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Mikel Arteta: Top Of The Klopps

squallman

Still Pining for Wenger
I hope the club remembers the Gazidis debacle if their plan is to let Arteta learn on the job.

Kroenke gave Gazidis the keys to the kingdom after he bungled our commercial deals and transfers for years with his incompetence.

What does he do? Put a failed structure in place then ****ed off to AC Milan and left us in the mud.

A word to the wise is enough.
 

AberGooner

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: Scotland

Player:Gabriel
Yep having Willian on £220k a week could really turn into another Kola/Mustafi/Sokratis situation where we are trying to pay off his contract the last year. The longer it goes on with him producing little then Arteta will be forced to give up on him when you've got the like of Saka and Pepe offering far more. Even Martinelli has offered more in limited minutes since he came back. It's really only the Fulham game that you can say Willian has played really well in.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
100k a week plus a fat signing bonus which balances out to 220k.

Not exactly a lie is it :lol:

Even if the base wage is 100k, that's just too much for a player of his age and profile. Specially when he had Pepe, Nelson, Saka (later when moved to the right) as options for RW.

Imagine paying 200k a week for a rotational player or thinking that he'd be better or have more upside than Nico.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
The point is: We can't have players like him and Cedric on high wages. Soares has not been as bad as Willian, but that's 70k on a player that will be impossible to move if his legs go. We need to do better than this.

A younger option to Soares, on lower wages, would at least give us a chance to move said hypothetical player on, something that just won't happen to neither Cedric or Willian. They'll be here until the end of their contracts.
 

HairSprayGooners

My brother posted it ⏩
Even if the base wage is 100k, that's just too much for a player of his age and profile. Specially when he had Pepe, Nelson, Saka (later when moved to the right) as options for RW.

Imagine paying 200k a week for a rotational player or thinking that he'd be better or have more upside than Nico.

100k a week for willian at the time was excellent business, coming off the season he had nobody can deny that. Hindsight is wonderful but I actively dislike people who simply use hindsight on a constant basis when players don't perform.

Like at the time it was a good deal, end of story, not a reason to lambast the club and Arteta.
 

HairSprayGooners

My brother posted it ⏩
The point is: We can't have players like him and Cedric on high wages. Soares has not been as bad as Willian, but that's 70k on a player that will be impossible to move if his legs go. We need to do better than this.

A younger option to Soares, on lower wages, would at least give us a chance to move said hypothetical player on, something that just won't happen to neither Cedric or Willian. They'll be here until the end of their contracts.

Tell me what is wrong with having Cedric as backup to a starting right back for 4 years?
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
100k a week for willian at the time was excellent business, coming off the season he had nobody can deny that. Hindsight is wonderful but I actively dislike people who simply use hindsight on a constant basis when players don't perform.

Like at the time it was a good deal, end of story, not a reason to lambast the club and Arteta.

No it wasn't, literally 99% of the fan base were against it. Of course it's a reason to criticize the club, the writing was on the wall there and we still pushed through and now are stuck with him.

There's a reason why Chelsea and other clubs did not want to give him a 3 year contract and we were the only suckers that did.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
Tell me what is wrong with having Cedric as backup to a starting right back for 4 years?

Because as an asset he has little to no value if his legs go in two years time. He'll be on 70k a week, with a year left on his deal and we'll be in the same situation we are with Willian, Kola and were with Mustafi and Sokratis. We can't as a club keep making the same mistakes, here.

9/10 players we sign need to be able to move on if things don't work out. Squad turnover has been a huge issue at Arsenal for the past decade and a half and we just can't seem to learn from it.
 

HairSprayGooners

My brother posted it ⏩
No it wasn't, literally 99% of the fan base were against it. Of course it's a reason to criticize the club, the writing was on the wall there and we still pushed through and now are stuck with him.

There's a reason why Chelsea and other clubs did not want to give him a 3 year contract and we were the only suckers that did.

Absolute load of tosh. The only thing that people were against was the 3 year deal, and that's the only way we couldve got him. As a player and coming off the season he had for Chelsea nobody can deny it was a good addition to the squad. End of story bro, look at the season he had for Chelsea and tell me its a **** signing at the time. You cant.

As for Cedric it's different to the players you mentioned due to Cedric being a competent backup at full back. Mustafi isn't a competent anything.

Let's be real you'll just say anything to bash Arteta and the club because you have an agenda. Why not just chill out, support the club, stop being a poo bag.
 

Blood on the Tracks

AG's best friend, role model and mentor.
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Rice
To me when it comes to Willian, I was mildly pro the signing at the time. My gripe was more with the contract length than anything.

