who’ve played the most minutes for arsenal and needed the break the most? those two players are bukayo saka and granit xhaka. even tim’s chart in the previous thread shows the player’s who’ve played the most minutes…and it’s not even close. it would have been an excellent opportunity for soares to get a game and show what he could do.
a fourth point: arsenal couldn’t control the midfield. where were are all of their center mids? sure, ceballos was suspended because he’s a moron, but where was xhaka? torreira? joe willock? maitland-niles? guendouzi? elneny? smith rowe and odegaard are not true center mids types but attacking players, yet both started. arsenal had little control because the team was unbalanced. in fact, how poor has arsenal’s midfield been since arteta had this “good idea” to play xhaka at left back? bottom line, arsenal missed xhaka’s sword in the midfield battle. all of this falls on the manager.
while i appreciate everyone’s thoughts about thomas tuchel at chelsea, i just look at it a bit differently. why did lampard have the chelsea job? that team was always very talented. lampard simply wasn’t qualified to manage a team like chelsea…and its the same for arteta being the arsenal manager.
in fact, if tuchel had replaced lampard before arsenal played chelsea in december, arteta couldn’t have gotten the sack after that game, a proper manager could have come in and had arsenal going to a cup final, hypothetically. indirectly, you could blame lampard for arsenal not making the uefa cup final.
bottom line, after finishing 8th and perhaps 9th, arsenal don’t deserve to be in the champions league. depending on cup competitions is such a bogus way to justify one’s inclusion into a cup competition. it’s clear that there are teams in the premier league that are better and have more right to play in the champions league than arsenal.
Great piece, or at least one I agree nearly 100% with.
That last sentence is particularly devastating.
I know certain “true supporters” will slag me for this, but here, late in my middle age, after a long career in business where I’ve been privileged to work with incredibly talented leaders and managers… and occasionally caught sight of and even a few times suffered (briefly!) under incompetent leaders and/or managers… here is my take:
I can’t really get invested in incompetence anymore. When I was a kid, I didn’t know better, and I fell for the home team, or the team I could catch on TV, or the team, like Arsenal, I was lucky enough to see in person a couple times. I fell for them and was “loyal” and full of hope, no matter how incompetent they were.
But then I grew up, and I realized that makes me, well, a sucker. Why let myself get emotionally invested in someone else’s incompetence?
Some people in business are just really damn good at management, at hiring great talent and achieving big things. And plenty of people have fine intentions but just are not capable. One key to a happy and rewarding career is to work with the former and avoid the latter.
If the owner can’t run a competent and competitive club, I can’t really get deeply invested anymore. Of course, fandom is an emotional not rational “act” and so I still pull for my clubs and teams, but I can no longer look past the incompetence and be fully dedicated.
I don’t think Stan is “evil.” If for no other reason than it’ll make his asset more valuable, I actually think the more likely thing is that he wants Arsenal to succeed. He has after all green-lit minor hires (e.g., Sven), “major” hires (e.g, Raul) and big moves (e.g., Auba, Laca, Pepe, Partey). He even hired PSG’s former manager!! Just unfortunately, the wrong ex-PSG manager.
I think Stan just is incompetent in his hiring. He found a brilliant hire in his Rams Head Coach — who was the youngest head coach by far in the NFL. He then poured a ton of money into getting that team back to the Super Bowl… but he spent it so badly that the team had send away a first round draft pick just to get someone to take their newly signed expensive QB off their hands.
So I suspect Stan will continue to reinvest the revenues of Arsenal back into the club… but I’ve got zero confidence that any of that spend will be wise, apart from the occasionally lucky roll of the dice.
Why should I invest myself deeply in that?
Maybe that makes me “disloyal” in the eyes of some. But being fully passionate about a club run as badly as Arsenal would leave me feeling (metaphorically… there’s no real comparison here obviously) like a battered spouse. “He didn’t mean it. It’s not his fault. I think he’ll treat me better from now on.”
The Arteta era is over.
By the brutal realities of the results game, Mikel is done. If the Arsenal board is a serious one, it should only be a matter of time before he is removed.
Of course he isnt solely responsible for the overall state of the club, but he is for the dismal results over a season and a half.
I completely agree Tim. Arteta is over-analysing everything, if I’m being generous, and being down-right naive and arrogant if I’m being realistic. Naivety and arrogance is a horrific combination.
