Submariners

136 comments

1. ha! i remember the producer panned to the villareal fans when emery brought on coquelin for bacca and they had a very familiar look of bewilderment on their faces. i laughed out loud as i recalled their pain.

   in baku, the thing that set chelsea apart from man united was giroud. he’s not the speedy guy to get behind defenses, he was the battering ram to break through defenses. he got a goal, an assist, and it was giroud, not hazard, that won the penalty. he’s a very underrated and clever guy, not to mention he’s a massive, powerful man. arsenal simply had no answer for giroud and i think deep down, we all knew what was coming. when employed correctly, very few have an answer for giroud.

   in baku, emery got out coached by conte. last night, it was emery’s turn as he out coached solskjaer. i can’t recall a single significant adjustment, good or bad, that man united made after halftime. he simply stuck to their original plan and it wasn’t enough. even their goal was the derivative of a lucky bounce, not good football. ironically, arsenal’s goal against villareal was a lucky penalty awarded after saka dived.

   lastly, i agree that penalties isn’t luck but preparation. what struck me is that de gea was so poor. most of the time, goal keepers are among the best penalty takers. i’ve always chocked that up to they shoot on each other all the time in training. however, when you have trainers taking shots instead of other keepers, i guess it’s simpler to understand. congrats to emery. i never hated him. i just hated his football…and still do. arsenal didn’t suit his qualities.

   1. Slight correction, in Baku it was Sarri, not Conte.

      1. right on.

2. Happy to see Utd lose and an underdog win. And I can’t actually remember a top flight match where the first 10 players(11 in the case of Villareal) all made their penalties. Well done.

3. Great post Tim. Thanks again.

   Emery does what he has to do to win the most games his team can win and his strategy is especially good in cup competition as his success in winning multiple Europa league titles with mid table teams proves how good he can be. I know there was an emotional reaction to losing to him in the Europa league but the idea that he is a bad manager with a bad team and we should have easily beaten Villarreal is just false.

   I believe the reason Emery failed so quickly at Arsenal was for some reason he could not improve the defense. He inherited a team that was relatively weak in creativity and scoring firepower and had just conceded 51 goals and finished 6th and was fading rapidly. His first priority had to be fix the defense. I think he over performed in year 1 finishing but the problem was in his first season we conceded 51 goals again and we were on pace to concede >50 again in his second season when he was sacked. The results went going downhill because we did not have the firepower to score enough to compensate for bad defense.

   There are uncommon exceptions such as Sheffield United competing for a CL spot last year but for the most part the 38 game season separates the teams by talent. The better teams finish higher then the less talented teams. I don’t think OGS is a great manager but ManU finished second because they have the talent. However in cup competitions a midtable squad like Villarreal can win the Europa league or a mid table team like Arsenal can win last years FA cup. We often complain about not enjoying the style of football they play but you can’t play visually attractive entertaining football when you don’t have the right players in your squad. The fact that the average score of football games is something like 2-1 proves beyond a doubt that defense has the advantage over attack. Its hard to score goals and that is the only real advantage that managers of less talented teams have. If you try to go toe to toe and attack against a team with more firepower you will usually lose. Often the best way to get a result is setting up to play strong defense and hope to find a way to score a goal or occasionally 2 even if that means the football might not be stylistically attractive.

   1. Youre wrong. He did have the firepower to compensate in his first season. His GD was +22, and we scored 73 goals against the 51 we conceded. If Iwobi and Kolasinac had been better finishers, it’d have been higher and we might even had had Top 4.

   2. I’d add that he made some mistakes, such as trusting Xhaka, but he also seemed to roughly know what was needed – such as requesting Nzonzi.

      It was justifiable to let go of him when we did, if (big if) we brought in a better manager. Should not have been that difficult – there were and are some. We went backward, for no discernible reason.

4. When a clear underdog such as Villarreal in Europa this season or Arsenal in the FA cup last year win a big game, its almost always because they played strong defense and hold the opponent and find a way to score a goal or 2. Most of the time it does not work and the stronger team usually wins but making the game somewhat boring is often the only realistic chance for the underdog to get a result.

5. I don’t know how many of you remember the Arsenal vs ManU FA cup final in 2005. Classic example of the underdog doing everything it could to make the game boring and defensive but winning. Even Arsene realized he couldn’t attack ManU and hope to win.

6. There was a good amount of “Emery isn’t Arsenal exciting” and I’m glad we’re reaping what we sowed.

   At the time we appointed him, the ‘shortlist’ going around consisted of Arteta, Vieira and Henry. When we fired him, we went back to the top of that shortlist.

   So you can see what the idea of “Arsenal exciting” is. Basically some think our club is so magic it can turn amateurs into professionals. Sometimes you have to get hurt to learn.

7. “Arsenal were playing turtle”, beautiful, simple, and really wonderfully crafted Tim. Had me laughing tears (was both really funny and quite sad due to the origin of the joke). Hurt like hell to lose to the Blues. Worst to have lost because Giroud charmed us to defeat with his overbearing charisma and handsomeness. Nevertheless, thanks for continuing to do what you do best amidst this crazy global pandemic and lousy forgettable season. Stay safe and blog on! #COYG.

8. Firing Emery halfway through his second season felt right to me at time, in the same way that changing Mikel after 1.5 seasons would not have elicited a complaint from me. His winning Europa won’t cause me to have a wise after the event rethink. It was what it was, and I felt then that it was necessary, and we needed the homecoming of wunderkind coach. Destiny.

   Plainly Emery had more success in the league. At the point in the season that he was relieved of his duties, Mikel had us in a far worse position the next one. However Mikel won a trophy, and that is a big thing in his favour. Emery got us to European final. Each has a sample size of a season and half to compare. Im splitting the middle one.

   Plainly Emery’s a decent guy, and I am happy for him. He said the right things when asked about revenge. It’s not that. It’s about learning and growing. He’s hard not to like, and to root for. I hope he gets the financial backing to compete effectively in the Champions League.

   Most of all, he has my eternal gratitude for silencing Man U fans on my social media timelines.

   On the penalties, I felt that if their keeper had been a better one and not so undersized, he’d have saved one long before he faced de Gea’s. But that was some good prep by Villareal.

9. We were never going to have any success conceding 50+ per year. Emery’s first priority when he took should have been to decrease the number of goals we conceded. It takes talent to play effective attacking football but you can play reasonably good defense with OK players and defensive solidarity is one thing the manager really should be able to control to some degree. I think sacking Emery was the right thing because the team defense was arguably getting worse.

   When I think about it I wonder if Arsene’s plan before the 2005 FA cup was to sit deep and play for a 0-0 draw. Its certainly possible that his plan was completely different but his team was so overwhelmed by ManU team that it became clear the only hope was to hold on for dear life. The way a game plays out on the pitch is not always the way the manager draws up the game plan.

   1. emery did try to decrease the goals arsenal conceded. he failed because his approach, sitting deep and playing out from the back, gave opponents far too many chances. the law of averages suggests that the more chances an opponent gets, the more likely they are to score. besides, arsenal didn’t have the players suited to play his defensive style of football.

      what you’re suggesting is like saying that a boxer can win a championship by simply not getting hit. to be a champ, you have to land punches. like claudeivan says, you need balance. arsenal had plenty of attacking talent when emery arrived. in fact, they were all in their prime. emery simply didn’t know how to use them.

      your approach seems to seek out the best single solution for arsenal’s problems. however, just like there are often a series of small problems that leads to a catastrophe, there are often several simple solutions necessary to fix big problems. even the best single answer will often be inadequate.

10. Tim

    I have said a few times before but every time we talk about Giroud there is still a sentiment that he is heavily underrated. However, that makes no sense when you see 5 managers in a row ( Wenger, Conte, Sarri, Lampard, Tuchel) have all felt he was not effective enough or didn’t provide enough tactical advantage to warrant using him as a regular starter. I could understand how one manager might have a blind spot and miss something but not all 5. Those are smart managers who also have an army of assistant coaches who are paid to help analyze hundreds of hours of film in minute detail which none of us have access. Its completely inconceivable to me that all of those managers are wrong. I honestly don’t understand.

    1. you don’t see it because you don’t use soccer acumen and intelligence based on what you see. you only make assumptions based on some fake-ass numbers.

       all of those coaches tried to move away from giroud multiple times, searching for something younger, faster, and more dynamic. however, they came back to him when it was crunch time; especially conte in baku. most of us remember the beating that giroud handed to arsenal that evening but you don’t seem to. that’s why you don’t understand why people have respect for the man.

       one manager who has stayed with giroud and reaped success is deschamps. as a result, france finished runners up at a european cup final and, four years later, champions at a world cup final. will deschamps stick with giroud this summer? probably not. giroud hasn’t been playing and is 35 or will be soon. he’s near the end of his career.

11. Well, we didn’t have any success reducing GA TO 39 either, Bill. As I say often, it’s about balance. The season we conceded 51, we scored 73 for a GD of 22. We came within a hair of top 4.

    This season its 16 GD, and 8th. By any objective measure, it was worse than the 51 GA season.

    I concede its not black and white. Both coaches can point to mitigating factors, as to why their defensive or attacking stats weren’t better. The point is unless Arteta finds a better attacking balance, we shouldn’t celebrate his turning us into 1990s Bolton Wanderers.

12. I was going to say at least 90s Bolton had Jay Jay Okocha, but he only joined in 2002 apparently.

    Time to fire up youtube for a Jay Jay retrospective…

13. Great post. The Villareal team I saw play against Arsenal did exactly what you describe. They know who they are, they lean into it and they do it well. Arsenal need to develop that kind of continuity and identity, though in our own way. Emery fits Villareal perfectly. He’s the perfect appointment for them. He was not the right fit for us.

    Speaking of continuity and identity, one of the major problems Arteta has is that he doesn’t seem to know his best team, for good reasons. He has the uncomfortable dillema of a star striker who needs space to operate and doesn’t link play that well, yet his Arsenal need crisp combinations in tight spaces to really flow. He has the much nicer but no less perplexing dilemma of finding a permanent home for Bukayo Saka, especially since that home may be in Auba’s former LW berth. He has to find a central midfield partner for Partey (Xhaka being the incumbent) not to mention a starting caliber right back and the small matter of Martin Odegaard’s future and balacing that with the development of Emile Smith-Rowe. Then there’s the issue of the first choice CB partnership. We have to assume Gabriel is one half of that but the other half seems very much up for grabs. By my count that gives us the following bonafide starters: Aubameyang, Pepe, Saka, Partey, Smith-Rowe,Tierney, Gabriel, Leno; and the following big holes to fill:

    1- Who will partner Partey? Candidates: Xhaka, Willock, Saka. Will likely need a new player here.