At the time we signed Willian we did need a more experienced wide man / AM. Who were our options there? We didn't have a real 10 in the squad. There was a real lack of experience in the squad in terms of wide men. Saka, Nelson were both kids. Ødegaard wasn't here. Pepe lacked experience / consistency. ESR was injured / not considered anything more than a promising kid. Martinelli was a kid with a long term injury. All kids apart from Pepe who was still a developing player himself. Experience was needed.

Adding a high quality, PL experienced player like Willian to the mix did make sense at the time, I'd strongly argue.

It's fair to criticise Arteta for signing him in hindsight and Willian for his performances. He's been underwhelming overall, but not awful. That's my issue.

People massaging his signing on fee into his wages to make it look worse and saying some of his assists aren't 'real' because they were easy passes is where it gets silly and agenda driven.

Every decent player gets a big signing on fee when they move on a free. Most don't get it added into their weekly wage by the fans.

I could also go through Özil, Fabregas' and Cazorla's assists and start knocking off any simple passes off their record, but that would be ridiculous, the same way it should be for Willian.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
Absolute load of tosh. The only thing that people were against was the 3 year deal, and that's the only way we couldve got him. As a player and coming off the season he had for Chelsea nobody can deny it was a good addition to the squad. End of story bro, look at the season he had for Chelsea and tell me its a **** signing at the time. You cant.

As for Cedric it's different to the players you mentioned due to Cedric being a competent backup at full back. Mustafi isn't a competent anything.

Let's be real you'll just say anything to bash Arteta and the club because you have an agenda. Why not just chill out, support the club, stop being a poo bag.

I can tell you it would be a **** signing because every sign pointed it to being a **** signing. No matter how you dress it up, giving him a 3 year deal on whatever the wages was a bad call, hindsight or not. When Chelsea dug their heels in about the contract length, it was just confirmation for me and for me others.

FInally, I'm the one of first ones praising him when he gets it right after a win in this thread and to infer that I'm not supporting the club is actually quite laughable. I was even defending him when the stuff from The Sun came out that he'd lost the dressing room :lol:

But yeah, you'll ignore all that like you usually do. Hey, at least you're stoping at "poo bag" now, would hate to see you go into your passive agressive mode and get banned again.
 

Blankety Blank

emoji merchant
Transition backwards it seems. If the Kroenke's want to safeguard their investment, they would be wise to replace Arteta and also revamp the management team at Arsenal.
I strongly disagree it's a transition they need to back arteta and see where the club is in a couple of years. Sometimes u need to take a step back and see the big picture.
Not a fan of the kroenkes but at least they aren't gonna listen to reactionary entitled ranting fools on the internet. If these sort had their wish Arteta would have been potted in Nov and we may have got the Southampton or Wolves manager.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
At the end of the day the club is paying Willian the equivalent of 220kpw. I’m pretty sure footballers get paid monthly, the weekly wage thing is just tradition.

You can spin it however you want but the fact of the matter is that Willian is costing us 34M.

11.4M a year
900k a month
220k a week.

It doesn’t matter how much of it is sign-on, how much of it is base salary. Arsenal FC are giving him the figures quoted above. Figures we can all agree he doesn’t deserve.
 

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
To me when it comes to Willian, I was mildly pro the signing at the time. My gripe was more with the contract length than anything.

At the time we signed Willian we did need a more experienced wide man / AM. Who were our options there? We didn't have a real 10 in the squad. There was a real lack of experience in the squad in terms of wide men. Saka, Nelson were both kids. Ödegaard wasn't here. Pepe lacked experience / consistency. ESR was injured / not considered anything more than a promising kid. Martinelli was a kid with a long term injury. All kids apart from Pepe who was still a developing player himself. Experience was needed.

Adding a high quality, PL experienced player like Willian to the mix did make sense at the time, I'd strongly argue.

It's fair to criticise Arteta for signing him in hindsight and Willian for his performances. He's been underwhelming overall, but not awful. That's my issue.

People massaging his signing on fee into his wages to make it look worse and saying some of his assists aren't 'real' because they were easy passes is where it gets silly and agenda driven.

Every decent player gets a big signing on fee when they move on a free. Most don't get it added into their weekly wage by the fans.

I could also go through Özil, Fabregas' and Cazorla's assists and start knocking off any simple passes off their record, but that would be ridiculous, the same way it should be for Willian.

The assist thing is silly, tbh. Yeah, KT did a lot of the work for one of them, as did Auba... but Lacazette made his last goal and it was a simple pass from Nico. If you're counting one, you have to count the others imo.