Everything he’s done this season; from the slow squad rotation, to the unbalanced lineups, to the woeful substitutions, to his lack of humility and passivity in game, to his young backroom staff hires, to the lack of consistency in selection, to the ignorance of developing player chemistry, to the lack of cover in key areas, to his misdirected trust in the wrong players in the wrong positions – has been mind-blowingly poor.
He’s been hamstringing himself with these decisions week after week after week. And you would honestly see better from even the most standard of Conference League managers with this squad. Maybe he has taken on too much too soon, and that is on the owners, but everything here is a coaching mistake, first and foremost a football management mistake. This squad is easily good enough to win the EL and be 5-6 places higher up the table, but it has been mismanaged to within an inch of its life.
He has had far too much reliance on teenagers to bail this team out of the tactical straight jacket he employs. While ostracising quality for mediocrity. Saliba over Holding? Mari over Gabriel? Willian over Pepe? Auba at left-wing-back for f’cks sake? That is the story of our season. It is truly incredible the faith he has put into either bang-average players. All the while fielding our best players completely out of position – out of positions they have played their entire careers just so he can prove to the world what a smart man he is. It is Pep-lite without the talent, without the investment. Pep himself has needed £500 million and 5 years to reach the CL final. It doesn’t translate. Play your best players in their best positions and foster a collective system with the interchangeable parts. It really is that simple. He has made this season so much harder than it needed to be.
Arteta cannot settle. He goes game to game tinkering and tweaking, often changing what was working last match for no good reason at all. Are Saka and Pepe over on the right playing a blinder together? Well next game Pepe is benched or shoved to the other side of the pitch – isolated, separated, alone. Is Martinelli man of the match and the only one showing a real hunger to score? You can bet your house he’ll be on the bench in midweek. This blind favouritism towards those who don’t take responsibility, those who don’t score, those who don’t contribute is contrasted by pure dismissal of those who take risks.
I have very little sympathy for him as this is a season entirely of his own making. If he had kept it simple we’d be in a very different position. I truly worry what more time on the training pitch next year will lead to. My hope is that the players are given a defined role at the beginning of the season and a positional game-plan to stick to. Fostering the chemistry and partnerships that so greatly underly this game. No more Smith Rowe at centre forward in a £70million game with your season on the line. This is not a joke, this is not pre-season. It is arrogant and naive, and maybe I was wrong but I expected much, much better.
“Play your best players in their best positions and foster a collective system with the interchangeable parts”. I particularly love this quote. My question: is emotional disinvestment attainable? If yes, please show me how to go about it because although my local club is West ham United, I have been an Arsenal supported as far back as Kanu.
I think it’s essential and urgent that we arrest the performance downward spiral. Success on the pitch equates to success off it and we haven’t got ManU’s momentum to offset a poor season or two. The gap to our rivals is increasing significantly.
I still believe we have a squad which can fight for champions league qualification (next season) with the right manager.
The current manager is a lame duck. I think it would reassure nearly everyone associated with AFC if the board acted quickly to plot a new course to a brighter future.
I agree with Tim about where the Kroenkes have taken the club. But I cant believe that they’re unbothered by the on-field results. In Arteta, the management team they hired gave the fans what they’d been clamouring for. It hasn’t worked out. That happens. Mikel is smart, but his lack of experience eventually showed. Maybe his managerial genius can be shown in the future… I hope so. But his current position at Arsenal FC is untenable.
The Kroenkes? I’ve no idea what the solution is. They’re the landlord/homeowner. They’re not going anywhere unless they decide to. Short of that, the next Head Coach hire has got to be an experienced scrapper who looks at this squad and its loanees and thinks that theyre 5 places better off than Arteta has positioned them. Sarri’s name was bandied about. I dunno.
Sarri was supposed to be going to Roma until our favourite c**t took the job. Let’s be honest though, Sarri is 64. He’s a fantastic manager and would have Arsenal back in the top 5 next season, but he’s not going to build anything lasting here. We need a young innovative manager.
Regarding the Sarri rumours, I admitted that I dont know if that’s the way to go.
That said, I disagree about a young, innovative manager. We need a pragmatist to stop the slide, and raise us 4 to 5 places. To get the better out of the players on Arsenal’s books. The young stud can replace him in 2 years.