    2- Who will partner Gabriel? Candidates: Holding, Chambers, Mari, Saliba, Mavropanos

    3- Who will play center forward? Candidates: Aubameyang, Lacazette, Martinelli, Pepe

    4- Who will play in the hole? Candidates: ESR, Saka (Odegaard)

    5- New RB signing. I really don’t see us starting the season with a Chambers-Cedric platoon.

    I’ll look forward to the developments that will begin to shine light on how the club views these dilemmas.

    1. Pretty clear lay of the land Doc. Don’t wish to start with rumors twitching about– but will be pleased if a report from David Ornstein is in fact the case. That Arsenal (Edu, Arteta) have presented their plans and goals to Josh Kroenke and the Board. Arsenal have also begun presenting to potential additions. According to Ornstein, he characterized the presentation as impressive based on conversations he has had with those players. With Euros starting right after the TW opens– could be activity quickly.

       1. Could be but Arteta did say it was less likely before rather than after the Euros. For my part I’ve always loved the Euros and will look forward to enjoying a few matches without worrying too much about the results.

          Random thought: Alex Lacazette turns 30 today (Happy Birthday AL!). He’s got two years left on his deal and is the only player we have capable of playing as a real 9. He might be the rare player you let play out his contract given that we probably don’t want to extend him to age 32-34 seasons but he’s an important player for us with experience among a bunch of young forwards.

14. I said it before, and I’ll say it again… Emery was/is not a good manager. In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that he’s a bad one. Here’s a snippet from an article/interview by Spartak Moscow’s chief Popov on Emery:

    “One day, we were travelling for a championship game, and one of the players had forgotten his passport. You need one in Russia even for internal flights. Because we were Spartak there wasn’t a problem, but Unai shouted at the player in front of the others: “Forgetting your passport means you aren’t thinking of the team. It’s a lack of respect towards your team-mates, blah, blah, blah!”

    “Less than a week later, we were going to Benfica, which meant an international flight. And the only one who forgot his passport was… Unai. The whole team had to wait three hours for him to get it so that we could leave. There was a difference between what he said and what he did, and so gradually the players lost their respect for him.”

    Personally, I was done with Emery at Arsenal for good when he clearly prioritized Europa League, and basically threw away our chances at finishing in the top 4 by fielding a very underwhelming starting XI against Crystal Palace towards the end of the season. We lost that game 3-2, and the rest is history. All would be forgiven, of course, had we won the EL final but we didn’t (and frankly, never had a chance against that Chelsea side).

    However, it can’t be overlooked that he has achieved a certain level of success, especially in the aforementioned Europa League. I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter how good or bad people think that Emery is Arteta is … much, much worse.

15. The irony of Emery knocking us out of the Europa League was bloody irritating, but if you’d told me that was going to happen at the time of his firing, I would still have let him go. Under Emery we were, for me, absolutely unwatchable. It wasn’t so much the result of the defense-first style he imposed, or at least not directly. But if you’re going to focus on defensive security, then I think the best way to balance that is to cultivate a quick-fire counter-attack that can take advantage of the spaces your opponent leaves as they push forward to try to break you down (see Moorinho at Spuds). We had plenty of speed to play that way, but Emery insisted on doing exactly the opposite, with his deliberate, possession-based build-up play. And with his insistence on us playing out from the back, disregarding the fact that we were simply awful at it, meant that our opponents quickly realized pressing us high was going to cause mayhem and inevitably result in our giving up regular high-quality scoring chances. We were actually embarrassing to watch, it made our players look incompetent, and you could see from their body language that they hated it. It was like suddenly playing for the anti-Wenger: no speed, no freedom to create, no joy. No surprise then that he eventually lost the dressing room, after which his demise was inevitable. You could argue that Arteta has a similar approach and I don’t disagree, although the players seem to be more willing to work with his deliberate, controlled style. But now we’re just so booooooring, and I worry that our lack of creativity going forward will generate similar unrest among the troops. When Aubameyang is showing signs of disgruntlement, it has me concerned.

16. Emery a bad manager, UPSTATE GOONER? I think I prefer Doc’s characterisation… he was not a good fit at Arsenal (despite having a decent first season). The man won the Europa four times, more than any manager, and was a five-time finalist. It is a competition increasingly populated by “big” sides, like the ones he faced in the final and semi-final, who mistakenly think they’re part of some European elite. Put some respect on the name, please.

    I said at the time and still believe that his hire was rational. That I supported his removal doesnt change my mind. He seemed a good fit at the time… he was not. But we lapped up all that stuff about “protagonists” and “non-negotiables” (from Arteta) didnt we? We football fans are hope junkies.

    I supported Arteta’s appointment, but I’ll say this with perfect 20/20 hindsight, gained from what they taught me at business school… the mistake Arsenal made was in not hiring a specialist to replace Emery. The firm needed corporate turnaround, and the type it needed to hire was a specialist in corporate turnaround. A grizzled veteran who had done CT before. None of Vinai, Edu or Arteta had that experience. Perhaps we should have brought the wunderkind coach — the acknowledged great coach in waiting — into a less demanding environment.

    But hey, as I said, pure hindsight.
    _____________________

    Bill, that 2005 FA Cup final you referred to. We are not rank underdogs at all. We finished 6 points ahead of them in the league in 2nd behind doped-up Chelsea (although we lost H and A to United), and they finished 3rd. United played us off the park. There’s a huge difference between that and being the underdog. It was a fairly even matchup, although Fergie had Rooney floating/ten, van Nistelrooy leading the line, Cristiano on the wing and Scholes prompting from midfield. On the field for Arsenal were Vieira, Bergkamp, Pires, Cole, Lauren, Gilberto and Cesc. On the bench were van Persie, Sol Campbell, Edu and Ljungberg. So no, we didnt park the bus and attempt to nick a goal or 2 as you say.We did not have an inferiority complex on the day, nor should we have. And we certainly did not “attempt to make the game boring”. United were simply terrific (and unlucky) on the day, and Roy Keane especially was magnificent. I’d to know what Tim made of it, but it seems to me like Fergie out-tactic-ed Arsene, and we toughed it out.

17. Yes, I stand by what I said… I never rated Emery, and I never will. He wasn’t the right fit and he wasn’t a good manager at Arsenal, Spartak, and PSG. Those are three big clubs in three different countries/leagues.

    Here’s another snippet that Popov recalls: “Unai didn’t understand the Russian mentality. He was too generous with the players. There was a lack of discipline, the training sessions weren’t taken seriously. He let them off without a fine because sometimes he was the one at fault”.

    He did reasonably well at Sevilla, and before that at Valencia but the level of competition was not the same back then and he had some great players at his exposure (Villa, Silva, etc.). Also, when he won a bunch of Europa League titles with Sevilla, no one really took that competition seriously. Only later, when it became a back door entrance to Champions League, did some clubs started taking notice. And as much as I’d like to give him some credit for winning with Villarreal, it was a matter of Ole/ManU bottling things up, and more importantly Arteta/Arsenal effin it up in the semis before that. Yes, it should have been us.

    I think people forget what a good manager is / supposed to be. Besides getting results and the best out of your players, a good manager should be a good communicator; coach; mentor; leader; motivator, and so on and so forth. Emery was none of the above. I remember towards the end of his tenure with us when Lacazette scored a tying goal against Southampton in injury time, and then the expression on his face was like “what have I done?”, meaning that he realized that the result will only help and prolong Emery’s time with Arsenal. It was funny and sad at the same time. The players lost respect for him just like they did at PSG, and Spartak before that. That’s a sign of a bad manager.

18. And again, I’d like to add to the above … as much as I never really cared for and rated Emery, I think Arteta is worse. I couldn’t stand him as a player (“King of a 5 yard Pass” as Kyle Martino once branded him), and I despise him even more so as a manager. Funny thing, at the time when it was announced that Wenger is leaving and Arteta’s name was brought up, I was both in shock and disbelief. When Emery got the nod I was actually psyched … but only because Arteta didn’t get the gig. Little did I know that I’ll have to suffer through both of them. As a side note, I think the reason he likes Xhaka so much is because he reminds him of himself as a player. I’ve never seen so many side and back passes from any other midfield player in my life than from those two.

    1. So to Upstate and the others who are Arteta out, what is your plan for the club? What would you do differently and how would you do it? The easy out from this is that you don’t get paid to figure that out, and that’s true. But I would like to hear your plans because that’s a lot less toxic than listening to you talk about all the things you hate.

       Burning it all down and getting new owners is not an option. Time travel is not an option. A massive load of cash magically discovered under Nketiah’s locker is not an option. You are Edu/Arteta and you’re free to chart the course ahead within the limits of the club’s resources. Go!

       1. If I were Arteta, and if I had any dignity in me, I’d had already resigned. I don’t know what his plans are, and my worry is he doesn’t have a clear picture either. Don’t forget, this is a man who’s been in charge for 18 months now but who still doesn’t know what his best starting XI is. We’ve won the last 5 games in the league but not once did I see entertaining football that excited me. Why not try new tactics/formations? Why not give youngsters more minutes? I used to get butterflies in my stomach before the games. I used to get upset over losses and draws. I don’t care about any of it anymore. I want my club back. I want to see in charge someone who knows what he’s doing. Someone with clear vision. Someone who can get the fans back on side and excited. That’s not Arteta, Doc. I’d love to see Jardim given a chance. Maybe Rafa, if we want more experience. Heck, I feel that even Eddie Howe or someone like Graham Potter would do a better job. The micro managing, super freak controlling approach is not working for me, and it doesn’t look like it’s working for some of the players either. I think it’s only a matter of time before Arteta loses the respect of the guys in the locker room, and then it’s the end game for him at Arsenal. So you asked a question to which I don’t have an answer to, and neither do you is my guess… but do you think Arteta would have survived a season (or half) like this at Chelsea? The answer is resounding No, of course. No chance in hell RA keeps this bum around to see his club finishing in 8th place, and no chance in hell he’s giving this bum another dime to waste on players like Willian or Cedric. It’s just mind boggling, really, how you or anyone else can defend Arteta. And the only reason he’s still in charge is because Kroenke’s don’t care about football/club, and don’t want to give Arteta his massive payout.