What bugs me with Willian is he doesn't really pass the eye test. He's had two games where he looked the part, Fullham and Leicester, but those were the exceptions to the rule of him being mediocre at best..

They way he's been playing is just not what the team needs, he doesn't run, is not really taking on players... Big L for the club.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
To me when it comes to Willian, I was mildly pro the signing at the time. My gripe was more with the contract length than anything.

At the time we signed Willian we did need a more experienced wide man / AM. Who were our options there? We didn't have a real 10 in the squad. There was a real lack of experience in the squad in terms of wide men. Saka, Nelson were both kids. Ödegaard wasn't here. Pepe lacked experience / consistency. ESR was injured / not considered anything more than a promising kid. Martinelli was a kid with a long term injury. All kids apart from Pepe who was still a developing player himself. Experience was needed.

Adding a high quality, PL experienced player like Willian to the mix did make sense at the time, I'd strongly argue.

It's fair to criticise Arteta for signing him in hindsight and Willian for his performances. He's been underwhelming overall, but not awful. That's my issue.

People massaging his signing on fee into his wages to make it look worse and saying some of his assists aren't 'real' because they were easy passes is where it gets silly and agenda driven.

Every decent player gets a big signing on fee when they move on a free. Most don't get it added into their weekly wage by the fans.

I could also go through Özil, Fabregas' and Cazorla's assists and start knocking off any simple passes off their record, but that would be ridiculous, the same way it should be for Willian.
My issue here is that Arteta seems to have been caught by surprise by ESR, Saka and Pepe’s development this season.

Is that the guy we want managing us? Somebody who doesn’t know what he has and just looks to buy without looking at internal solutions?

Maybe he was just unlucky but there seems to be a theme of him now knowing what he’s got and/or giving up on players prematurely.

We’ve discussed the assist thing before anyway, if you end up with the most assists in the league/your team it’s not by fluke. As @El Duderino its more about how he’s failed the eye test 99% of the time.
 

Blankety Blank

emoji merchant
There definitely has been a culture at Arsenal to fix, but the problem is it is fine for Pep or Mourinho at super-rich clubs that can throw hundreds of millions away here and there by marginalising big assets, flogging them off, and replacing them with expensive replacements in a compressed period of time. At other clubs, including ours, there is a pragmatic balance to be found. We can’t afford to depreciate assets through an aggressive pathway without consequences felt financially in a way City or United wouldn’t.

A lot of this I think is minimising depreciation of assets you want to get rid of mid-season. Quietly just get things done ruthlessly and efficiently during the transfer windows. You can see how Mourinho is struggling at Spuds because he would like to turnover around six players in his first team squad asap, but he can’t, and his lack of flexibility is resulting in a nightmare for Spuds where assets have been depreciated left rotting on the bench a lot. I’m not saying Arteta is as bad as Mourinho in terms of rigidity, but it is the subtlety of understanding Arsenal cannot do exactly the same things a club like City can.
I think that is a fair comment in some ways but we need a change of culture. Arteta has tried to do that to best of his ability and has not replaced the whole side and been able to spend massive money. I think he has been quite ruthless though he has also tried to work with the players he has like xhaka Pepe. He had brought in some decent additions while also bringing on the youth. Even the much maligned Willian in a poor season has produced more than Özil did for the last 18 months.
I think he is doing a decent if not spectacular job given the hand he was dealt while having a vision for the future.
There are few managers in the prem I would want to swap for him tbh.
I doubt many others would hacev
 

Blood on the Tracks

AG's best friend, role model and mentor.
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Rice
The assist thing is silly, tbh. Yeah, KT did a lot of the work for one of them, as did Auba... but Lacazette made his last goal and it was a simple pass from Nico. If you're counting one, you have to count the others imo.

What bugs me with Willian is he doesn't really pass the eye test. He's had two games where he looked the part, Fullham and Leicester, but those were the exceptions to the rule of him being mediocre at best..

They way he's been playing is just not what the team needs, he doesn't run, is not really taking on players... Big L for the club.

I'm sure you've seen more of Willian over the course of his career than me with him being Brazilian. So I'd be interested in your perspective.

From what I've seen of him over the years and at Arsenal he's pretty much the antithesis of what I think of as a Brazilian winger.

He's almost robotic in the things he does on the ball to me, there's not a lot of flair or individuality there to me, so I find him quite a boring player to watch, irrespective of his qualities.

His CV and everything speaks for itself but for me I've always viewed him as a player who's stats exceed his performances generally. It's weird.

How highly is he thought of in Brazil?
 
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