I was slower than most climbing onto the Wenger out train so I can certainly understand reluctance on people’s part to let a manager go, but Arteta’s failures are just too obvious to me to even entertain the idea that a few new signings would make a huge difference next season with him still leading the way.
Do I care whether he stays or not ? Not really.
Much in the same way that I don’t care whether Stan sells or not.
Not like former Arsenal shareholders didn’t know who he was, or what he was about when they all cashed in their chips and made millions.
I’ll support this club no matter what but with minimal care and emotional involvement.
Let’s be fair. Arteta is YOUNG. Maybe too young. But we can’t discuss him as though he’s as though he’s a finished product and what we’re seeing is somehow a manifestation of who Arteta is as a manager. Isn’t there room to grow and learn from his mistakes? I think he needs better help, personally. He needs to bounce Steve Round and get in some guys like Zeljko Buvac was for Klopp, always arguing and fighting and forcing Klopp to address problems.
Arteta is 39. I’m going to say he’s glass half-full, not empty, and given the paucity of genuine coaching prospects out there, give him another half season. It’s on Edu now to take away some of Arteta’s crutches and ship off Lacazette, Luis, Willian and maybe even Aubameyang and force him to coach Balogun, Martinelli, Saliba, Pepe et al and get the rebuild well and truly underway.
he may not be done but he needs to be done at arsenal…at least for now.
I hear you guys punting around names like Sarri as a replacement for Arteta. If you want to get a good thing going for a few years, it could be a decent move.
The only thing is, Sarri isolates 15 or so players and says, those are my guys. And then, he doesn’t rotate. Many of the injury problems Kante has suffered for the last two years has been down to the constant overexertion he suffered under Sarri.
Sarri is also tactically inflexible. Come rain or shine you’re getting the same football. That’s easy to gameplan against, and ultimately we suffered.
I was wondering if you’d go down the german route, and hire and up and comer like Glasner. Or try and look for somebody who’s the D’antoni of football. Wenger used to be this for you guys. Give him meat and potatoes and he churns out something special attacking wise. I think Graham Potter might be that guy.
I like Marco Rose at Monchengladbach but he’s lined up to take over at Dortmund next season. There are a lot of coaches under 45 with plenty of experience but that’s for another post.
Understandable, i just think Potter understands the league and what a team requires to be competitive. Sometimes you dont need the guy who comes in to help win you titles. You just need a foundation to eventually become something better.
Almost like that partner you dated that taught you a few things and gave you some experience. Deep down you know this may not be the mother/father of your children, but they’re just as necessary to get you to that point in life. Now you only realize that looking back, how instrumental they were, and you’re glad because there’s no way to be your present self without them.
(As an aside we, Chelsea, have had all time bad breakups but I’m still thankful)
All that is to say, I think you might need incremental change to build your ethos again. Arsenal will always be that free flowing club that welcomed artists. So hire someone who knows how to work within his means and give those artists a chance to shine.
And based on the sentiment over social media and here, it looks like Arteta is done so it’s natural to talk about a succesor.
Sarri-ball had Napoli playing some exciting stuff. And he managed to get Chelsea playing the way he wanted in about 2 months, which is amazing. We’re talking a guy that has 33 set-pieces off throw-ins alone.
Graham Potter? Good God, no.
Ah yes, the 33 set piece master of all footballing things. Man its crazy how a lot of fans love the idea of a foreign manager and then when things don’t translate, they berate and belittle them.
It turned ugly here at Chelsea, after a short burst of optimism about the same things. Sadly, it ended almost on a xenophobic note.
Again, it was so bad our home fans chanted some horrible things at him, ala you guys calling Wenger a nonce at the tube station. Reason I say this is, I don’t think Sarri would want to come back to England and face that abuse.
And no, it’s important to note, Sarri never truly liked what he saw on the pitch. We never really played Sarri-ball. More often than not, in press conferences he would lament that he needed to hammer home his style further in training or we had forgotten his principles.
Also the underlying numbers for Brighton are surprisingly great, not even just good.
ha! i remember that sarri chant.
“we want sarri’s head, say we want sarri’s head!”
don’t know if sarri knew the original version of that song or even knew what the fans were saying, but it was a cool chant.
Personally I’m planning to enjoy our Evertonian years, confident that we’ll eventually come again.
And when we do, I hope it’ll be under Arteta, because he’s one of our own and he’ll have learnt from this season.