          1. I’m not going to try to change your mind. I’ll just leave you with the following anecdote:

             Juergen Klopp joined Liverpool in 2015. At that time you’ll remember Liverpool was on the outside looking in and hadn’t won a league title in 20+ years. Liverpool’s much maligned American owners vowed to take this stories club back to the top by investing intelligently using the money ball principles that worked so well for the Red Sox.

             In Klopp’s first full season in charge, Liverpool finished 8th and lost in the finals of the Europa League to Unai Emery’s Sevilla. You know the rest.

             The lesson is not that Arteta and Arsenal are destined to do what Liverpool did but that they very well could if they navigate out of this mess in the same intelligent way. Liverpool’s example supports the value of a centralized strategy and continuity. That’s what I believe in.

             1. You’re forgetting one “minor” detail, Doc. Arteta is not Klopp. When Liverpool appointed JK, he’s already done it at the highest level, and won multiple trophies. So it’s laughable really that you’re comparing someone who’s always played electric, entertaining brand of football which any fan would get on board with while also beating the mighty Bayern to the title a couple of times, and a Nobody who’s only achievement was to sit next to one of the best managers in Pep for a few years. Even Lamps who was by far the better player than Arteta, managed Derby prior to joining Chelsea. And even he, the Legend of the club, got sacked because the results weren’t there. Let me ask you another question(s): What will it take for you to say enough is enough? What are your expectations for next season? Top 4? Top 6? Will another FA Cup trophy be enough to keep Arteta in the job for another season? Europa League? Oh wait…

             2. I’m not Arteta out, but I’ll say this. The club has apparently decided to give the head coach 5, 6 months probation. So talk of replacing him now would appear to be moot. Why don’t we wait to see where we are by new year? I personally hope he kills it. Since that would appear to be a settled issue, I’m rallying round. If he does, he gets a clean slate from me. Conversely, I would not have objected if they’d replaced him now. If he can’t get the business done at half term/yearend, im for a turnaround specialist. I’d have to give that one some thought, Doc; but yes, the people who run the club know the managerial market much better than we do. We are, as the Brits say, in for a Penny and in for a Pound. Imma gonna try to enjoy the ride, and, with all sincerity, wish him the best.

             3. Ha, Doc making up facts once again. Liverpool finished 4th in Klopp’s first full season in charge, which was 2016-17.

             4. But who needs verifiable facts when you have moral certainty, prvhc?

             5. comparing arteta to klopp is downright awful, doc. i don’t think i even need to explain why.

             6. Klopp was appointed in 2015 and Pool finished 8th that season.
                All Doc got wrong was the year Klopp took over Liverpool.

                Some folks just want to gripe– and use any nit to pick.

                Still not heard a concrete plan for the club– that deviates by any large measure considering the resources and assets available.. Just a lot of animosity toward those who see a way through.

                C’est la vie.

       2. We’ve wasted so much money since Wenger left because of picking managers whose style is ill suited to the squad, and then because we had vested interests guiding recruitment and squad registration, and/or we are bad at identifying talent. I don’t think money fixes the issues we face. More likely we end up wasting more money to get worse. This is actually my biggest fear with the ‘he needs his own players’ idea. I wouldn’t mind giving Arteta time if he showed he can coach his way out of this and play a consistently effective style. I don’t believe the narrative that he’s being let down by his players. More the other way around.

          How would I fix it? Go back to what made us a big club, both stylistically and as a brand. Get a manager who wants to play attacking football first and foremost. Build around/incorporate the players who came through Colney, play to a system they’re used to. Keep agents out of the club. Have scouts/DoF which have a ready pipeline of young players/reasonably priced players to replace players we sell/add pieces to the system. Get an AM, a backup LB, and a backup GK. Use AMN, Willock and Nelson. Extend Nketiah and send him on loan. Keep Lacazette. If possible extend and keep Guendouzi.

          It may not be a top top squad, but it’s good enough to be higher up in the table. Top 6. Worst case we miss out on Europe again. I’d take that. This is the rebuild that should’ve been done this season. Then you can add pieces, instead of indulging in a wholescale squad turnaround, which is really just a way to spend money and then have it take time to come together. Then if it doesn’t work you get stuck doing the same thing again for the next guy. Until you can’t afford it any more.

          The direction of the club needs to be set irrespective of the manager, and frankly if that is set by Arteta’s vision, even assuming he has some level of success, it means the club loses on an aspect that gave it its mass appeal. Not just among fans, but even among players.

          1. Great comment and I couldn’t agree more. The manager to fit the club; not vice versa.

             This is where Edu needs to grow a pair, and hopefully Garlick will help steer him and the club to do exactly this.

             p.s. splitting hairs I’d sell Nketiah and give Balogun the minutes. My preference also to sell Laca (unless he’ll take a 1 year extension) purely because we have too many over 30s and he’ll be commanding large wages. I’m ambivalent on Guendouzi.

             1. if you sell lacazette, who’s going to lead the line, aubameyang? nuts!

                i don’t mind selling lacazette but you’ve got to replace him first. you don’t sell simply because he just turned 30. players are so good at taking care of themselves and extending their careers now. most of the top goal scorers in europe are very close to lacazette’s age. harry kane is the heir apparent to lewandowski as europe’s top center forward and he’s only 2-years younger than lacazette; lewandowski is nearly 3-years older than laca. in fact, many of europe’s top goal scorers are older than lacazette, particularly center forwards.

                being a top center forward is not simply about how many goals you score. it’s a position that requires many nuances developed over a long career. players like mbappe and haaland score a lot of goals but they don’t have the experience to facilitate their team scoring like harry kane, karim benzema, or robert lewandowski can. psg clearly missed cavani’s sword in battle this season and barcelona missed suarez’; two 34-year old uruguayan players whose experience also led their current teams to heights that wouldn’t have been achieved without their contribution. ironically, if psg still had cavani and barcelona still had suarez, who’s taking bets that they wouldn’t have won their domestic leagues in short order?

                one thing i’m sure of, if lacazette had played regularly at center forward this season, he would have gotten to 20 goals easily. likewise, he would have facilitated other arsenal players scoring more goals than they did. in fact, i was saying arsenal should have extended lacazette and given him a 10k-per week raise last fall.

          2. good to have you back, shard. it’s always scary when regulars just seemingly disappear. i hope you’re in good health.

             i agree with everything you said, brother. especially the piece where you say that arsenal may not be the top squad but should have finished higher up the table with the players they have. likewise, the manager should have proven he could coach his way out of this before giving him more time/money. it’s just a great post, top to bottom.

             i don’t know if i agree with the nketiah piece but i’m not opposed to extending and loaning him. bottom line, he’s not a center forward. david is right, those reps should be going to balogun. will that happen? probably not. arteta finished the season playing aubameyang at center forward. we’ll see.

             1. Hey thanks Josh. Yes, I’m doing well.

                I’m not opposed to selling Nketiah but I do think he’s a goal scorer and can be useful in the future. Send him on loan to get game time. Lacazette and Balogun split the CF minutes, with Auba and Martinelli filling in when needed. Laca’s then out of contract, at which point we could extend (I wouldn’t), or buy a replacement based on evaluating how both Balogun and Eddie have done with games under their belts.

                We lose out on Laca’s transfer fee, but that ..what 20m(?) lost keeps us much more competitive next season. A Europa qualification and it’s paid for. We’d also then be in a stronger position to recruit a new CF. Can always sell one of the young guns then.

             2. Josh,

                I’m not going to argue against your clearly more detailed tactical knowledge than mine via a vis CFs in general, and Lacazette’s role this season in particular which you’ve previously highlighted a number of times.

                However, although he’s a decent player, the truth is that he is not consistently at the level of those other players you’ve mentioned, and having been burned at handing long and expensive contracts to players past their peak rather than investing in tomorrow’s players I guess I am more than once bitten twice shy. A one year extension = good idea. Longer than that and I just fully expect that in 18 months time or so the posts on this blog will be asking why the hell we wasted £xxx a week on another washed out player that still has another x years on his contract, is unsaleable, and ffs can we seriously not learn our lessons.

                I’m no talent scout, but I don’t believe that an acquisition needs to be world class at scoring if you play to Auba’s strengths (which is presumably why we extended his contract, so why wouldn’t we back that decision). That’s what Liverpool did with Firmino.

                Finally, and if needs must, I would also point out that City won the PL this year – and scored the most goals in it by some way – playing without a CF. Yes, maybe exceptional and due to the quality of their manager – but he’s the one that Arteta’s coaching knowledge was supposedly learned from.

             3. By the way, speaking of goal scorers, how good has Brentford’s record been at identifying them?! Three out of twenty PL teams will have their current/alumni leading the line next season (assuming no one swoops in for Toney over the summer, in which case it could be four). That’s seriously impressive for any club, never mind one who have never before played in the PL.

                Think Arsenal could pay them to scout a new CF to replace Lacazette?

          3. Shard, your vision is as good as one might expect when considering the present situation. Like to highlight the part about ‘build around/incorporate the players who came through Colney.’

             For me, we’re seeing it in practice– now. Saka and ESR who have made it. Willock whose loan spell was everything asked of him. AMN whose loan spell is a wake-up call for him professionally. Nelson who still has an outside chance. Balogun who seems ready to take the next step. Nketiah who’s had an opportunity. Miguel Azeez is my fave to make big strides next season. That’s a lot of talent through the pipeline in just 3-4 years.

             My feel for the situation is one where– the only players in the group above who were PL-ready at the start of last season-were Saka and AMN. That as bad as the first 3 months were? Throwing all of The Kids in the deep end early-on– might have stunted what growth they’ve each realized after Boxing Day.

             While I expected better in those first 3 months with the players who did start games– I’ve been stating throughout this season that it would be the latter part of it before the team would begin to play better together.

             At other blogs we’ve contributed to– I’ve gone way out on a limb in years past with prognostications that have come good. My confidence at present– is that the club’s current situation is in the midst of being redeemed.

             1. I totally understand where you are coming from JW1. I could see it being the way you say and predict. For a while, I did.

