When Unai Emery signed for Arsenal the club released a video of Ivan Gazidis showing Unai a hallway, then showing him a book, which was supposed to be a gift, and then snapping the book shut and taking it away from Emery. It turns out that this would be a prescient metaphor for the three and a half years after Wenger was fired by the club.
We spent that time being shown around an underground place, lit with fluorescent lights, by troll-like middle-men who never looked comfortable and who always seemed to snatch away any gifts just at the moment we thought we were going to have them handed to us. At one point I was so desperate to feel something for this team that I claimed I was “all in” after a lucky win over Spurs. I admit that I’m nothing if not predictable in my mood swings about sport. Sport makes me emotional. I know that’s weird to some of you, the people who are really into Huey Lewis and the News.
Even when we finally got rid of Emery – who we often make fun of but who was a stop-gap, a guy brought in to do one thing, win the Europa League – it still felt like everything at the club was in the cellar, rooting around in a tunnel, looking for the boss’ office.
There were the high profile fallings out, the club paying off players to go play elsewhere, the club buying players in weird positions, and doubts over whether the manager, coach, and owner really knew what they were doing. And then there was yet another of those moments – the one where Gazidis tells Unai he’s getting this wonderful leather bound book, and then snatches it away – where Arsenal win the FA Cup and for a brief period look like we are playing something like good football again. Only to have that hope dashed by a weird start to this season and what looked like a reversion to the mean.
If you think about what Arsenal FC have been through since 2018 – firing our greatest ever coach, getting to a Europa League final and losing in ignominious fashion, persisting with that coach when it was clearly the wrong plan, firing him, the pandemic, the constant squabbling between players and manager, the weird player deals of Sanllehi saddling us with huge debts, the Super League stuff, a 6 month bout of form which saw Arsenal briefly look like a team that could finish in the bottom 5, and two 8th place finishes – I think it’s pretty normal that Arsenal supporters and players would celebrate a run of 10 wins in our last 13. And especially celebrate a 1-0 win, our fifth away win in a row, in which we controlled the match from start to finish in a way that we haven’t seen Arsenal manage in 8 years? What kind of emotionless Golem, what kind of unempathetic automaton, wouldn’t celebrate?
We aren’t being insanely unrealistic. We aren’t having a open top bus parade. I think most of us still know that we could even drop 4th place. But I also think that fans who had to travel from London to Birmingham at 4 in the morning so that they could attend a noon football match in a city that only has one service station and three remaining working toilets were right to celebrate. It was just a moment of spontaneous joy and if you’re such a sour old fuck that it made you mad, well maybe you should consider finding something, anything, that makes you happy. No.. kicking puppies is not the right answer.
We celebrated because Birmingham Villa gave Arsenal a hard time, they kicked everyone until they bled, literally. They dived all over the pitch, and even tried shoving our players on the floor whenever the referee had his back turned, like cowardly little punks. Villa tried to give Arsenal a good game and yet we won. Thomas Teye Partey looked like a Rolls Royce at a Birmingham car boot sale. Bukayo Saka made us all happy that we didn’t buy lol Coutinho. Ben White made Tyrone Mings look like the cart part of the cart horse. And even our backup goalkeeper was better than your starter. So, yeah, we celebrated. Because it was so fucking satisfying to shove it in your little rat faces. You fucking miserable turds.
And finally, to Ashley Young. I can say without any anger that I hope an entire flock of seagulls shits a space age love song on your head.
From now on, when you see a team celebrating, when you see other people’s joy, shut the fuck up. Accept that you lost. Don’t be a sore loser. Be an adult. Let people have fun.
“We aren’t having a open top bus parade.” We have standards. Brilliant Tim, just brilliant.
Well said, Tim. Youthful joy should be celebrated, not criticized.
If we’d just briskly shaken hands and silently walked off they’d have said we were emotionless snooty superior London types with no connection to real football fans. So fuck ‘em 🙂
Nope sorry Tim, a fan’s and player’s joy should be perfectly correlated to their team’s league position.
Arsenal’s 4th place allows for fist thumps into the air and the occasional high five at the end of the game. The scenes we witnessed bring the game into disrepute. Shocking stuff, we should all be appalled at what we witnessed.
Is that a droll remark or are you being serious?