But realistically I don’t think the turnaround is going to be that quick.
Meanwhile stick or twist with Joe Willock?
This team is clearly the work of a tactically stable genius.
No football manager in history has been treated more unfairly.
Thanks for the post Tim. Huge disappointment that we dropped out of the Europa league. My take is the real problem is the same as we have had for the last 2 league seasons. We can’t score enough goals because we don’t have enough firepower in this squad. We can dissect tactics and strategy to death but no matter how you slice it you can’t expect a group of players who have never scored goals in their entire careers to suddenly start scoring. Football does not work that way and it never has and never will. I am not trying to suggest that Arteta has done a great job but expecting him to perform miracles and find ways to score a enough goals with this squad as currently constructed is a case of unrealistic expectations and I think we are clearly taking the anti-Arteta anger a long ways over the top. I agree completely that our front office which currently includes Arteta has done a really poor job of rebuilding this squad and our resource management has been mostly a disaster since we bought Alexis Sanchez and that is the reason we are where we are. If you want to give Arteta part of the blame for his part in the squad and resource management then I am 100% in agreement. I have no idea whether Arteta will be sacked but if he isn’t, whatever success we have in the next couple years will depend on how well Arteta and the front office does with rebuilding this squad.
Emery almost finished fourth and reached the EL final with an inferior squad.
Expecting Arteta to finish fourth with the squad he has is not a ‘miracle’.
Leicester, West Ham, Leeds and Aston Villa have scored more goals than us.
I guess they have more ‘firepower’ ?
You may not care much for tactics and strategy, but that’s how a good manager is supposed make a team greater than the sum of it’s parts, or at least close to it . It’s kind of his job, you know. That’s how football works.
Aubayemang, Lacazette and Pepe know a thing or two about scoring goals. They only have to be played in a setup that maximises their scoring potential.
La Liga is a strong league and Villarreal is in 6th place and they are now in the Europa league finals. The idea that they in the bottom 1/3 of teams we have played this season and they are a poor team that we should easily be able to beat is not supported by any real evidence. I know that we don’t like Emery but he has had a very long and relatively successful career. His Valencia teams were always in financial trouble but he routinely had them in the top 4 even after having to sell David Villa and David Silva. His Sevilla teams were also cash poor but he kept them in the top 5-6 in Spain and won the Europa league 3 times. He won the league in France and he took his Arsenal team to the finals in the Europa league. Emery has proven he is certainly is very good at managing cup competitions. To suggest that he is an incompetent manager and we should have won easily against someone like him is quite a bit off target.
PRVHC
The idea that we are a big team and we have better players and more firepower then Leicester, West Ham, Aston Villa etc is not realistic in the current EPL. If you take a look at actual numbers instead of just assuming we have more firepower its clear how weak we are. Pepe has a grand total of 10 league goals in 2 seasons and a significant portion of those are PK’s . Auba’s total has dropped to less then 1/2 of previous years and might not hit double digits this year. Lacazette has been with us for 4 seasons with 3 different managers and never scored more then low teens. Those are the best options we have. In the first game against Villareal we started a line up which I don’t think had a single player that has scored more then 10 league goals in their entire Arsenal career. You can’t expect a team to score goals with that sort of line up.
PRVHC
I thought the current theory is Emery is a crappy manager and we should be embarrassed to lost a game against a team he manages, but now you are saying that he took a really poor squad and somehow got them to overperform and almost finish 4th. You can’t have it both ways and change the story when the prior theory becomes inconvenient.
There is no ‘theory’
I didn’t make any assertions about Emery’s capability as a manager or the quality of our squad. You made them up.
I merely pointed out that Emery finished a point off fourth with the squad he had, and Arteta has us sitting in 10th with 150 million worth of talent added to it. So the argument that no manager could have done better with our squad is non-sensical.
By any standard, Arteta has done a poor job. Get over it.
The essence of good, effective coaching is making your collection of players achieve more than the sum of their parts. Klopp did that at Dortmund. Pocchetino did that at Southampton. Moyes is doing that this season at West Ham. Martin O’Neill used to that at Leicester. Claudio Raineri did that at Leicester. Arsene took Arsenal to a Champions League final with Almunia in goal.