                I suppose it really comes down to trust. As it turns out, I don’t trust the process. I have no faith in the ability, nor the attitude of the people running the club. What I see, or fear we are seeing, is the decimation, not the resurgence of Arsenal.

                I’ve seen it with other clubs, and THAT process tends to start like this. Where the people at the club start focusing on internal battles and personal gain rather than feeling like they belong to something greater than themselves. You think Arteta is fixing it. I fear he sees himself as the club. Or worse, puts himself and his reputation ahead of what’s good for the club. I know it’s a really high bar, and times have changed in terms of how managers operate, but it’s the opposite of what I expect from an Arsenal manager because I grew up with Wenger in charge.

                I hope I’m wrong, but even if results improve on the field, I’m not sure I would feel good about the club if they function the way they do these days.

                On a brighter note of comparison, both ManUtd and Ajax went through something like this before they reconnected with their roots and found success.

19. Commander Coquelin…..hilarious!

20. Shard.

    I understand the appeal of trying to build a team around youth players from the academy but Arsene tried that after he broke up the invincibles and he basically had to abandon the concept in 2011. I don’t think we have had a single academy grad in this century score 10 goals in a season or produce 10 assists in a season. We have not developed a single reasonably successful CF or a CB that I can think of. Football has changed since Arsene’s early championship teams ands football especially the PL is even more competitive from top to bottom then it was during the time when Arsene was building title contending teams. Arsene was arguably one of the worlds most innovative and successful managers in 2005 and he was at the height of his powers and yet could not develop the players he needed and make something like that work the way he had hoped. How can we expect it to work now?

    1. We have Willock who scored 7 at Newcastle in less than half a season.
       So it appears we are not getting numbers because youngsters allergy in Arteta. With 5-25 occasional minutes things don’t gel. We seen it with Pepe at the end when he started getting somewhat consistent starts. Might have been better if Pepe was not kept on the bench after impressive starts to give chances to darling Williams to succeed. Saka and ESR are left confused playing all over the place, masters of no position is the expected outcome. Think Balogun would have got more goals too if he was utilised in Europa League. All this consistent to what SHARD said above

    2. Football hasn’t changed that much because ‘you’ll never win anything with kids’ has been around since forever.

       The point about building around youth isn’t really to embark on a project youth redux though. It’s to establish a playing identity that doesn’t need you to change up the whole club. Bonus is you can then actually see how these guys perform and choose whom to sell, whom to build around. Hopefully saving money in the process, and not making costly, unnecessary mistakes of buying players you didn’t need to prioritise. Instead of spreading the spend around the squad, buy one top player who fits.

       The problem started with Raul taking over. Trying to get rid of Ramsey and Ozil. Not using Willock. Sending ESR out on loan and bringing in Denis Suarez instead? It caused Sven to pack up and leave because it was so obviously ridiculous. We sidelined/sold Iwobi, Miki, Ramsey and Ozil when if we’d just kept them and used Nelson, Saka, Willock and ESR as their backups, they would have had a more settled environment to grow in and show us what they can do. We wouldn’t have spent 100m trying to get rid of and replacing those guys, and we’d actually know where our shortcomings were. Now we’re basically saying we’re short all over, and repeating the same process even with the younger guys. Which I really fear is just going to mean more money down the drain, and wasted talent.

       Of course if we have a club willing to spend 200m every year for the next 3 years then this doesn’t really matter that much. Are we that club?

    3. your valuation of a player seems to be based exclusively on goals or assists. it’s unreasonable. most players simply don’t make it and there are a variety of reasons why.

21. Our 2 best youth prospects right now are Saka and Smith-Rowe. They both certainly outperformed expectations but neither of them look like they are going to score much. It would be great if we could somehow develop Balogun or Nketiah into the scorers we need. However, we have been trying with players like Bendtner, Walcott, Aliadiadare, JET, Afobe, Ox, Welbeck, Sanogo, Akpom and its never worked. Obviously scorers are the most expensive players to buy and no one wants to sell them because everyone needs them. It would be great if someone could find a way to develop but it seems like that hasn’t worked. If Arsene couldn’t develop his own goal scorers then its hard for me to believe that we can do it now.

22. Towards the end Wenger too had lost his acumen. If Serge Gnabry was used regularly instead of being packed off to Clubs not suiting his style, we could have got our solutions. In fact it was an Ozil suggestion that Gnabry had a higher ceiling than Gironde. Incidentally Ozil had forecast that Willock would be a player talked about 2 years back. Guess, setting apart Ozil lazy attributes, his judgement of players has been very precise. Ozil also mentored Balogun along with Auba . And Balogun did speak highly of the help he got from Ozil. Maybe that might explain why Balogun has been ostracised by Arteta.

23. Thomas Tuchel puts the big debate on this thread into perspective. Sometimes you have to jettison sentiment, and go boldly for change. Lampard was a Chelsea golden boy. The mid season reports in West and North London showed that neither former player\coach was cutting it… one club acted decisively. You never know, of course, but still.
    Enjoy your moment, Tuchel.

24. Folks, first of all, Juergen Klopp joined Liverpool in October 2015 and that’s the season they finished 8th. Not a perfect analogy to our situation but there are similarities.

    Second, The point of my post was not to say that Arteta is like Klopp or has the same credentials. Obviously not. The point was to say that sticking with a new coach who is trying to figure things out can pay off. If you don’t like that example, how about Alex Ferguson after he was first appointed? They finished 11th in his first season there. Yes I’m cherry picking anecdotes, but it’s no worse than the warped views about Arteta that cast him as some sort of villain ruining the club.

    Third, I don’t appreciate the tone of some of the responses above, but I won’t be dragged down to that level. Just know that your words are noted and will be remembered.

25. Yeah Tuchel’s a good coach, but that 222 million summer spending spree had something to do with this success as well. Not sure the situations are as comparable as you suggest given the respective investments by each club.

26. What is comparable Doc is that both coaches struggled to get enough from their squads and Chelsea decided to make the change and went from 9th to 4th and straight to CL glory.
    While Arsenal, well, we know what happened there.

    Tuchel didn’t spend a penny and managed to get instant results, while Arteta has spent plenty and failed to move the needle.

    No one is advocating Arteta needed to match Tuchel results but to merely improve on his.
    Failed in the league and twice in Europe against Olympiacos and Villarreal.

    1. Tuchel didn’t spend a penny! Seriously?

       While strictly speaking that’s true, That’s probably the most misleading statement I’ve read in a long time.

       You say Arteta needed to improve on his results? Check out Tim’s last post. Arsenal was one of the form teams of 2021, and while we can argue who gets credit for that, it’s only fair to hand him some given the turnaround.

    2. Doc missed the moral of the story. Which, depending on your choice, could be change, decisiveness or decisiveness in change. The point is not that Arsenal and Chelsea are the same in every respect.

27. My moral is that if you spend 222 million you have a chance to win any competition regardless of who your coach is.

    1. Net spend since summer 2016:
       Chelsea 308m Euro
       Arsenal 299m Euro

       The wider context…
       City 631m
       United 586
       Barca 471
       PSG (Tuchel’s former club) 455 etc etc

       By your logic (1) City should have won today (2) Tuchel should have won it with PSG

       1. Nobody missed the point.

          Chelsea were decisive and it paid off. Tuchel turned things around, it has been excellent from him. It’s certainly tempting to think the same thing could have happened to us. But the counterpoints are

          a) Arteta also turned us around.

          b) Arsenal’s league form since Xmas has in fact been better than Chelsea.

          c) ​Chelsea have a superior squad to us, that’s obvious to everyone, and better players are easier to coach.

          d) bringing in a more experienced manager at Arsenal could have gone like Tuchel. It could also have gone like Ancelotti at Everton, in many ways a better comparison club.

          As far as the net spend goes, you’re very badly cherry picking. Chelsea’s net spend over the last 5 years includes the season they sold Hazard and made a net profit of £100 million. Over the last 3 seasons they outspent us by £40 million. More obviously and more importantly, over the last 10 seasons they outspent us by £500 million (over 50% of our total spend).

          Net spend hides past investment. If you’re a big club and manage your squad well, you can stay on top of the pile without spending too much.

          Chelsea bought top quality in Ziyech, Werner, Havertz, Thiago, Chilwell and Mendy while keeping their net spend comparable to ours. Tuchel has a massive advantage over Arteta in that respect. Tuchel just had to get Chelsea playing at their level, whereas Arteta has to get Arsenal playing above theirs.

          1. From 15 place before Christmas the % improvement always is better than labouring above 4th. One of the quirks of arithmetic.

          2. “Nobody missed the point”, Greg?

             lol. You could not have read DR.GOONER’s comments 🙂

             You also miss the point, by a country mile.

             I understand that you guys favour Arteta but all this injured indignation for pointing out that Chelsea prospered by being decisive is ridiculous. The argument you and Doc raise makes no sense in the context of the point raised — bold change.

             Net spends is unhelpful to the “Arsenal dont have their resources” narrative. We paid 35 million for Skrodan Mustafi and 72 million for Pepe. Miss me with the “poor Arsenal” argument.

             Here’s the thing that gooners dont like to hear — Arsenal are a big spending club.

             And again, no one but no one is saying that Arsenal are like Chelsea in every respect. As Ive said to Doc before, you dont have to kill nuance to disagree.

    2. doc, your point is a fair one and you’re right, tom’s implication was misleading. but i understand the point he was trying to make.

       tuchel was able to, in short order, move chelsea from 9th to 4th and win the champions league with the same exact players that lampard had. he didn’t come in and snivel and moan about needing “his players”. he understood what he had and came up with a training plan and strategy that got better production from someone else’s players.

       this is the definition of management and a football manager’s duty; getting the best football possible out of that group of players. tuchel has an ability that lampard (and arteta) simply don’t have. mind you, chelsea still need a center forward.

       with that, it’s still tuchel we’re talking about. i guarantee that he will do something to shoot himself in the foot and i’m predicting it will happen before the end of the year. it’s what he does.

       1. Come on Josh. Chelsea is an elite level squad. Arsenal is not. Public comments, approaches and results of both managers reflect that reality as much as anything else.

          All that Chelsea’s season proves is that Tuchel is better than Lampard.

          Tuchel is also very probably better than Arteta but you need to give this animus a rest. He’s a competent man doing a tough job in a very tough year.