I couldn’t tell
Unai Emery, whose Europa League champions have just booted Juventus out of the Champions League, was shown none of the patience that Arteta was. I say this as someone on the Mikel bandwagon, and who was in agreement with Emery’s removal. But man, hasnt Emery ever rebuilt his cred. The consensus of many here is that he wasn’t a good fit, but I dunno, man. Time puts everything into better perspective. He wasnt Mr Smooth. They mocked his accent, and his mannerisms. His politeness became something to joke about. I wish him nothing but the best.
I’m liking the work that Arteta is doing on the footballing side, and if Arsenal opt for long term managerial stability and we can grow and learn together as a collective of fans and players with Mikel in charge, I’d be happy with that. The results are the ultimate barometer (nothing succeeds like success), but I want to see that he’s growing a manager, and iron out some of the less attractive parts of his management style. He has considerable strengths, of course. It’s not black and white, as some supporters would have us believe. In terms of spirit, the signs look very good. The fans and the team are connected. There’s a lot of love in the air. Seeing Ramsdale hugging Leno after the game yesterday was (and I dont want to overstate this) kind of moving. “That’s my team”, I thought.
This is not a call for the return of Emery or the sacking of Arteta, or a moan on Emery’s behalf, I feel i need to state. It is an attempt that an honest, balanced look at things. Peace. Fans are fickle. The togetherness (as Arsene often noted) is a fragile thing. It is often correlated solely to winning, and ALL of us as fans need to get beyond that.
btw, Tim, Birmingham will forever be the city where Martin Taylor broke Eduardo’s leg in 2008, and we suffered a calamitous reversal of fortune after being 5 points clear at the top of the league. Seemed we’d overcome that, then a moment of doziness from Gael Clichy in his own box. Three years later, we threw away the league cup to Birmingham City when Kosc and Szczesny screwed things up. It wasn’t Villa, but it was a team from that city. Those 2 matches were among the worst I ever felt at an Arsenal supporter.
“The consensus of many here is that he wasn’t a good fit, but I dunno, man.” Unai can be successful elsewhere, but he was terrible for us. The football was horrible. And no, I don’t want Arsenal playing Villarreal kind of football, unwatchable. The regrets are why we hired him first and why we did not fire him sooner. So, I know man, Unai wasn’t a good fit for Arsenal.
Thank you for saying it. He was and is a decent manager. People who mock him and deny his decency have no grace. They also tend to be the ones who are most cult-ish about the incumbent.
Damn, those were two moments of utter sadness from the blue half of the “damned” city that I don’t enjoy recalling or remembering at all
I feel like I need to say a couple things here. First, Emery could go on and win the champions league and I would still think he’s a bad coach. His villareal side right now are one of the worst teams in terms of away games in La Liga. That was also his Achilles heel at Arsenal and in his previous incarnations in La Liga he actually went an entire season without winning a single away game. And won the Europa League that year with whatever team it was that he was at I honestly can’t even be arsed to go and look it up.
I don’t know what magic he’s able to work in Europa League games and champions League games with his teams but it’s very clear that he is what we refer to as a cup manager.
I actually think it’s funny that pundits keep dragging him up as if he’s a good coach and he’s really not just because he does well in European competitions does not make him a good coach. He is a bad coach.
Well mediocre okay fine.
As for the rest of it I believe that there was a great deal of racism with the accent stuff and I think that he actually lost the team which was why he got fired. Once your players start making fun of you you’re done.
I think you’re a lot more measured than this Tim. So I’m not proud of it but my instinctive response to “just a cup manager” is – yeah, that’s exactly why Emery in 20 years of management has more European trophies than Arsenal football club in its 140 year history.
THW14…not exactly an apples to apples comparison. For much of Wenger’s time, we were in the knockout rounds of the CL. That’s generally a pretty significant step up from EL. A fair number of those teams would have been heavy favorites to win the EL. It’s like saying we don’t have as many trophies as we would have if we were in the the Championship. Or comparing Carabao to FA. I’d rather us have lost to Barca in the CL than won the EL.
I’d rather we won the EL than those pointless years pretending we were competing in the CL.
Lovely centre-forward goal from Auba in the clasico. Scored with his head, lol.
He’s murdering Madrid with his movement and positioning, had THREE good chances and took one so far. Halftime coming up.
I’m watching the game. What a class act PEA is.
Indeed he is. Game sums him up. Superlative striker. Two goals, one assist, but three significant misses. Should have had a hat trick at least. Tim warned us, before he had kicked a ball for us, that this was his overall game. Great get for Barca. They have to be Europa favourites.