Mikel’s problem is that he makes Arsenal look less than the sum of its parts. Odegaard and Partey dont look the same players now. He’s had bad luck with his main goalscorer having an annus horribilis for reasons of health, family and form. But Joe Willock’s form for Newcastle is an indictment of Arteta’s judgement. Willock is, on form, right now, the most potent scorer from midfield in the EPL. Im not even going to talk about Willian, who Arteta subbed into a season-defining game in which we needed drive, energy and goals. He had previously subbed Willian into a game with seconds left in added time, just to take a corner for a badly needed goal.
The arguments for keeping Arteta are sentimental and hopeful. But we are in the results game, and his 1.5 season sample size is enough (for me) to suggest that he hasn’t been the hire we hoped he’d be. I like Mikel, and supported his appointment.
“Arsene took Arsenal to a Champions League final with Almunia in goal.”
correction: that was Jens Lehmann. Best keeper in the Champions League that season.
Thanks. I misremembered that. Jens got sent off and Arsene subbed off Pires for Almunia.
…who then played a blinder, if I remember correctly.
Claude
Rob Holding and Pablo Mari have never scored a PL goal. Bellerin has a career average 1.1 goals/season and Tierney has 2 goals in 38 PL games. Xhaka career PL averages 1.8 goal/season. Partey has not scored this year and averaged only 2 league goals/season in Spain. Smith-Rowe has never scored a PL goal. Saka has 6 goals in 63 PL games for a career average of about 3.3 goals/season. Ceballos has never scored a PL goal. Elneny has 1 total career PL goal. Ogegaard has averaged 2.8 goals/season in his career in Spain. Lacazette has averaged 13 goals/season in his 4 year PL career. Pepe has averaged 5 goals/season.
If the add up the career total goals/season of our best 10 outfield players not counting Auba you come up with the whooping expected total of approximately 29.5 goals/season. Even with a 20 goals season from Auba we would have struggled and the fact that he has only scored 9 has made it much worse. We can talk tactics and strategy all day but i suspect there is probably not a single one of us who has actually done the math. Its pretty clear at least to me the math clearly indicates we are at best a mid table team and its highly unrealistic to expect this squad as currently constructed to be competing for a Europa league spot much less the top 4.
this stuff again!
using historical goal scoring is a terrible predictor for future goalscoring.
Thierry Henry: 20 goals in 5 seasons before joining Arsenal; Luis Muriel, 60 goals in 11 seasons before joining Atalanta; Robin Gosens, 11 goals in 6 seasons, 18 goals in his last two seasons (he’s a FB); Aaron Ramsey, 9 goals in 8 seasons before his breakout season.
etc.
You need to look at how many shots players are getting and then why they are or aren’t getting shots.
The facts are that Arsenal’s system is 9th in shots per game and 10th in goals. That’s not entirely down to the players because last season we were 15th in shots per game.
Coaches matter, systems matter, if they didn’t matter they wouldn’t exist.
just fyi.
Tim, is this Bill guy for real ?
Anyone who even watches football occasionally cannot be making arguments this dumb.
Bill is a good guy, he’s just stuck on this thing right now. But let’s stick to critiquing the ideas rather than the man.
Take it easy!
Yeah, I’m backing off.
It’s just that it frustrates me when people simply refuse to understand reason.
👍🏽
That was noble . You are a good man
You are not going to get many goals from your back 4 or the deep holding central midfielders like Xhaka/Partey/Coquelin/Arteta/Ceballos/Elneny/Denilson etc etc. If you assume we use a formation with 4 CB and 2 deep central midfielders that only leaves 4 spots for attacking players. Saka Smith Rowe Odegaard are good players but they don’t very many goals. That leaves only 1 or possibly 2 spots in the line up for players who have to score a huge percentage of your goals. No matter how you slice or dice it the numbers just don’t work out.in our favor
Bill, did you just turn a deaf dar to Tim’s comment?