          1. Sorry I take that back, you can of course complain about anyone you want to 🙂

          2. greg, i didn’t compare chelsea to arsenal. in fairness to tom, he said explicitly that he wasn’t comparing chelsea to arsenal either. i was talking about management.

             while arteta might being doing a tough job in a tough year, so has everyone else. the main talking point is on arteta’s ability to manage the playing staff at arsenal football club; one of the top clubs in the world. he certainly hadn’t earned the right with his credentials as he came in with zero credentials. you say he’s proven competent but how? what has he done to suggest he’s competent enough to manage arsenal to win the premier league against teams like chelsea, man city, and liverpool? for a club like arsenal, that has to be the goal.

             let me leave you with this. i’d agree that arteta has arsenal moving in a different direction compared emery’s direction, which wasn’t difficult. some seem impressed by the changes. however, ask this question; are those changes progressive or lateral? the consecutive 8th place finishes suggest the latter. i’m searching for progress, brother. i’m truly hopeful but the jury’s still out. we’ll see.

             1. This is a fair response.

                I think he’s proved his management competence in terms of the progress certain players have made, the way he’s made us hard to beat, and in some (but by no means all) of the individual games. As a player coach he proved himself and made his reputation at City, and I don’t have much patience for anyone who says they were glad to be rid of him.

                Most of the games we’ve lost this season, especially in that shockingly poor run in the autumn, I don’t think were because of the way Arteta set up the team or the way he asked them to play. I think they were due to players struggling to adjust to his demands, and as a result giving poor performances.

                So in a way we agree on that. But a) I think that was probably a necessary part of the change process for Arteta to impose his vision, I respect him for sticking to his guns, and I think the improvement since xmas shows that it could be paying off; and b) the poor performances surely also speak to the ability of the players to raise their level as much as to the demands being made of them.

                The way I see it is that he put down the marker when he joined, explained what was going to be expected of players if they wanted to be an active part of the team, and then followed through on that promise. It’s uncompromising, but I think that’s good management, and many players responded to it.

                I think you see all of it as just a lack of competence or experience to do the necessary man-management of big egos, where I think he made an explicit choice not to pander to that.

             2. What Greg said. +1

                Goals —> Promises —> Actions

28. I really believe there is such a thing as the weight of history. ManCity didn’t win it yesterday for the same reason we didn’t win in Paris in 2006. Never having won it before as a club. Never even having been there. Occasionally a set of players can just ignore that and focus on winning. But really, part of the magic of the European Cup/Champions League is its history. How can you not be affected by it?

    ManCity have the resources to come back. They’ll probably win it in the next 2 years. If we’d had the luxury of those resources, we’d have made it back. If we weren’t halted by that RVP red card, or the Kuyt penalty dive in the Liverpool tie, we would likely have won it. Because even though the players were young, as a club we’d been there once before.

    Pep being blamed for overthinking, the City players bottling it, and Tuchel’s Chelsea being well drilled are all true to some extent. But Chelsea had done it before, ManCity hadn’t.

    1. shard, i don’t think i agree with you, particularly comparing arsenal in ’06 to man city yesterday.

       first, barcelona were simply better than arsenal. second, arsenal got a red card early in that game. third, and very subjective, wenger’s decision to bench reyes for ljungberg was one of the dumbest decisions i’ve ever seen in football.

       reyes was taking souls that year in europe. ljungberg, at his very best, was nowhere near reyes’ level. reyes had an even higher level for big games. wenger even referred to reyes as a “big-game player”. bill was talking about the ’05 fa cup final. do you remember who arsenal’s best field player was? it was jose by a mile…and it was a big game. so why, in the biggest game in arsenal’s history, do you not play your “big-game player”? if i ever get to meet wenger, i will ask him that question.

       1. I’ll accept anything you say about that game. I have never watched it again.

          The point was simply that there is something about the collective goal beyond tactics and ability as well. I believe it’s intangible, it’s not something that cannot be overcome, but it exists. That’s all.

29. how about n’golo kante, folks? he’s won player of the year, a couple of premier leagues, an fa cup, a europa league and the world cup. if france wins the euros this summer, he’d have won everything and he would have deserved it all.

    1. Legend status fast approaching, surely.

30. I see posters conveniently skipped over Arteta’s European excursion and ignored the fact he’s had three times longer to coach his players than Tuchel has.
    But I suppose Olympiacos and Villareal also have better players.

    Anyway, I’m not too bothered by any of it if I’m honest.
    Hope Arteta succeeds next season.

31. GREG: “All that Chelsea’s season proves is that Tuchel is better than Lampard”.

    That, m’lud, was the point being made all along.

    Look, we beat Chelsea in the league a few weeks ago. We beat them in the FA Cup final a year ago. Where is this supposed huge gap? There are 2 things that gooners apparently believe…(1) that this is 2004; (2) that we’re plucky little Arsenal. The uncomfortable truth is that the financial gap between the clubs is small. They have done better business on outgoings of late, and yes, the sale of Hazard will distort the net in their favour; but it’s hardly their fault that we let valuable assets leave for nothing. Musti and Saliba cost 62m combined. One rotted in the reserves for almost a year; the other hardly got a kick. Pepe, Auba, Laca and Thomas cost us big in transfer fees.

    1. Correction: Saliba arrived at the conclusion of 19/20 season, so he was with us for about 7 and a bit months and not a year. He didn’t play 1 minute of competitive football; or make a single matchday squad. Not even against my second favourite club, Wheelbarrow United. But he was good enough to be thrown into the fire straight away for top flight Nice. yeah yeah…Im sure we’re going to hear how terrible the French league is. Still, I wonder what another coach would have made of his talents, in the same way that Tuchel resurrected Rudiger.

       But Tom, Im with you. The decision’s apparently been taken to retain Arteta on a sort of probation, and I want him to succeed, earn himself a long tenure and earn Arsenal some managerial stability.

32. Havertz, Werner , and Ziyech cost Chelsea $200m and their PL output in goals/assists is exactly the same as Arsenal’s Pepe, Willian and Laca.
    Three Arsenal players many consider a flop, a worst signing ever, and a surplus to requirements who should under no circumstances be given an extension.

    But lets big up their players by all means why don’t we.

    1. the only players i would take over arsenal players are mount/smith rowe and kante/xhaka. to blame the roster is an excuse.

       1. Josh, I’d take Chilwell over Tierney ( a close call) and Azpilicueta over anyone who’s currently the flavor of the day at RB.
          He’s the real captain Arsenal haven’t had since ……I don’t know….maybe Vieira, or Cesc.

          Havertz is a prospect who’s less talented than a peak Ozil.
          Werner has failed to prove his finishing is good enough, and Ziyech is a tidy technical player I’m not hugely impressed by.

       2. I have no words for this

33. Claude, the funniest thing I find about football fans in general is how they love to rewrite history even just a bit to fit the narrative.
    Not a single fan, pundit or otherwise had Chelsea even in a conversation for the CL title before the season’s start, but now many are acting like it’s hardly surprising because Chelsea have world class players at every position and all it took was a competent coach to get that out of them.
    Another words, Tuchel didn’t exceed their talent leve by topping Porto, two best Spanish sides, and the richest club assembled in all of Europe.

    He merely hit par lol.

    1. Also, Arsenal’s level is apparently 7-8th position behind the likes of Tottenham, West Ham and Leicester. Anything above and we’d be over performing.

    2. Tom, I agree. Solid point on the productivity of the 200m trio versus our trio. And the implied suggestion that even Sam Allardyce or Steve Bruce could have led that squad to Champions League glory is interesting, to say the least. Pep had the stronger squad, even if KDB’s was a massive loss.

       Here’s Arsene Wenger: “what Tuchel did well was play Mount and Havertz more inside defensively, so City could never find a way through the middle and they had to go wide, where Chelsea were quite strong tonight. So Man City had a big tactical problem tonight that they could never sort out. They were not balanced, they didn’t find a way to play incisive football and Chelsea stopped them very well”.

       Arsene also said that beating City earlier in the season gave Chelsea belief. He did not mention transfer fees once. But he did mention the superb Mason Mount, who cost Chelsea nothing.

       1. Claude, losing twice to Chelsea in short order had clearly played on Peps mind, hence his line up.
          The only thing I would add to Arsene’s observation is that both James and Chilwell got the better of Sterling and Mahrez all day by denying them the ball, or not allowing them to turn with it.
          Getting so tight on Sterling is risky because of his speed on balls over the top, but Chelsea rolled the dice, and because he’s been so out of form lately they got lucky when he wasted the perfect ball from Ederson.

          I think if Pep plays his conservative line up( not sure you can ever call it that) he wins that game.

    3. Hi Tom

       Well, there’s no revisionism from me. I thought Chelsea had a title-winning squad with crazy attacking talent, but that they would probably fall short under Lampard, who was not good enough to beat Pep or Klopp. I stick by that. I certainly don’t think Bruce or Allardyce could have led them to a CL final, that’s not my implication. They needed a good manager, and Tuchel has done well. He has not, as you point out, got the best from that frontline though – a similar problem to Arteta.

       I didn’t make any predictions about the Champion’s League because I don’t really think very hard about it – it’s a cup competition so anything could happen.

       In terms of the comparable quality of the squad, sorry but for me it’s not even close. We would take almost every player from them, they would take maybe Auba, Pepe, Saka, ESR, Partey and Tierney from us, and most of them on the bench.

       These things don’t stand still of course, I’m optimistic that with further development and some astute purchases, by the end of next season the assessment might be different.

34. a point that folks have jumped on shard about is his post stating his desire to see the team built around the young guys. i have two thoughts. first, wenger had a technique selecting young players that was illusory but i cracked the code. senderos, fabregas, vela, merida, joel campbell and a few others that i can’t remember have one thing in common. they were all captains that led their youth level international teams (u17-u20) to a world championship the summer before being signed by arsenal. is that a coincidence? hardly. you can throw rob holding into that group.

    this doesn’t include the likes of henry, vieira, van persie, coquelin, diaby, aliadiere, and anelka who didn’t necessarily win or captain their youth national teams but impressed with their obvious special talent. i remember seeing henry as an 19-year old absolutely dominating the u-21s in ’97. i remember 19-year old vieira captaining france u23 olympic team during the ’96 olympics in atlanta. i remember watching van persie in the 2002 europa league. it was plain to see those guys were special. understand, these payers aren’t londoners. every club wants their academy prodigies to make it to the first team but you’re lucky if you have one every 3 years. arsenal are punching way above their weight, which brings me to my second thought.

    would young players like bukayo or emile get into arsenal’s best sides as 20-year olds? is this much player progression an indicator of how good arsenal’s academy has gotten or how bad the first team has gotten?