Also watching Ousmane Dembele. Unstoppable for 50 minutes, not good thereafter. Three subs, but strangely remains on
El Clasico is still the biggest game in club football. Two goals and an assist on your debut is Roy of the Rovers stuff. 1969 the last time a Barca debutant had that impact.
I’ve been watching Barca since Xavi took over. No doubt he’ll do well. And their recent buys; Torres, Traore and Auba have all hit the ground running. When you think what they paid for those three it’s nuts.
Great post Tim. Currently we are definitely favorites for 4th place which is something I would have never believed before the start of the season. We are fortunate that none of the other teams we are competing with for that spot has played all that well but no one will remember or care if we are in the CL next season. It does not matter if we win 10-0 or 1-0 it all counts for 3 points and puts us closer to our objective. I think we are still are a couple of goal scorers away from being a team that has a legitimate chance to compete with the CL teams in our league and the CL teams from the rest of Europe but the $150M we spent last summer has made a big difference and this year represents a clear improvement. Hopefully we can maintain the momentum.
Claude
I defended Emery for most of his tenure but it was not working. Any manager whose team aspires to be in the top 4 but concedes 51 goals in his first season and then regresses the following season needed to be sacked. I don’t really think it was his fault because he inherited an unbalanced squad filled with a whole lot of overpaid under motivated underperforming players which needed a top to bottom rebuild and I am not sure any manager could have done a lot better. Arsene was such a dominant figure and Emery also had to contend with a club which needed to rebuild its front office and its front office culture and that sort of complete rebuild of front office and players will always take time and there will always be a some missteps. I don’t believe for a second that Emery was a bad manager. I believe that just like early Arteta the style of play we saw was more a result of the squad Emery had to work with rather then a deep seated tactical stubbornness or that he was tactically inept. It never made sense that a manager who was reasonably successful throughout his long career would suddenly forget how to manage.
Claude
Auba has certainly looked great since moving to Barca and full credit to him. Obviously there was still some petrol left in his tank. I expected some improvement when he moved to a new situation but nothing like this. Where was this Auba for last 1 1/2 seasons while playing for us? He has had a about 1 1/2 months of really good form but you can’t ignore 1 1/2 seasons of diminishing production and diminishing effectiveness when he was playing for us. The idea that he was being held back by his manager and teammates seems likes rubbish to me. He wasn’t held back by the manager or his teammates during the first Emery season and during the Emery/Arteta season. I think his resurgence is similar to the new manager bounce we sometimes see and time will tell if he is able to maintain this form for any length of time. If he does then I was clearly wrong about him being washed.
Whoa, Bill. Pump the brakes. I did not say any of the things you mention here. In fact, I did not mention Arsenal at all. I was merely commenting on today’s game. I dont see the point of getting into this with you. You have a bee on your bonnet (several, in fact). Take the bonnet off, shake it out. Nothing to do with my observations on the game 🙂
ha! i don’t know why bill does that but he does it all the time.
Sometime I think that my bredda in Colorado has these comments on file. And he didnt once say “age 32 season” 🙂
We dont need to get dragged back into the Auba v Arsenal thing. A well-known Arsenal supporting twitter loudmouth tried to get that started again, and Auba classily shut it down, saying in effect that sometimes a separation is good for all parties. He gets to show that in a suitable system, he can be lethal (and still miss a lot). A young player at Arsenal got an opportunity to shine, he has seized it with both hands, and he has earned himself his first senior call up for Brazil. Ploughing the ground again is counter-productive. Everybody won.
I watch a ton of football games from all leagues, and simply posted a comment on the game and his impact. it both interesting and eye-popping, and to be reminded of what a great player he is. His positioning and movement were something else. He seemed to know where the ball would fall. And moreover, he had Dembele to his right, and their synergy goes a long way back. It is interesting watching the Xavi experiment. And Im very pleased for PEA that things didnt go tits up.
Overall, I agree with Tim’s sentiment!
Claude, for sure Emery just wins important games, but would not him back!
Question: what was our xG for this last game?
We are living on razor thin margins that is for damn sure.
Still say, top 4 or bust for Mikel.
It is in his hands, spuds are going to push us all the way.
Please stop with the “top four or bust” thing.