Oh, darn something wrong there. Deaf ear, and nothing else
i don’t think bill watches the arsenal games. he has a “money ball” approach to making assessments, believing the truth lies exclusively in the numbers. if football was played in a vacuum, he’d be right. however, that’s not how games are played and it’s the beauty of our game. numbers do tell a story but never the complete story and most fans of any team sport, bar baseball, know this. likewise, he blames players but never the person responsible for preparing the players.
arsenal have one of the most talented rosters in the league, featuring some of the best players in the world. if a manger can’t get more from this squad than mid table mediocrity, they’re not good enough for a club with arsenal’s status. arteta could oversee the demise of arsenal’s time as a world football power. mikel’s not experienced enough and most of us know this. his strategy doesn’t work effectively. it doesn’t respect the strengths/weaknesses of the players. he doesn’t appear to know how to minimize his opponent’s strengths. he doesn’t seem to know how to maximize chances while minimizing his opponent’s chances. his in-game management is poor. he’s regularly out-coached. most of us realize that arsenal aren’t creating enough chances. bill doesn’t consider any of that, which makes it difficult to take his posts seriously.
bill, i’ve been cordial and listened to you opine. what’s clear is that you don’t seem to know anything about playing good football. what’s more frustrating is you don’t seem interested in listening to anybody either. i frequent this forum because there’s a history of really smart guys from all over the world that come here and respectfully express thoughts and ideas. i haven’t been able to respect your ideas; they don’t respect the nature of the game.
i don’t trust arteta today…especially against an experienced sam allardyce. we’ll see.
Tim
There is no perfect method but using historical data is by far the most accurate way to try and make logical predictions of future performance. Nothing else comes anywhere close. The same is true of every sport Every season you can pretty accurately predict which players will be near the top of charts in goal scoring and you can predict who will be close to the lead in batting average and which players will hit around .250 in American baseball. As you point out every year there are a few exceptions but those cases are unpredictable and often never replicated. No one could have predicted Adebyors season in 07/08 or Ramseys season in 13/14 but those players never came close to replicating what they did in that one season. Thierry Henry was once per generation player and we never replicated someone like him. In the last 15-16 how many players have come to Arsenal and consistently outperformed their historical averages? I think the answer is basically none. There have been hundreds of academy players who were predicted for stardom but in the last 15 years I don’t think there has been a single academy player who has scored more then 10 goals or created more then 10 assists in any single season. If you try to build your strategy and squad management around the idea that a specific player is going to break out you will be wrong about 99% of the time. The bottom line is nothing is perfect but building your assumptions based on historical data is the only possible chance you have to be accurate.
So you’re telling me if we buy Messi and stick him at right back we’ll add 40 goals to our season ? Bring it on !
Tim : Sorry, couldn’t resist
Tactics formation and strategy working well so far today.
Josh.
I have been blogging long enough to realize that what my eyes tell me when I watch a game is often subject to my predetermined biases while if I go by the numbers I am not going to be fooled in the vast majority of cases. The objective of discussing something on a blog is to get the right answer so I tend to stay with something that gives the correct answer most often.
that’s the difference, bill. fans don’t watch arsenal with any pre-determined biases or to make predictions. we simply don’t care much about either…certainly not enough to go on a forum like this and talk about it.
most of us became arsenal fans because we loved the team. we were entertained by the football we saw. we wanted to see if arsenal could play the best football in the world and win the most coveted trophies by virtue of the quality of their play. we come to this forum to talk about arsenal. no one cares about predicting who’ll produce what stats…except wins.
tim has historically used stats to help folks better understand the football they see. however, stats don’t determine the quality of a player. they are a residual product of a player’s work. many great players have intangible qualities that can’t be quantified. there’s no stat that quantifies how important patrick vieira was to the invincibles. however, anyone who knew the game and watched him play in that side knew that they were watching a special mf….and i don’t mean midfielder.
consider the lack of experience of arteta. the fact that he got such a big job with no experience is a slap in the face to everyone else who’s earned their due, proven themselves, and gained experience. however, it’s becoming more popular as everyone thinks they’re going to find the next guardiola. however, guardiola has never taken a bad team and made them good. likewise, pep is an outlier. you’re not going to just find a guardiola, even someone working as his number one.
we saw lampard flop at chelsea only to watch tuchel come in and get a clearly superior product from the same resources lampard had. we have witnessed andrea pirlo guide juventus down a few notches from their perch among the elite in italy with many of the same resources his predecessor had. now, we’re watching arteta struggle to prove his worth in north london. its’ not that these guys are talentless. they’re inexperienced and big clubs can’t afford to let a young hotshot learn so many lessons on the job while losing their prestige.
the irony is the kroenke’s gave arsenal fans what they wanted. many were screaming out for arteta. i wasn’t one of them but his name was strongly touted, even on this forum. if you clamored for arteta, you can’t call for the owners to sell because arteta flopped. likewise, moving forward, you can’t be mad if the owners don’t listen to fan’s bad suggestions.