    1. Have you ever seen Guendouzi play for France U-21? When I did, he looked leaps and bounds ahead of every other player on the field. And with his peer group, he is more offensively minded. He has captained France’s U-21s. His senior minutes have been limited, but he has never looked out of place in Deschamps’ absurdly talented assembly. The kid is spiky and immature, but footballistically speaking, he’s special.

       This is one reason why I have been an Arteta skeptic. If you cant work with a young player of Guendouzi’s calibre, who CAN you work with? I don’t believe — as the papers dutifully report — that he was exiled simply because he was a d*** to a Brighton player. I’ve no idea what is going on there. But it seems the coach wants no part of a young player with, potentially, a very high ceiling. I’m going to guess… mavericks, those who are not 100% unquestioning are not welcome. JOSHUAD mentioned something along these lines, in terms of establishing authority. Van persie, Song, Adebayor and Bendtner were not easy guys in their youth. Van Persie became our captain.

       SHARD is onto something, and please dont call it Project Youth. It’s called harnessing the value you already have… building on it. Arsenal were never the squad in which you can buy your way to Nirvana.

       1. mavericks, those who are 100% unquestioning are not welcome.

          This is exactly how I see it with Arteta, and it honestly scares me about the future of the club.

          We’ve got an inexperienced manager. An inexperienced (but potentially somewhat dodgy) DoF (with a definitely dodgy agent who publicly speaks about club business) and we’ve by default ended up promoting a commercial manager who once brought in a fake Chinese car company as sponsor, to the CEO position.

          Wasn’t the point of moving away from Arsene also to say one man shouldn’t have that much power where no one can challenge him? Who’s challenging Arteta on any of his decisions despite how much they are costing the club on and off the field? Who’s competent and empowered enough to do it that has been allowed to remain at the club?

       2. i didn’t mention guendouzi because wenger didn’t sign him. however, he is a gem.

    2. Honestly, Josh. I don’t think it matters. What matters is where we are at now. We’ve got some talented kids. Using them is better than not using them. Especially since it’s not like we’re buying top top quality to play ahead of them, and they add depth anyway.

       Arteta had chances to play the kids. Give them a few minutes at the end of games. Play them in cup games. He even got asked about it and pulled out a strawman about people wanting 11 youth players, but no other team is doing it. Who cares? Why wouldn’t YOU do it?

       Willian stole all of Nelson’s minutes. His Arsenal career is over I think. He may be raw, but he does have some obvious talent. Enough for Nagelsmann to want him. Enough for Arsene to rate him. Similarly, I would have given minutes to Willock in that midfield. Raw. Yes. But someone who would add some dynamism. When the game’s won with 15 minutes to go, he throws on Elneny instead of giving Azeez a few minutes.

       His treatment of Guendouzi, Nelson and Saliba has been atrocious. And I’m not a Guendouzi fan really. I do believe the kid was unprofessional and got away with it because he was part of the Auba and Laca group. But he’s a kid. And talented. A good manager would be able to deal with it.

       1. i mentioned it to highlight how difficult it is for young players to get into the first team when the teams are so strong.

35. “SHARD is onto something, and please dont call it Project Youth. It’s called harnessing the value you already have… building on it. Arsenal were never the squad in which you can buy your way to Nirvana.”

    On the value thing………..when Arteta took over the Arsenal squad was valued at $720m by transfermarkt ( I know, I know, not exact science and all that) and just just below Tottenham’s.
    Now, it’s barely at $600m while Tottenham’s held steady even after their Jose episode.

    Arteta has put a torch to his squad but I suppose it’s called rebuilding.
    I guess we’ll see.

    1. I wouldn’t blame Arteta for that. It’s not the youngest squad, so depreciation on aging players near the end of their contracts would be a natural trend. You’ll get value appreciation from the likes of Saka (young, first-team, starter, England international, high ceiling). Pepe probably increased his value over the season, but not at his transfer fee starting point. 72m was never his ceiling. Emery/Arteta inherited that.

       But again, let me come back to Guendouzi. That was an 8m asset who (if reports are to be believed) may be on the market for 20m. We’ll make money on his sale, but Guen will be a 50 – 60m asset in 3 – 5 years. Saliba’s stock has fallen, on the manager’s inability/unwillingness to work — at all — with the 2nd most expensive defender in the club’s history for a pre-season and half a season. That destroys value. We’d be lucky to get half of the 27m we paid for him. Auba’s transfer value has fallen, due to circumstances beyond Mikel’s control (mom illness, malaria, bad form) and within his control (formation, chance creation, attacking conservatism).

       Conversely, I like what Arteta did for Pepe in making his all-round game better. And if we’re looking at this objectively, he also improved Xhaka’s reliability, though not his transfer valuation.

       But he’ll really earn his corn by turning base metal into gold, and increasing value organically. That’s part of the job. Remember Emery’s job application dossier? Value creation was a big part of his closing the deal.

       1. Guendouzi has a track record of being petulent starting at PSG, then Lorient, then with us and then with Hertha. It’s part of who he is. That doesn’t mesh well with what Arteta is doing. You can turn a blind eye because you care about his value and play him anyways (that’s what Emery did) but that comes at the cost of the discipline and professionalism of the whole team. In the long run, that undermines the whole to benefit an individual. You can’t have both.

          Saliba is more complicated. He has undeniable talent but for a variety of reasons that was not on display last summer. The plan was to loan him all along but that was bungled, badly. He had every right to be upset about that. Now, fresh off another impressive campaign in France, he will have another chance to stake his claim with us and I hope it goes much better, for everyone’s sake. I think we’d all much rather see him flourish than have the simultaneous problem of how to be shot of him and who to partner with Gabriel.

          1. “How to be shot of him?” You and Mikel must think that money grows on trees. Sorry, man… value creation is part of his job.

             I see a pattern with the coach… an inability to man-manage all that make up a squad of highly-paid, high-testosterone athletes. If newly arrived Arsene had been similarly inflexible, Tony Adams would have been shipped off somewhere on Day 1.

36. Tom

    The squad Arteta inherited was filled with overpaid underperforming players that bloated its value well above its ability. Many of the formerly high value players on our squad have gotten older in the last few years and have not been adequately replaced. I think we all agree Arsenal has done a miserable job of managing resources and squad building since roughly 2015/16 and its left us with an unbalanced squad which is woefully short of firepower. That is by far the biggest reason Arsenal finished in 8th. Part of the fault for the inadequate squad rebuilding certainly is on Arteta

    Pep’s team has scored about 22% fewer league goals this year compared with previous 2 seasons because he lost Aguero and Sterling struggled this season. In the end his team was shut out and not having a player to score a goal is one of the things that cost him this chance

    2 of the last 3 years has seen 2 English teams in the CL final. It illustrates how strong the top of the table has become in the PL

    1. “The squad Arteta inherited was filled with overpaid underperforming players that bloated its value well above its ability. Many of the formerly high value players on our squad have gotten older in the last few years and have not been adequately replaced“

       Bill
       It is my understanding transfermarkt takes all these issues under consideration when assessing player’s value.

37. How many of the top teams in the PL in the last 20 years have been built around home grown academy youth players? I think the answer is very close to zero. The football world has changed because of the money influx and teams scouting the entire world. How can young players from any teams academy successfully compete with players from the entire world? Arsene at the height of his powers tried and did not work and the league has become much tougher and more competitive which makes it even harder. I understand the appeal of trying to build a team from scratch from youth ranks but the reality is the chance of success is very very low.

38. No Giroud sightings in the final

39. I some strong disagreement in the chat. And I’d just like to add that you know football’s messed up when you hope City lose because their financial might makes Chelsea the plucky underdogs.

40. Tom:

    You just equated the statistical output measured in goals and assists of Willian, Lacazette and Pepe to Werener, Havertz and Ziyech and told us that talking about the differences in squad strength between Arsenal and Chelsea is therefore an excuse for failure. Did I read that right?

    Given the excellent minds in this community I’m sure I don’t need to explain all the holes in that argument. Between this and the whole Tuchel not spending bit, you seem to be trying a little too hard to place responsibility on Arteta’s shoulders. Maybe you are feeling like all I’m doing is trying to excuse him of his managerial responsibility by pointing the finger elsewhere?

    I think this comes down to a different perspective on football managers. I view them as human beings first. If I am convinced as I was about Wenger and am about Arteta that he is a stellar human trying to do his best then that’s what matters to me and I will back him to the hilt. Humans make mistakes. They are not magicians. They may want to give us the results we think Arsenal “deserves” but things get in the way. You may think this is crazy because maybe to you a manager is a guy who is supposed to lead your club to glory and you think we should keep sacking them until one of them gets us there. That’s not my idea of how to run an organization. To me you hire someone you believe in, and you let them do their job. And if you really believed in them in the first place you won’t give up on them after a year and a half.

    At the end of the day I could give a damn about Chelsea. I used to be made to feel angry by the trolling photos of happy players and fans with trophies and memes making fun of our lack of trophies. But To me being a fan of Arsenal should be no more about comparing our image to someone else than being a person is about comparing my personal image to someone else. Both are exercises in toxic wastes of time.

    1. Doc, did you think Emery was a ‘stellar human being’ ?

       1. “Now, you might not believe it, but under fire Mikel Arteta’s one of the finest human beings in the world. All he needs is somebody to throw hand grenades at him the rest of his life.”

       2. I’m not a fool and can smell a trap but I’ll oblige anyways because I’m a glutton for punishment, apparently.

          By and large, yes. I dind’t find him particularly endearing but that’s a different question. I also didn’t think he fit well with us, but that’s a different question as well. I backed him against criticism that seems unfair to me just as I backed Wenger and now Arteta.

41. “You just equated the statistical output measured in goals and assists of Willian, Lacazette and Pepe to Werener, Havertz and Ziyech and told us that talking about the differences in squad strength between Arsenal and Chelsea is therefore an excuse for failure. Did I read that right?“

    No Doc, you didn’t.
    That was just me responding to the Chelsea spent 200m plus argument by pointing out that none of the three players always mentioned as the difference makers made that much difference at all.

