2020/21 Arsenal Season Diary pt.2 (Matches 12-21)

20 comments

1. this is depressing. league losses to wolves, everton, burnley, spurs, and villa.

   back to the previous thread, who in their right mind believes you can change a 32-year old player? especially, a 32-year old player that’s won a lot of silverware simply being who they are? why would they want to change? what could you possibly say to them to make them change? why would he listen to this inexperienced manager who won next to nothing as a player? he ain’t listening to arteta.

   1. Who are we talking about?

      1. willian

      2. …or any other senior player who’s won silverware and arteta is trying to change how they play.

         i don’t doubt arteta’s tactical nous as that was plain to see when he was a player. i doubt his managerial skill to get the best out of experienced campaigners; they all come equipped with egos. it’s why the call it management and not coaching. this was key to wenger’s success; he knew how to get adams and co. to follow his lead.

         you had a stint in the army so you know what the leadership you would follow in combat looks like. it’s the same here, especially when you’re talking about senior guys that have been around and seen good leaders. its just that no one is going to die. however, if you trust the wrong manager, your career could die. when senior guys see that and they have options, they quietly look to move on. the young guys will be fine. they don’t know any better.

         1. Josh I agree that it didn’t work, Arteta overthunk it, and that in hindsight a more orthodox approach to finding an AM would have been better.

            However, I’m pretty sure that AT LEAST it would have been discussed with Willian beforehand, and more likely that Willian was on board with the idea and that he was excited by the chance to play more centrally or to come in off the wing instead of always being the wide man. He often played as an AM or a 10 for Shakhtar back in the day, and last summer it was widely felt that it was Arteta’s thinking on how to use him which convinced him to come across to North London.

            Arteta’s faith in his own idea may be a sign of his inexperience and overconfidence, but there’s no need to characterise it as a young manager being disrespectful towards the experience of a senior player. That’s your own story about Arteta based on your own opinion of his character and that’s ok, but it’s not borne out by the facts here.

            1. we don’t know the conversations they had. likewise, i don’t recall willian playing centrally for shaktar or brazil; i’ll have to take your word for it that you saw that. i only remember him playing on the wing in a 4-4-2 that shaktar ran and opposite neymar in a 4-3-3 that brazil ran.

               you’re right when you say it’s my opinion that arteta disrespected, not only the player, but the very nature of man. hell, he disrespected the game itself. it’s a derivative of his overconfidence so they’re one in the same. everyone knows it’s a bad idea trying to teach an old dog new tricks. overconfidence had arteta thinking he could, essentially, turn lead into gold. i have no problem with this “good idea” of his. however, i’m vehemently opposed to the fact that he began the campaign with no alternative in the likely event his idea would fail. it’s an overconfidence borne of disrespect for the player and the game. what’s worse, it was willian who bore the brunt of the criticism as arteta had asked him to perform a task for which he was ill suited.

            2. Josh, I wouldnt go as far as saying that he disrespected the game. Question is why did he keep doubling down on decision that didnt work out. We did have an alternative to Willian failing at the Ten. Free ticket to the tropical island I’m currently on if you guess his name 🙂 (I jest, I jest)

               Look, in any properly managed squad where there was true competition for places, the guy who could provably do the job would at some point (even if for the odd game) displace the square peg, the favoured guy who was not performing in it. None of us (you, me or Greg) knows the ins and outs of that and can only speculate, but what’s crystal clear is that Willian’s performances/struggles in a role he wasn’t used to (at least not latterly) show that it wasn’t a set of circumstances based on football.

               And the more Arteta persisted with Willian, the clearer it seemed to me that it was mainly to defend his initial decision making. It looks like strength, but it’s actually a form of weakness. I’m really glad that ESR broke through, though he did tail off bit, and that we brought in the Norwegian kid.

               I dont agree with everything that Mikel does, but he does strike me as someone who respects the game. I think that particular criticism is harsh.