Some good points Josh. This is my sixpence.
It looks like Arteta is staying and re-modelling the squad this Summer. I saw in his press conference before the WBA game he came out playing the victim card, blaming the players, and previous managers. I hate that. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t own their errors.
You mention the lack of experience but for me it’s more than that:
Experience – To be fair experience can only be accrued through time. However, if you know you don’t have it at least surround yourself with people that do. Steve Round FFS. What on earth has he achieved in the game? Arteta is a fool for the coaches he’s appointed. None of them scream elite or progressive to me. Where’s the challenge to his authority or the reasoned voice that whispers ‘maybe that’s not a smart idea’?
Ability – there’s a significant delta between Arteta’s gauge of his own abilities and reality. After 80+ games it’s still constant experimentation in personnel and playing style. Even average managers stamp their mark on a team quicker. The fact he doesn’t know his best eleven yet says it all. In the biggest two games of his career he played a kid midfielder as a false 9 and in the second leg one man in midfield! Some might say this is down to his lack of experience but knowing your team and first eleven really are basic requirements.
Character – There’s a large body of evidence that Arteta is not a good judge of players (Joe Willock is one example) with many question marks over who he’s brought in and let go. Judgement can be refined with age but frankly if you’re 40 years old and you’ve been in football your entire life you should be able to judge who and how to play. What compounds this further is that he’s such an obsessive control freak and that’s just not a good character trait for a manager in 2021. Even Mourinho can’t make that work anymore. If he had the backing of the players (and the ability to motivate and lead them) surely we would have seen a better performance on Thursday night? I just don’t see the characteristics of a team leader. What he does well is talk a good game to the press which is enough for his bosses (who are football and accountability illiterate).
I’m disappointed the club feels that Arteta shouldn’t be under pressure. Where’s the onus for him to address his failings? We wouldn’t field a player if they’re not good enough so why excuse the manager? I can’t think of another big club anywhere that would tolerate this season’s failings. Abramovich would have sacked him at least three times already!
It feels like history repeating itself with a board that won’t take difficult decisions. I wrote on the previous post the board have rubber stamped failure and the manager is a lame duck. After we paid off Ozil et al, the players know they either choose to play Arteta’s sh1t football or sit on the sidelines and see out their contracts. What kind of a functional environment is that?
PRVHC
Are trying to suggest that if we brought in Messi or someone else who has a history of scoring a lot of goals like we did with Auba a couple years ago and put him at forward that it wouldn’t help us score a lot more goals?? You can’t really believe that.
Past results are the metric that transfer fees and wages are based on and its the same in every professional sport in history. Wealthy teams spend billions of dollars to buy the players who have been scoring the most goals and creating the most assists because those are the players who will continue to score and assist. You never see teams in the champions league with a group of forwards whose entire career history includes less then 10 league goals. The idea that past performances such as goal scoring numbers are poor way to judge future performance makes no sense.
No, the scenario I was interested in was if he played right back.
Why couldn’t he produce 40 goals from right back ? I mean he averages around that figure per season.
We could also get Ronaldo in a free and stick him at left back behind Willian.That’s another 30 goals ! We’re cruising to the title.
Josh
I agree that stats are not the only thing which determines the quality of a player but you can’t just ignore them because you don’t like what they tell you. If you want your team to have success on the pitch then someone on the team has to be producing the stats such as goals scored. I think we all agree the single biggest reason we are in 9th place and out of the Europa league is because we don’t score enough goals. You can disregard the stats all you want but the reality is you can’t win with a team full of technically talented players if none of them are scoring enough goals and producing the stats. That seems so completely simplistic and obvious.
to imply i’m ignoring the fact that arsenal don’t score enough goals is something you’ve made up. i don’t ignore stats. i consider other factors in addition to stats; i don’t rely on stats “exclusively” to tell me about the football i see.
since arsenal aren’t scoring more goals, most would ask why. your answer is that they don’t have players who are “good at scoring goals” (i don’t even know what that means). however, the rest of us would say that arsenal aren’t creating enough chances. the next question would be why aren’t arsenal creating more chances. this is where the stats stop telling their story, bill. the conversation (and truth) transitions to things you don’t fancy, like tactics and strategy.
your nonsense argument about how many players haven’t scored more than 12 league goals is just as bad. most of the arsenal attackers weren’t even in the league 2 years ago so no, they’re not going to have goals. this list includes pepe, smith rowe, nketiah, odegaard, nelson, and martinelli. many of these players are at the beginning of their careers. it doesn’t mean they can’t score goals.
