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Mikel Arteta: Top Of The Klopps

Batman

Head of the Wayne foundation for benching Nketiah

Country: USA

Player:Saliba
Thats actually a very good point. Further confirmation that Saliba probably never will play a single minute for us.
Yup. He'll go to a bigger club and become one of the best CBs in the world after we sell him at a loss. 😞
 

Farzad Stoned

Self-appointed Deprogrammer for the Cult of Mik 🟥

Country: USA

Player:Havertz
My point is Arteta is playing his own complex defensive positional play because he wants to, nothing to do with any past seasons.
I think any idiot coming into the team he inherited would of focused his buys and energy on fixing a broken defense. How good Wenger’s defense was 3 or 4 years before he took over is really not the issue
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
I think any idiot coming into the team he inherited would of focused his buys and energy on fixing a broken defense. How good Wenger’s defense was 3 or 4 years before he took over is really not the issue
He’s got completely new players so there’s nothing to fix and he’s still playing very defensively.
 

Farzad Stoned

Self-appointed Deprogrammer for the Cult of Mik 🟥

Country: USA

Player:Havertz
He’s got completely new players so there’s nothing to fix and he’s still playing very defensively.
Don’t know feel like you are ducking the fact that he inherited a poor defense and has improved it, especially if you look from the second half of last season. Every pundit was scratching their head about Ramsdale only Edu and Arteta scouted that correctly plus Arteta had the balls to pull the shirt from Leno real quick. Gabriel in my mind is best Central defender we have had in a while. Yes they spent money, if he can get Kroenke to spend and spend smartly that is a plus not a minus.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
There should be some sign of creativity in attacking play in his third season. He’s not going to progress without it though.

I agree that I don’t love the formations but I think we’re still light on a couple of players.

I don’t think we have a chance creator outside of Saka and the midfield is an issue when Xhaka is injured.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
I agree that I don’t love the formations but I think we’re still light on a couple of players.

I don’t think we have a chance creator outside of Saka and the midfield is an issue when Xhaka is injured.
I don’t think it’s a personnel problem, it’s more about patterns of play. Take your point about Xhaka, but even with him in we haven’t created much.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
I don’t think it’s a personnel problem, it’s more about patterns of play. Take your point about Xhaka, but even with him in we haven’t created much.

I think I’ve seen us look to play more on the front foot against lower opposition recently.

I think we’ve got a lopsided and inexperienced squad and sometimes we play like that. Arteta still isn’t really the finished article but I feel a bit more optimistic.

We actively look to press smaller teams I’ve noticed.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Don’t know feel like you are ducking the fact that he inherited a poor defense and has improved it, especially if you look from the second half of last season. Every pundit was scratching their head about Ramsdale only Edu and Arteta scouted that correctly plus Arteta had the balls to pull the shirt from Leno real quick. Gabriel in my mind is best Central defender we have had in a while. Yes they spent money, if he can get Kroenke to spend and spend smartly that is a plus not a minus.
But he didn’t improve Unai’s defence. Unai only lost 10 games in his full season finishing 5th, Arteta lost 13 in his full season finishing 8th, so he made the defence worse.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
We will finish top 6?
Yes, always been quite, quite confident of that. The question is if we will finish 4th. If I felt more strongly about Arteta's performance as a manager to date (setting aside team building, personnel decisions, and getting players on side and believing in the project, which of course are an important part of management but not the aspects I'm referring to here) I'd be 95% sure. As it is if I were a betting man I'd bet on us for 4th but I wouldn't put the odds at more than 55-60%.

I see the games so i dont need stats. We are not playing a sustainable football.
Well, as stated, after 13 games of a harder than usual schedule, we are not far off the league position the best underlying stat we have suggests we should be at. There are certainly major areas of improvement but opponents have to be taken into account. Stats like the pressing resistance / pressing efficacy graph that @AmericanGooner posted are of course exposed to these facts...that is, playing the likes of at City, at Liverpool, Chelsea (at Brentford, at Brighton, Palace, at Leicester to a lesser extent) bias this information in a certain direction, even if I think our performances in those matches are quite improveable. We will have a more complete picture with all of these metrics, and with the eye test (it's no coincidence that we see our football looking more sustainable when our last 4 matches have included home to villa, home to watford, and home to Newcastle, and that the curve is trending upward as well having weathered the early season crisis and seeing the various new signings begin to bed in) at the halfway mark.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
I think I’ve seen us look to play more on the front foot against lower opposition recently.

I think we’ve got a lopsided and inexperienced squad and sometimes we play like that. Arteta still isn’t really the finished article but I feel a bit more optimistic.

We actively look to press smaller teams I’ve noticed.
If you look at that pressing chart I posted from the Athletic a couple of pages ago, our pressing is the second worst in the league, behind Norwich but above Newcastle. I’m not seeing your optimism, but acknowledge he’s brought in young players and is bucking all his stats by over performing his league position.
 