               Arteta himself was an interesting case. At Sociedad, he played in the back of the midfield. At PSG, Rangers and Everton he played further forward as a CAM. Arsene, in one of his more inspired decisions, put him back in the back of the midfield, and for at least one season, I thought that he was utterly superb there for Arsenal. Mikel’s reading of the game was out of this world good. He was a DM who did not need to fly into tackles, because he knew exactly where to be. He disproved the notion of the tough tackling DM, and played the position with supreme intelligence.

               I loved watching him play, particularly with Mertesacker (another intelligent footballer) behind him. As his legs went he became a non-playing captain. Arsene also eventually redeployed Santi to the heart of the midfield, with even better results. It’s not exactly teaching an old dog new tricks, but it’s close. To be fair, I think that Mikel was channeling that, but it didnt work out for him. I believe he was thinking that intelligent footballers can adapt. He was his own Exhibit A. His problem was sticking to a plan, for whatever reason, that plainly wasn’t working.

            3. sorry claude. while it may be true that you see senior guys move positions later in their careers, you don’t see players moved to the cam. cdm is a completely different monster; it gives you an opportunity to put your experienced campaigners in a position to better control the flow of the game. we’ve talked for years how cdm isn’t a skills position but an experience/intelligence position.

               rule of thumb, you put your smartest player at cdm. this is from the book of cruyff. guardiola wasn’t the best player at barcelona but he was the smartest, which is why he played for barcelona under cruyff.

               it’s also why i’m equally salty about the proposed move of granit xhaka. he’s clearly better now than he was when he got to arsenal but arsenal are about to sell him, in his prime, for half the price they bought him for. nuts!

2. talk about ironies: apparently, emi buendia was convinced by his countryman and name sake, emi martinez, to join him at his current club, aston villa instead of joining his former club, arsenal.

3. giroud got two more goals for france today. any bets on him catching henry?

4. Great post Tim thanks again

   I agree with Josh. That part of the season was truly depressing. It was clear before the start of the season that we would struggle to score given the composition of the squad. Defense was going to be the key to a successful season similar to the FA cup run from the season before. However, I don’t think anyone could have predicted how much we would struggle to score. Clearly plan A was not working and a change was needed. Arteta deserves some credit for making a mid season change

   Josh.

   I realize there are exceptions to every generalization but the last 15 years of history indicates that a majority of attacking players in the PL start to see their productivity and ability to influence the games fade in their early 30’s. However, I don’t think anyone would have predicted how dramatically and quickly Willian dropped off the cliff. Implying that Arteta was the reason for what happened to Willian seems a bit unreasonable. No manager can control the effects of Father Time

   1. Willian, and almost everyone else on the team, was told to stop taking on defenders off the dribble. Arteta doesn’t want his players getting involved in 1-v-1 duels (tackles, dribbles, etc).

      Arsenal were:

      Last in the league in tackles v. dribbles (also the least “dribbled past”)
      19th in tackles won %
      Last in the league in overall tackles
      14th in tackles in the opposition final third
      18th in pressures attempted
      7th in high pressures so we did press a bit
      17th in blocks
      Last in interceptions
      14th in dribbles attempted
      5th in progressive carries (we carry the ball forward but stop when the opposition press)
      Last in miscontrols
      19th in number of times dispossessed

      If Willian’s problem was just age I would expect to see a lot of dribbles but a high fail rate, he attempted just 22 dribbles all season. That means he tried 2.98 dribbles per90 last year and 1.41 per90 this year.

      Arteta is a strict authoritarian with his players. He absolutely wanted Willian to be the guy who made the pass to another guy who made the run rather than taking on defenders. It was clear as a summer day watching the games.

      1. “Arteta is a strict authoritarian with his players. He absolutely wanted Willian to be the guy who made the pass to another guy who made the run ……….”

         Arteta is a strict authoritarian with his players. He absolutely wanted Willian to be the guy who made the pass to another guy who made the pass to another guy who made the pass to another guy who made the pass to another guy who made the pass to another guy who made the pass to another guy…………… there, fixed it for you Tim. You welcome.