1. 5th place is progress
2. The club isn’t firing him no matter what happens this year
3. We have a tough run-in
4. Spurs have the easiest run-in imaginable
5. I don’t care what the club spent this summer
6. We have clearly progressed
7. If you kill the coach right when he’s showing signs of progress, you set the club back – that’s just a fact – because then they have to retool everything at great cost
8. There’s no good coach in the world who would take the job if Arsenal fired Mikel this year after finishing 5th, because it shows that the club have no clue what they are doing.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
We have the right guy for our club in this moment. When I see that relationship between players and fans at the stadium, I know he’s done something really amazing. He’s not perfect – he’s still learning, but he’s getting better and he’s created a sense of pride and optimism about Arsenal that we’ve haven’t seen in a long time.
As you said, our run in is much tougher than Spurs’, but after watching Spurs yesterday, I couldn’t get over how much worse both they and WHAM were than us. Our passing is so much crisper, our movement so much better coordinated and our defending way sharper.
I actually sat there thinking, “I can’t wait to play these teams.” Doesn’t mean Kane/Son moments of brilliance couldn’t beat us, but I will be very surprised if we don’t dominate them in XG and by the eye test.
And as I’ve said before, we’re getting top 4, so it doesn’t matter what anyone else does anyway!
I politely disagree.
5th might be progress or not, considering we have no Europe or anymore cup games to play during the week.
If we score less than 60 goals this year, pointing out the last two games were won by miracle shots, the offense is not sorted in the least.
The two previous years we have 56 and 55 goals scored, that is not much improvement, with 48 and 41 goals scored against. We are on pace for 59.7 goals scored and 42 against.
For context, that would put us in the top 4 defenses in the league, but only in the top 7 offenses in the league by year in if worked out with current averages.
Not getting CL in a million years with a top 7 offense, and if we actually get 6th this year would you call time? I would because the offense is still not turning over 3 years in-period!
Agree with 2-5, but not 1,6, 7 and 8.
Did not Xavi just walk into Barcalona, with no $ this year and no Messi, got his offense and team clicking, just like that, and everyone keeps saying Barca are on a downward trajectory, well not really are they.
To my eye test, over the totallity of 110+ games, he is not overperfoming, and I want a coach and team to overperform based on who we recruit, train and develop.
Just my lousy opinion, but I wil just keep watching my team and see if we get through this, becuase if Mikel stays, and we scrape top 4, next year is going to be way more challenging for our team considering our squad depth.
Xavi didn’t, in fact, walk in and fix the offense with no money. Despite being ‘poor’, Barcelona actually managed to get Ferran Torres, Adama Traore, and Aubameyang in the winter transfer window, and all three are doing an incredible job for the side. Xavi has done a great job, I won’t deny that, but to say he fixed the team without money is just outright wrong.
I don’t care about “bust” because the club’s governance went bust a long time ago. Top 4 is a reasonable expectation. That’s not some diktat, it’s just a way of reminding ourselves of the minimum expectation when we fired Wenger. It’s not wishing for anybody back, it’s not wishing the current manager badly, it’s just wishing to avoid another decade of mediocrity.
To me it isn’t “top 4 or bust” at all. And I mostly agree with Tim.
What I’d say differently from Tim is that all things considered, top 4 is reasonable and gettable, and dang it, yes, I’d be disappointed with 5th.
Some of us have said from the get go that we had all of the conditions to make top 4 and return to the Champions League.
The absence of European competition is not nothing. It was a big deal. A lighter schedule in autumn and early winter should theoretically have given us a leg up teams that had European commitments.
And I disagree with Tim on spending not mattering. It absolutely does. Otherwise, what’s the point?
It does not have to be binary… fourth, or sack the coach. He’s going nowhere, nor should 5th be sackable. But is 5th sufficient progress, all things considered? When did we start being ok with having low expectations of Arsenal? A disconcerting number of regulars here were saying last summer, before we’d kicked a ball, that we’re a 6th to 10th team. Why? Who doesnt want to see us in the Bernabeu? When did we become safe, middle of the pack dwellers? When did we become the support for whom 8th, 8th (with no European football) and 5th counts as satisfactory progress? Courage, mon gooners.
Runs-in, like games in hand, are on paper. We should reasonably expect to beat Spurs. If there were “we cant beat them” games, Spurs would not have beaten City. The play, tactics, coach, gave them belief, and Harry Kane had a worldie. We had a golden chance to beat City, but made a number of bad decisions that gave them all the points, in a game in which we were the better team for large stretches.