Surely, the reason why Auba has been so unproductive this season is because he so rarely sees the ball when he plays.
His style of play does not match Arteta’s preferred and only style, so when he is there he may be lucky to get a couple of chances.
You win games by scoring goals and if you make no chances you don’t win games.
We have consistantly had 2 or 3 shots on target in a game, which is simply not good enough.
The regularity of that statistic means, in my view that the problem is not the players but how they are required to play.
Until the Chel$ki game the regular complaint was there was no creativity.
In that game Arteta was forced to use ESR and the Chel$ki were so bambouzled by something they were not expecting, that we won the game and looked like title challengers.
The problem was that Arteta was not interested, so in the games after that he tinkered with the creativity started to drop ESR, so it became as you were, unitl he was forced to allow it again, I cannot remember which game.
But we are are back to where we were, little or no creativity, which few shots on target.
Sheffeld United and WBA can be ignored because they were both cannon fodder.
I fear that Arteta will remain and more money will be thrown at him and more inconsequential and second rate players acquired.
I agree with what most people are saying here (except for Bill, sorry, but you remain in the dream world that so many bloggists still occupy), but what we say will not have any effect.
this is the stuff i say to bill all the time. we all seem to get that, except for him.
before the chelsea game, arsenal didn’t use a #10. as a result, they struggled to create chances…and were in 16th place. it had nothing to do with the ability of the arsenal attacking players to score goals. in fact, the only reason arsenal weren’t in the relegation zone is because the attackers were scoring at an incredibly high and unsustainable rate; that’s something the stats tell us.
when i was 15, i learned the definition of a manager and still remember it verbatim: a person charged with carrying out the duties associated with management. i also learned that management is defined as the most efficient and economical use of available resources to reach an objective or goal. it’s arteta’s job to take the players he has been given by the club and win games. has he proven he can do that well enough for arsenal to be a top team? i don’t think so.
i’m watching with great interest, the title race in la liga. if sevilla had held on to win yesterday, there would only be 4 points separating the top 4 teams with 3 games remaining. these teams are all competing to be their domestic league championship. it’s amazing that when you’re competing for a championship, finishing in the champions league spots tends to take care of itself. this is who the CHAMPIONS league is for, not some mid table english team who snuck into the champions league because they won a stepped-down cup competition. arsenal, don’t deserve to be in the champions league and it’s because of their management.
The point of football is to win.
How do you win? score goals.
How do you score goals? get shots.
How do you get shots, especially since the opponent is trying to get shots while also stopping you from getting shots? That’s what the manager is for.
‘How do you score goals? get shots’
No, you score goals by signing players who score lots off them.
‘How do you get shots, especially since the opponent is trying to get shots while also stopping you from getting shots? That’s what the manager is for’
No, a manager is for adding up all the goals the players are going to score and ensure they are enough to win.
Josh, if we’re to follow Bill’s logic, then you’d never play a young striker. Because he doesnt have a large number of career goals, he cant be expected to provide regular goalscoring. Therefore we shouldn’t have signed 17 year old Nicolas Anelka or 21 year old Robin Van Persie.
It’s an argument that is not logically sound, however consistently he makes it. Even Leo Messi at one point had more promise than productivity. I saw a funny vid one time about how Canadians are born. A full grown man comes of a hole in the ice, hockey stick in hand and skates on his feet, and skates away into the distance. The argument that only guys who’d previously scored 25 goal a season strikers can be reliable goalscorers reminds me of that vid meme.
On another score… Cavani. I’ve been singing his praises for years as a classic CF I wish we’d pursue, but United got him instead. He has extended. Excellent business for them.
Arteta. The owners are giving him till mid-season next season to show competitive improvement, according to reports. Fine with me. It’s their call. Maybe they reckon that after Emery, Freddie (temporarily) and Mikel in a short timespan, stability is what the club needs r/n. Left up to me I’d hire a new coach, but I can’t get worked up with whether he stays or goes.