    On the evidence of their first PL season Havertz is a poor man’s Ozil, Ziyech is a poor man’s Mahrez, and Werner outside of his pace, has shown very little to think Chelsea won’t be needing an upgrade at the position and soon if they wanna move up the PL table next season.

    And I’m not gonna go down the rabbit hole of trying to judge managers on any qualities other than them getting the most out of their squads.
    Personally,I can’t stand Tuchel the guy.
    Everything about him bothers me, including his posture, his looks, and his touch line theatrics.
    Arteta has him beat easy when all that is considered as far as I’m concerned, but to my mind Tuchel outperformed his squad qualities in Europe by a considerable margin, while did just enough in the league to justify the managerial switch.

    Arteta on the other hand failed badly in Europe, again, and failed to improve his league position as well, although I will acknowledge the improvements from the first half of the season to post Xmas.

    Look, I’m not even in the Arteta out camp, mainly because I don’t trust the clowns above him to make good choices ( Josh Kroenke is the Jared Kushner of sporting franchises as far as I’m concerned), I just don’t think Arteta is taking Arsenal to where we all hoped he would.

    1. Thanks for that response Tom, I appreciate it.

42. The fact that Werner, Havertz, and Ziyech underperformed this season is the biggest reason Chelsea started out so slowly and the reason a very talented squad almost missed the top 4. Over the course of a 38 game season you can’t compensate when the players you are counting on to score and assist are underperforming. As we saw in the FA cup run last season things are different in knockout competitions. Chelsea won the CL because they played the best defense and conceded only 2 goals in the knockout rounds and the championship game.

    The idea that our squad is comparable talent wise to Chelsea seems like a huge stretch.

    1. Bill
       Havertz, Werner, and Ziyech had a better g/a PL output under Lampard than Tuchel , yet he took Chelsea from 9th to 4th.

43. Chelsea would never have had to go into the first game of Champions league semifinal with a starting lineup that had score only 13 total goals for the entire season

44. Chelsea have a far better squad than us. Not only better, but young too. They will likely continue to push City and Pool at the top for years. Werner has disappointed, but the others have been pretty good. And I’d take Pulisic over Pepe to this point as well.
    I don’t get the Guendouzi love here. Not as if Arteta is the only coach that has had issues with him. I haven’t seen him play for France, but for us his defense and control were poor, and he was poor in the air.
    Not sure what the deal is with Saliba though. Apparently we’re looking for another CB, which to me says they may not be willing to try Saliba. Don’t get that at all, and it reflects poorly on both Arteta and Edu if true.
    Finally relative to that United/Arsenal FA Cup back in 2005, United did outplay us, but as stated, we weren’t really big underdogs, and that Arsenal team had far better players than the current one.

    1. i love pulisic but him over pepe? nuts! i wouldn’t fancy any chelsea player over a front three of aubameyang, lacazette, and pepe. once upon a time, i would have taken giroud over laca but the big man is turning 35 soon and is getting long in the tooth; so long, deschamps has recalled benzema to the french team.

45. So you’d take Pulisic over Pepe even though Pepe has 16 goals and 5 assists ( 10 and 1 in the PL) to Pulisic’s 6 goals and 4 assists ( 4 and 2 in the PL) in similar minutes played, and with Pulisic playing on a vastly superior team, allegedly?

    Begs a question what Pulisic numbers would’ve looked like playing on the lowly Arsenal team then?

46. doc, bill judges everything on goals and assists.

    tom, i can’t stand tuchel either. actually, i had a fear back before the chelsea game in december that arsenal were going to sack arteta and hire tuchel (he had just been sacked by psg and was the best option available). we were all sure arteta was about to get fired. after beating chelsea, i was happy that arteta was going to stay and hopeful for a definitive arsenal turn about. while some of the results improved, the football never really did.

47. bill, most don’t have any real expectation of a player when they first come to the premier league. chelsea spent a lot of money but these were foolish signings by an inexperienced manager. my take on their signings is this:

    – i love kai havertz but there’s no way he’s better than mason mount so why chelsea spent that much money on him alludes me?

    – ziyech is a decent player at best but there’s absolutely nothing special that i’ve ever seen from him to justify what chelsea paid for him either.

    – lastly, werner. initially, i thought it was a good signing. however, when lampard said in an interview that he wanted werner to lead the line, i knew it would fail. why? we already saw this movie in the last world cup when germany also had werner leading the line. the problem is werner is proven as a striker, not center forward (does this sound familiar?). as a result, germany lost to both mexico and japan at the last world cup because they couldn’t create scoring chances. imagine that; the team that ripped brazil for 8 in 2014 couldn’t score a single goal in two games against mexico and japan.

    timo played striker for rb leipzig while poulsen led the line. i’ve said a million times how different these roles are. can werner score goals? absolutely. however, you need to play where he’s doing what he’s good at. playing center forward is so much more difficult.

    1. doc, i’ll tell you my comprehensive perspective. a manager is the person responsible for managing the team. it’s preferred that he be a great human being but not necessary. i’m sure you went to medical school with good human beings who weren’t suited to be physicians. i know i’ve trained with good people in flight school ill-suited to be aviators. as arsenal fans, we’ve seen “good people” who have seriously injured our players. i think you get my drift. being a football manager is not a test in morality. what’s critical is that the manager can make the right decisions and lead world class athletes with big egos, particularly in difficult situations.

       when arteta, a man with no managerial experience, comes to arsenal with a list of demands and “non-negotiables” before he even gets his other foot in the door, it’s a poor look. players are thinking who the f*ck is arteta to make those demands? he’s talking like he’s guardiola…but he’s not guardiola. pep has earned the right to make demands. arteta hasn’t earned anything.

       as an inexperienced manager, arteta had his ideals but he doesn’t know if they’ll work because he’s never been in the captain’s chair before. he doesn’t know if the changes he’s insisting on are even necessary until he gets to the club and confirms what’s going on, as opposed to what he presumes is going on from the man city bench.

       arsenal have big players who’ve played for big clubs and won silverware with good managers. this means they know what good leadership looks like. what do they see when they see arteta? being inexperienced isnt’ a deal breaker. however, he also came in the door with demands like he was billy badass. when he suddenly has those human moments and makes those inevitable mistakes, how easy is it to forgive that bossy manager, especially when he’s humiliated you and other senior players?

       prophetically, when he makes mistakes, senior guys call him out. now, he’s got a problem in the dressing room and those players have to leave. however, these are not his players. they are arsenal’s players that the club has spent a lot of money on that he want’s to get rid of. is it because they’re bad? no, it’s because he lacked the skill to properly manage those resources. his ego, based on nothing but his opinion of himself and his ideals, is the primary problem. it’s the manager’s job to manage the club’s resources. this takes skill that arteta doesn’t seem to have.

       with the young guys, he doesn’t have a problem as they don’t know any better, but everyone knows you can’t win with kids…and if arsenal stay a mid-table team, they won’t be able to keep players like saka or tierney, as the teams playing in the champions league will come for them.

       1. “I feel if you come into a club as manager you have first to work out its specific qualities,” Wenger says. “For me Arsenal is a club which tries to respect tradition, style, honesty, fair play. If you come in and behave like a gangster you will not last long. The supporters will be the first ones not happy with that. A club needs values. If a club has no values you go nowhere.”

          That was Wenger in 2008.

       2. when i was in the army and a new commander came in, they didn’t say much because what they said didn’t matter. however, one thing they always did say was that all current policies, practices, and procedures will remain in effect. why? they’re not going to make changes until they figure out what changes need to be made. that takes time; a bit of an investigation. you often find that the things as is are better than your ideas.

          also, you need to establish a rapport with your senior people. arteta has marginalized senior players, many who had better playing careers than he did. you can’t treat these guys like you treat an academy prodigy and an experienced manager knows that. it’s disrespectful. a good manager knows he can’t do everything and having senior guys on your side makes his job soooooo much easier. there will be good things happening that arteta would know nothing about. however, because he has no experience, he doesn’t realize that yet.

          understand, i don’t blame arteta. he had no business getting the arsenal job. it’s not about his age, but his lack of experience and humility. the rams got to the superbowl with mcvay but he had a bunch of experience as an assistant under various coaches that began in his early 20s, long before he got the head coaching gig. arteta doesn’t have that time learning under different coaches; just 3.5 years as an assistant at one of the richest clubs in the world. i’m sure he’ll be fine in the future but i don’t believe he has the man-management skill to lead arsenal to a championship right now.

          1. Josh, did you help script-write Ted Lasso?!

             1. i don’t know what that is.

             2. i haven’t seen this show.

          2. On Apple TV+ and def worth a watch if you have that.

             In a nutshell complete novice coach comes in to coach an imaginary PL team (as a laughing stock to fans, media etc). And succeeds by having no ego, getting senior players on side and pretty much everything else you outlined above!

48. This hits some of the themes Shard and I touched on. I dont have a sub. But for anyone who does, enjoy.

    https://theathletic.com/2580688/?source=fbpcadsbc&ad_id=23847451718240092&fbclid=IwAR1t0AuUD4z1CLuhyOh42lAlCEdXTA5pLgQdJLFjVYjDsLKrjjgug6zD7jc

49. I respect your stance and opinions, Josh. I completely agree that just being a good guy isn’t enough. However, that’s the thing that I have the most access to when I’m looking at these managers. That’s what drew me to Wenger. I saw him as a protagonist of sorts, a lone wolf doing things in the best way he could amidst a tide of money and corruption. He fought the good fight as long as he could and gave up everything for that fight. It was unhealthy and by the end, counterproductive. But I think we can all agree about him in terms of his values and “non-negotiables.” He believed in a certain style of football and he believed in a certain way to live. He could be a disciplinarian too and had little patience for trouble makers. You could be goofy and have a personality (Podolski) and you could even be standoffish and cold (Anelka), you could be a sensitive soul (Ozil) or a real thunderbastard (Keown). You could be whatever. But you couldn’t disrespect him or your teammates. You couldn’t be consistently late to practice. You couldn’t be disconnected and goofing off at the wrong times. He demanded a consistent, professional attitude and for the most part he got it.