It seems to me that the hurdle we have to clear is feeling that we belong in top company. We compete well for long periods, but one mistake, and we unravel and lose the ballgame. I don’t know why that is. Overall, though, Im loving our trajectory.
Points taken. It’s all about context. 5th with a very united team and fanbase and the youngest squad in the league is very different than 5th with a team full of aging, overpaid players. Clear upside vs. no future.
A young team struggling against the very best isn’t concerning to me. We can and will do better, but it usually takes a few contests before the young guys unseat the current champs/leaders. Not just football, but almost every sport. Jordan and the Bulls, My Steelers, all lost a few playoff games before getting over the hump.
Our play vs both City and Pool has improved dramatically. We belong with the best now. I think that was the problem. As fans we believed we belonged, but the teams over the last 5 years didn’t perform that way consistently. Our effort and performance has become remarkably consistent this season, and it’s something we can sustain.
Especially if Partey stays healthy and keeps playing this way. The man is a monster!
Reasonable points as always. But let’s talk about this👇🏽
“5th with a very united team and fanbase and the youngest squad in the league is very different than 5th with a team full of aging, overpaid players.”
You know who’s not buying that? Bukayo Saka. The best players want to spend their best years playing with the best of their peers. Translation: Champions League. Saka has tasted Championship football. He took the last kick for England in a major tournament. He is not interested in glorious underachievement. He’s been with the club since he was 8 or 9. He knows Serge Gnabry. He sees him playing for Bayern. He wants to be sharing a football field with him, and with Kylian Mbappe, not the big lump from the champions of Latvia. Barring injury, he seems certain to start on the right for England in Qatar. He is world class. We are not going to hang onto this player, if we dont match his abilities and ambitions. Sorry, but he’s not playing for fan feelgood.
You know who else isnt buying this feelgood? Thomas Partey. Partey has played injured and within hours of getting off a plane from a 9 hour flight and 15 hour round trip for Arsenal. Why did he do that? Because he wants the club to be among the big boys. How do you think he felt watching Atletico draw City in the Champions League? That he’d rather be playing Betis than Barca next year?
And oh, when you mention aging and overpaid players. Do you mean, like, say, Lacazette? (whose praises we cant stop singing?) 🙂
Let’s face it. Our re-adjusted expectations as Arsenal fans are based on our current coach delivering 8th and 8th. We’ve adjusted downwards to meet him. So 5th looks like progress. Tim labels Emery (who took us to 5th) “a bad coach”, and then declare of Arteta that 5th is progress. We cant have it both ways.
I want the same things that you want, LA. I love our trajectory and the togetherness. I love seeing young players grow. But I (and I suspect our best players) would prefer jam today, not tomorrow. We wont keep our best players if we dont give them the biggest platforms, but ll that said it isnt 4th or bust for me, as a fan. Darn, if we got relegated I’d still be here.
“Let’s face it. Our re-adjusted expectations as Arsenal fans are based on our current coach delivering 8th and 8th. We’ve adjusted downwards to meet him. So 5th looks like progress.”
If we were 5th this season but were playing like we did in Fall of 20, it would not be progress. More attacking, dominating football that’s pleasing to the eye looks like progress. Clearly improved XG metrics look like progress. A defense that gives up the fewest shots of any team vs. Liverpool this season looks like progress. No locker room drama, no Wenger Out banners, no booing fans looks like progress. Recruiting that brings in White and Gabriel rather than Mustafi and Sokratis looks like progress. Four players in the England National side looks like progress. It’s a lot more than our place in the standings.
For the past 5 or 6 years, we’ve been putting plasters on wounds and hoping we could hobble through another year and eke our way into top four. Arteta’s come in and done the major surgery the club needed from top to bottom. We’re now legitimately competing against the best clubs, and there’s every reason to believe we’re going to get even better. That IS progress.
“Our re-adjusted expectations as Arsenal fans are based on our current coach delivering 8th and 8th. We’ve adjusted downwards to meet him. So 5th looks like progress. Tim labels Emery (who took us to 5th) “a bad coach”, and then declare of Arteta that 5th is progress. We cant have it both ways.”
Print it on the Emirates.
It’s all about context. Emery took us to 5th on some very lucky early results – results which vastly overperformed expected goals and points. We were an 8th place team largely because of Emery and the board royally screwing the team up. Even I, a guy who deeply dislikes Arteta on a personal level, have to admit that what he’s done in the two years since has been a huge work in progress. And I can say that while also saying that an experienced coach would have probably only taken 6 months to get to this same point and also that an experienced coach would have probably gotten the best out of some of the players that Arteta has shunted aside.