   2. taking a guy who’s played his entire professional career out wide and expecting him to do a totally different job in a totally different position that requires a totally different skill set is not a player’s fault. it’s a foolish use of resources and a waste of that player’s talent, not to mention the knock on his confidence. i can boldly say that nobody here would have done that as their plan a.

      what’s damning is having no alternative to that awful idea. that was all arteta. it was beyond negligent and borderline criminal. so no, i don’t blame willian nearly as much as i blame arteta.

5. Arsene obviously recognized that players tend to fade in their early 30’s which is probably where his over 30 guideline for contract negotiations and length of contracts came from. Its also probably why he broke up the 03/04 title tend a bit early rather then wait until it was too late.

6. This run of matches was the nadir. Nobody on the pitch looked like they knew how to play football any more. Poor performances – bad passing, no movement, no pressure, defending too deep – compounded by poor tactical and game-management decisions from the manager.

   Interesting to remember that Willock, AMN and Nketiah were on the pitch a lot during this period, I’d forgotten that.

7. someone recently asked me what’s the best advice i’d ever received. after thinking about it, i came up with a moment. when i was a very young man (young soldier), we were doing some training and it was a pear-shaped clusterfuck. after we’d gone on debating why it went sideways, a senior guy, typically extroverted, said to us in an unusually calm tone “gentlemen, you have to allow the situation to dictate your actions. i don’t care how good your plan is or how smart you are, if you fail to respect the situation, you will get yourself and others killed”.

   this is what i mean when i talk about a lack of respect. the situation always has to dictate what you do in life. arsenal’s situation was arteta wanted either aouar and buendia but failed to get them. however, he still had mesut on the roster but failed to register him. did he really think willian could do a job he wasn’t suited for?

   this is what i mean when i say arteta didn’t respect the player or the game. it was an awful lack of respect for both the limitations of that player and the quality of the premier league that he believed he could simply cut and paste what a competent #10 could do with willian, an older player who lacked the required experience or tactical nous. in fairness to arteta, it could have been a directive from the board that mesut was done at arsenal. however, the arsenal manager has some input and he’s responsible for managing the squad so it’s his face we punch.

8. Tim

   If you look at the last 20 years of Arsenal history not a single one of our top attacking players has remained productive past age 31. Henry, Bergkamp, Fabregas, Van Persie, Giroud, Sanchez, Ozil, Ramsey Wilshere all faded in their late 20’s or early 30’s. Time will tell but the same thing may be happening right now with Auba. Not a single one maintained anywhere near their top level of production by age 32. I don’t think we can blame the manager unless Arsene was somehow at fault in many of those cases. Around the PL the same thing has happened for majority of the leagues top attacking players. You can pick an individual stat such as dribbling success but I suspect as their skill level fades they stop trying to do things like making difficult dribbles. In Mesut Ozil’s case he maintained his pass completion percentage but he stopped trying to make difficult pinpoint passes in traffic that made him special and created assists.

   There are occasional anecdotal exceptions but to me the preponderance of evidence indicates that when someone age 32 has a drop off in productivity and ability to influence the game by far the most likely explanation is age related.

   1. Lewandowski
      Messi
      Ronaldo
      Benzema
      Muriel
      Suarez
      ben Yedder
      Immobile
      Kramaric
      Yilmaz
      Ibrahimovic
      Vardy
      Zapata

      Just a few exceptions this season. As usual, it’s more complicated than you’d like to paint the picture.

      Nutrition, sports science, etc have all gotten miles better since the Bergkamp/Henry days. And each player is different in how they take care of themselves and what they can put out after age 30.

      What I will also point out is that this Arsenal team was one of the worst attacking teams in my memory – especially those first 19 matches – and ranked behind Wolves and West Ham in shots created. Auba has never been a shot creator – he doesn’t make shots for himself or his teammates – he’s a shot taker. If the team isn’t creating for him, he can’t score. And he’s especially dependent on big chances. If I remember correctly, his only big chance in the first 19 matches was a penalty and one missed shot.

      Players do slow down as they get older and there is some evidence that is happening with Auba but the way that Arsenal were set up in those first 19 matches was a fireable offense.

9. Next season will be Auba’s age 32 season. Anything is possible but based on the last 20 years of Arsenal history expecting a return to his golden boot winning form is probably not a good bet

Comments are closed.