    I believe (and I may be mistaken) that Arteta is trying to do the same thing in his own way. I believe in his leadership bonafides because I saw them on display as a player and then again under Guardiola. He was captain at Everton and then at Arsenal because he’s a model professional and a born leader. More than that, he was beloved as a player and he was beloved as a coach at Man City. Such is his reputation that he was appointed to this job without any first team managerial experience by the Arsenal brass. I hear your ironic laugh (what do they know?) but it’s just another testament from yet another source. Even now in what must surely be the most difficult year of his life (certainly as a coach), his players speak of him in glowing terms. That is not the profile of a man who recklessly casts good young players aside for nothing more than his own vanity. That is not the profile of a man who can’t be trusted to lead our club. This club needs leaders and it needs direction and I can’t think of a better person to entrust with that than Mikel Arteta.

    I can’t imagine being completely wrong about this because my sense for people tends to be very good and I have seen too much evidence to the contrary. However I can imagine the job being too big for him. I can imagine that if he burns too many bridges that the moment against him may become too much to surmount. I can imagine that he makes mistakes or is too rigid at times. Even the best and brightest people fail, all the time, and he certainly could fail at Arsenal. But if he succeeds, if he gets everyone on the same page and pulling together, he has a chance to build something special here. And that’s a chance I’m more than willing to take.

50. Sorry doc, but it was physically painful for me to read that.

51. Shard, great quote from Wenger 2008. You know who bought into the vision of the geeky, unknown Frenchman? Tony Adams, leader of the Booze Brothers. And he added considerably to his game. We’ll never know for sure, but to judge from how Mikel has operated, he’d likely have cast out Adams, Bould etc. And I cant see him taking a chance on a young hothead like Van Persie. Where is the record of his working with mavericks?

    Enjoying the civil discussion between Josh and Doc, but I want to touch briefly on this good guy argument. Im sure he is, but I’ll raise you Santi Cazorla. No one’s arguing that Santi should be head coach. By the brutal realities of the results game, 8th, 8th and no European football isnt acceptable. Forget Chelsea. The Arsenal board made a significant investment in Arteta’s squad, and the ROI has been poor.

    However theyve given him a lifeline, and from a results POV, I hope he seizes it. I really do.

52. Two instances of Arteta. One, how we answered the question on Torreira’s wish to move to South America. And 2, how he threw a strop at the door being left open during one of his zoom press conferences. Even more so, how the person responded to him. Anyone can have a bad day and get annoyed by something small. But the other guy kept saying ‘Sorry Boss’, and the first time he said it, Arteta went on to show even more annoyance.

    Those, combined with his press conferences, and I’m the opposite of Doc. I’ve seen too many cracks in that well crafted persona. I don’t think Arteta is a ‘nice guy’ or a ‘good guy’. Which makes it hard to root for him. But the real problem is that he seems to not have the humility to accept responsibility without deflecting, which suggests to me he will not learn what he’s doing wrong until it’s too late. For Arsenal that is.

    1. I tend to gravitate closer to Shard’s take on Arteta then Doc’s, although I’m not too bothered by coaches who achieved a lot throwing their weight around a bit.

       I’m just not sure winning the FA cup qualifies as such.

53. doc, i appreciate the chat about the arsenal manager. we have different opinions and that’s okay. because arteta is the arsenal manager, i hope you’re right about him and i’m wrong and i really mean that. in the end, i want what’s best for the club.

    my biggest gripe, in a nutshell, is arteta seems to be an egoist who lack the humility that his inexperience requires for him to succeed.

54. A lot of us have compared what Tuchel did for Chelsea with Arteta for Arsenal. However, in the last 24 games Arsenal had one of the best records in league play. I don’t know where Chelsea results stood compared to our during those last 24 games but results wise they were certainly not dramatically better. They started from a higher position. Tuchel did not turn his team into a great attacking unit. They only outscored by 3 over the course of the season. He won by controlling the thing he could control which is the team defense just like Arteta. Lampard was the manager when they qualified for the knockout stages of the champions league and Tuchel won the champions league because his team only conceded 2 goals in the 7 games he was in charge. Arteta gets no credit for taking his team to the semifinals of the Europa league and for some reason he gets no credit for players like Saka and Smith-Rowe outperforming expectations and he is getting no credit for the good run Pepe had at the end of this season. Myself the only thing I think either manager could really control was improving the defense but everyone else seems to believe that managers have complete control over every facet of the game and if that is true then Arteta deserves a lot more credit then he is being given.

55. I think the whole idea that managers improve players is more myth then reality. Players have been working with professional coaches since their early teens and they work with an army of coaches every day in training at their club. It never made sense to me that somehow a manager could come into a team and find something that all of those coaches had missed and somehow find a way to improve a players technical skill within a short time. Arsene gets credit for improving players like Henry but I think that was more about his and David Dein’s scouting and finding a couple players who were on the verge of a break out such as Henry and Vierra. He never really replicated that ability to “improve” players after the rest of world caught up with his scouting. Arsene also had a reputation for developing youth but if you look at the record I don’t think he really did a great job of developing all the “talented” players who have come thru our academy or the high priced youth players like Walcott, Ox etc.

56. Sometimes the things we as fans see when we watch football is more about what we want or hope or expect to see rather then reality. For example, Arsenal had the reputation as one of the worlds best “attacking” teams for many years and obviously we all wanted to believe that. However, if you look at the number of actual goals we scored during the last decade of the Wenger era its clear that our perception of a great attacking team was clearly hyperbole. We were a good but certainly no where close to great attacking team. That is why I tend to put more weight on the actual numbers rather then trusting my subjective perceptions.

57. BILL: “Arteta gets no credit for taking his team to the semifinals of the Europa league and for some reason he gets no credit for players like Saka and Smith-Rowe outperforming expectations and he is getting no credit for the good run Pepe had at the end of this season”.

    Even critics of some aspects of Arteta’s management gave him credit for improving Pepe’s play. I did. Several times in this memorable (👀) thread alone. I specifically said — and you previously acknowledged — that early season Pepe wasnt as good as end-of-season Pepe. Arteta got credit for turning things around against Vienna, but got criticised for tactics against Villareal. And no, Saka’s emergence was under Emery. Barring injury, his trajectory this season and beyond was/is expected.

    This right here is the problem with these debates (and to be fair it exists on the other side of the opinion divide too). Some of us think, that in staking out a position, it has to be a black and white engagement. We can criticise Arteta, form an overall conclusion about whether he stays or goes, and still credit him with some things. And vice-versa. We’re not in court, fcol. This shouldnt be wholesale prosecution and defence.

    We punched below the weight of our squad strength, our investment and our pedigree last season. Pound for pound, we have a better squad than 3 of the teams that finished above us. And if you remove Cavani, at 34 still one of the best No 9s in the world, I’d take our squad above that of the 2nd place finishers all day long. I’d take him, young Greenwood, Pogba and Bruno Fernandes. No one else over anyone we’ve got.

    Imma gonna refrain from any “since Christmas” talk. A season is 38 games. Bill, you can’t simultaneously downplay the impact of Tuchel’s arrival, and talk in the same breath about Arteta’s latter season form. That’s being inconsistent.

58. no one fails to give arteta credit for getting to the semifinals. the truth is the teams arsenal beat were awful but i still give arteta credit. however, i blame him for his failure to get arsenal to the final. while villareal weren’t awful, you need a good strategy to defeat them, and neither arteta nor solskjaer were clever enough to come up with that strategy. likewise, i predicted (guessed) pepe would hit form at 18 months; not arbitrarily but thats how long it took pires.

    no one has ever said that managers dramatically improve the technical skill of any footballer. coaches make their money with the tactical skill development. just so you know, tactical skill, is a player’s decision making on how best to use their technical skill in game situations. mind you, all professional footballers are talented. their tactical skill is what makes them good and not just talented.

    i thought all gooners knew this but both vieira and henry were wenger signings. vieira was wenger’s first signing, a signing that famously happened before the boss even got to arsenal but directed by wenger. henry got his pro debut when he was playing at monaco. the manager that gave him that debut was arsene wenger. it’s unknown if dein knew who those players were but wenger knew exactly who both those players were. not judging, but i thought every arsenal fan knew these easily verifiable facts.

59. Claude. Fair enough that was a poorly worded comment. Full credit to you since you were the one person who pointed our that Pepe improved near the end of the season. I don’t really believe that was due to Arteta but there is no way to know for sure. No one else including myself really thought about it until you mentioned it. Before you made that observation the vast majority of the comments criticized Arteta for not using Pepe earlier in the season.

    Bloggers with differing opinions tend to separate themselves further then needed in order to make their points. In reality I suspect the truth is almost always somewhere in between the 2 widely divergent opinions.

    1. Bill, I’m going to give Arteta a significant amount of credit (and obviously the player himself) for Pepe’s improvement. He was too one-footed and killed promising attacks down the right by needing to check back onto his left, and his defensive work — helping out Hector — was not good enough. When he was played on the left, he was better. The coach, I think, thought that he should persist with him on the right, because of the personnel he had overall, and the way he wanted to play. And you could see, in the end of season games, that he was finishing more and better with his right, and putting in more of a shift defensively. Arteta said before Pepe hit his purple patch that they were working hard together on the training ground, and the best was yet to come. In fairness to Arteta you have to acknowledge his work with the player, and the results. Im pleased to hear him say that he wants to keep Willock, and look forward to seeing how he develops and rounds out his game. Ten goal a season midfielders are hard to find. That’s a terrific base.

       btw, Saka just scored the only goal for England against Austria. Joe has to be looking at that, and thinking that he can push for an England place. England has some terrific young players in the middle of the park and in the forward midfield positions, though. Foden, Grealish, Rice, Bellingham, Greenwood, Mount…

60. Josh.

    I have always been under the impression that a lot of fans actually believe the right manager can teach a player how to be a better more skillful player. That never made sense to me.

    I don’t know the exact details of how Henry and Vierra. The point was Arsene had a scouting advantage and knew something the rest of the world didn’t in the case of Vierra and Henry. I believe he brought in both players at just before they were ready to break out. Similar to a manager who came to spurs the year Harry Kane broke out. However after Arsene lost the scouting advantage, he was never really able to replicate the way he “improved” those players. If Arsene really could improve players then why didn’t he use that skill to develop successful goal scoring players from his academy?

Comments are closed.