Lots of things can be true at the same time. The world isn’t binary.
Taking that point about binaries forward – we can also accept that Arteta has benefited from patience from ownership and fans that was never extended to Emery. Even when he was on a good run, there was kvetching about xG which (in current form) is basically a useless stat.
It’s all motivated reasoning which – fair enough, it’s football after all, but let’s not pretend that there’s anything ‘reasonable’ about the position that Arteta is in any way better than Emery. He’s not. He could be, but he’s not. He is Arsenal manager though, so there’s that.
“We should reasonably expect to beat Spurs”
This is overegging the pudding.
“And I disagree with Tim on spending not mattering. It absolutely does. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
To get better players. We did. But spending money in the transfer market has very tiny correlation to league position. And is certainly not causal.
Loving the “F” bombs delivered to all the angsty Villians out there… and LOL the curse on Ashley’s head… keep ‘em coming Tim!
Ah the old “excessive celebrations” critique. When you have nothing else to hold on to you can always hold on to that. Some people really are miserable and there’s so much misery on Twitter. They’ll do whatever it takes to wind you up.
Erm, noting that 5th would be a good outcome compared to 8th is not lowering your expectations. Nobody has “adjusted downwards.”
I want us to 1) continue to improve, invest in at least a striker and midfielder and establish ourselves next season at the 80 point level, which would guarantee us CL football, and THEN 2) get up to the 90 goal / 90 point level which would mean we are challenging for the league. I haven’t lowered my expectations but we are a 20-point improvement and therefore probably min 2 seasons away from challenging for the title.
In the meantime I’m not complacent either – we are not scoring nearly enough goals, firepower IS a problem, creating chances IS a problem, we are still capable of very mid-table performances and we are only a couple of injuries or disaffected players away from being a mid-table side.
It’s all about striking the balance between short-term and long-term gains.
Also, while decline is often gradual and hard to perceive – boiling frogs – improvement doesn’t tend to be linear.
At first you don’t see results from your improvements because they are just reversing the problems that were causing the decline. You put in a lot of work and all that happens is you bottom out. Then you start to see step improvements when events happen, or when certain things click.
We’ve seen a couple of big step improvements recently but we need to have a lot more to get where we should be going.
Coming 8 – 8 in last 2 seasons , technically was the best metric for our improvement. Playing with relative coordinates for a presentation.😂. . Also considering we were not making the most obvious corrections last 1.5 years except when providence kicked us upstairs like when Smith Rowe was re- found.
Based on the past when good play was countless overhead crosses to no one in particular and persisting with it and praising the idiocity , don’t know if the fluid movement up we see now is Hale Enders playing the way they were trained and the rest falling in that line of play, particularly since cannot see players in the game responding to the micro instructions from the sidelines . Anyway it is all well that ends well , in whatever way.
Nice one, Tim.
Villa and the media are idiots to complain about celebrating. How do they not get laughed at for such statements? Anyway, we can do the laughing as well.
We’re looking good for 4th. (My pre-season target was 4th and/or 71 points) I believe we’ll get there, but if we don’t Arteta should still stay. I will say though that it partly might be because I don’t like him, but I remain unconvinced about his ceiling being good enough. He’s young, learning, and improving. But ..but.. but… there’s just this nagging thought about there being a limit to his methods which we’d hope Arsenal would outgrow. Which is why I am loath to label this as progress and be accepting of ‘mediocrity’.
Arteta’s PL record so far in 20 games split:
00-20: 33 pts, 32 goals, 21 agnst
21-40: 30 pts, 26 gls, 20
41-60: 31 pts, 29 goals, 23
61-80: 39 points, 34 goals for, 21 against
(81-86: 15 points, 10 goals, 6 against)
this improvement has come in a season where we’ve had the most spend, have had no major injuries, and not had many distractions away from the league.
Arteta has repeatedly complained about not having enough time to train between fixtures. Last year for European games, this year on scheduling for the PL.
Can we continue this form when we do have the pressure and schedule of European games? Will we spend to add to the squad? Can Arteta even rotate a large squad effectively? (I have serious doubts about this)
And as for the togetherness, it comes from the players buying in. But if we’re honest, Arsenal is a great step for their careers at this moment. Claude referred to Saka not wanting to stick around without the CL. What about if Liverpool/ManCity come calling with big bucks? Bayern or Barcelona or Real Madrid? Would they stick around? Will we be able to replace them with cheaper/younger?
the problems that come with growth are sometimes more difficult to overcome than finding a decent level. We had those problems when we couldn’t make the step up from CL spots to League Winners. But we were short of cash then. Seems like that won’t be an issue any more. But I’d like to see how the manager handles those challenges before proclaiming him the future.
+1
Lots of doubts still to be overcome.
I’m enjoying the football at the moment though. I don’t think we’re quite there yet for the whole game, but some of the play has been fun. Which is what I’m really looking for. Winning trophies is fun too, of course. But it’s a lot more fun if you can get them playing entertaining football.
i could care less what ashley young has to say about arsenal. i will admit that i don’t like the way punditry has vilified arsenal. it goes back to the covid reschedule. they have no sympathy for arsenal as they cried for the seemingly illegitimate covid reschedule back in december and now arteta’s complaining about the reschedule. arteta had to expect that blowback.
in fairness, arteta is right to gripe about the reschedule. there’s no good reason to have a wednesday night game followed by a lunchtime kickoff on saturday morning. the game could have been played on sunday or even saturday evening. it’s not so much about arteta wanting to train but the players having adequate time to recover to prevent injury. arsenal have this dilemma presenting again in a few weeks with a wednesday night game against chelsea followed by a saturday morning game against manchester united. the league scheduled those two games in less than 72 hours against top opposition and it’s stupid.
it goes back to the discussion about the low quality of the administrators being the worst part of the premier league. the players, the coaches, the stadia, and the crowds are all top notch. the level off happens when you get to the officiating and the league administrators; two groups who’s performances are where the stepdown in class happens in the premier league. there is no performance standard. it’s disgraceful.
congrats to pv4 for his induction into the premier league hall of fame! he’s the greatest #8 ever! when people compare others to vieira, it’s clear that they forgot how amazing vieira was. having vieira was like having a license to cheat. it’s so unfair as he was so freaking good. once again, congrats.
btw, i wanted him, not arteta, to get the arsenal job. he truly knows what it means to be an arsenal legend. players like aubameyang and ozil would listen to him as he knows what it means to win championships at every level for the best teams in the world, including the world cup and european championship. it’s amazing what he’s done at crystal palace. imagine what he could do with the arsenal resources.
wenger said recently that vieira was the most important player he ever signed and that’s absolutely right. besides, bergkamp, vieira was the only player involved for all of wenger’s premier league championships. i’m sure that if he were at arsenal, bergkamp would be in the dugout along side him. once again, congrats to paddy.
After Arsenal, Palace have the most exciting group of youngsters. PV has to be such an inspiration for those kids. They destroyed Lampard’s wimps recently which was a fun watch. As I recall someone here predicted Paddy wouldn’t do so well after a mediocre stint in MLS.
you’re right about someone saying that but it was after his time at nice; vieira was a rockstar in the mls. cool story, espn conducted a survey among mls players. one of the questions was which mls manager would the player like to play for. i think it was like 48% said they’d like to play for vieira. that’s incredible. the other 52% of that vote was split among the other 26 or so managers. like i said, he was a rockstar in mls.
at nice, he got screwed by the owner. he’d done well, getting them into europe but their owner sold some of the senior guys and left vieira with a bunch of academy kids and young loanees that simply weren’t ready for that level. at palace, he has what i believe is the oldest squad in the league. the young players and loanees he has are significantly better than what he had at nice.
speaking of young loanees, congrats to guendouzi and saliba for making the french squad. saliba is talking about extending his marseille loan through the world cup for obvious reasons. we’ll see how the club manages this one. we saw what happened to koscielny for the last world cup.
When the news broke Paddy was joining Palace I thought it was a big mistake. Last term under Hodgson they were the oldest squad playing some fairly attritional footie. Plan A, B and C was get the ball to Zaha to win a FK.
Paddy’s changed the football and team to be much more exciting and the results are flowing. I’d happily have Gallagher, Olise, Eze and Guehi on Arsenal’s books. Edouard hasn’t lived up to his early season promise but all told the kids are taking their chances. Paddy’s a good shout for manager of the season.
When I was doing the corporate shuffle attending BS black-tie events was part of the drill. I once spent an evening in the Dorchester bar with Steve Parish. At the time he was just a Palace fan but was already scheming to own the club. Funny old world.