Paperino

It’s Timo Time

Country: Sweden
Don’t know feel like you are ducking the fact that he inherited a poor defense and has improved it, especially if you look from the second half of last season. Every pundit was scratching their head about Ramsdale only Edu and Arteta scouted that correctly plus Arteta had the balls to pull the shirt from Leno real quick. Gabriel in my mind is best Central defender we have had in a while. Yes they spent money, if he can get Kroenke to spend and spend smartly that is a plus not a minus.

Kroenke dont spend money. Can you get that through your head?
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
If you look at that pressing chart I posted from the Athletic a couple of pages ago, our pressing is the second worst in the league, behind Norwich but above Newcastle. I’m not seeing your optimism, but acknowledge he’s brought in young players and is bucking all his stats by over performing his league position.

We’re not consistently pressing I agree. I’ve seen more of it than say last year when it was absolutely non-existent.

It’s not the only way to win games but I think overall we’ve tried to pen some of the smaller teams in since the shambles that was the Palace game.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
xGA/ g

Em*ry:
18/19 -- 1.51
19/20 -- 1.62

Arteta:
19/20 --1.56
20/21 -- 1.14

In their first full season as manager, Arteta's Arsenal averaged a whole .37 xG against less (which comes to a difference of 43.23 to 57.30 over a full season, 14 goals), and Arteta picking up at half-season always improved on the disaster Em*ry had left him with immediately, yet...
But he didn’t improve Unai’s defence. Unai only lost 10 games in his full season finishing 5th, Arteta lost 13 in his full season finishing 8th, so he made the defence worse.
you still have people making false claims like this.

This is the stuff I can't stand. Use some levels of critique for some things and others for others.

But, in short, I know what poster I am dealing with, and I knew the risks of clicking the 'show ignored content' button.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
No Arteta in person has good points beyond the let's have faith in the young team and manager, you can see the tripe some here are trying, go backwards on this thread a year ago and read the exact same stuff. That's a valid opinion to have sure, but it just doesn't add any insight.

Call me crazy, but someone who said we would spend significant money and have a good season (not sure the extent of his predictions, but I'm guessing EL spots while not ruling out CL?) compared to the overwhelming consensus here (not spend money, probably not finish in European spots, which then changed quickly to mid-table or worse after the first three games) was adding more insight and balance than the rest (the consensus).

I'm curious what you mean by the 'same tripe here people are trying.' When I am looking for a not completely biased analysis of Arteta in this thread, or something resembling balance and not allowing emotions to completely bias judgment and discussion, I never find it in the Arteta outers, with perhaps the exception of @Trilly. I have only ever seen it with the people who have more fluid opinions like @CaseUteinberger or @MikelHadADream or @Blood on the Tracks, or indeed, people who have always stayed in the Arteta camp (I don't know who that is? Maybe Hairspray? I'm not sure if it even applies to me, considering I would've seen it justifiable to sack him at the end of last season and hire Potter, ten Hag, or Gallardo, and have consistently held significant doubts about whether he will become good enough in the end / make good on his potential).
 

Paperino

It’s Timo Time

Country: Sweden
Call me crazy, but someone who said we would spend significant money and have a good season (not sure the extent of his predictions, but I'm guessing EL spots while not ruling out CL?) compared to the overwhelming consensus here (not spend money, probably not finish in European spots, which then changed quickly to mid-table or worse after the first three games) was adding more insight and balance than the rest (the consensus).

You do realise that this season isnt over yet, right? Many games left, dude. And no member here said we wouldnt spend any money.
 

AbouCuéllar

Author of A-M essays 📚
You do realise that this season isnt over yet, right? Many games left, dude. And no member here said we wouldnt spend any money.
Yes, but I think he was one of the only people who really believed and was outspoken about us making significant investment this summer. That's why I included that part.
 

mirrorstares

Active Member
The predictions were for last season, not this one.

Don't know where you're getting the consensus was that this season we weren't going to spend money either, it was obvious that Arteta's project was going to get investment after he undeservedly survived the last season trainwreck. It was a shock being Europe's biggest spenders but nobody predicted that anyway.

From what I saw a fair number of people also agreed that top 6 is reachable because we will have little injuries and a rested team due to no Europe, so that was not a crazy prediction either. Right now though we're banking on most of our competition being unstable (Sp**s awful appointment in Nuno and Villa falling out without Grealish were predictable, Leicester and Ronaldo ruining United were a nice surprise), not really on top 6 quality football.
 

Paperino

It’s Timo Time

Country: Sweden
Yes, but I think he was one of the only people who really believed and was outspoken about us making significant investment this summer. That's why I included that part.

The guy/girl was consistently overoptimistic all the time. It was his/her theme, not a sign of intelligence.
 

Blankety Blank

emoji merchant
Squads are built over several years, so a spurt in spending over one or two years still doesn’t get you quality in all areas of the team, or depth for injury problems. Everton have never gone beyond 7th for squad investment. You’re not going to win the league with that squad. And Mourinho has very little experience of a club spending 6th in the Prem, where he can’t buy players he wants. It’s a difficult job. Wenger was exceptional getting continuous top 4 with a team spending so little but fans never understood and mocked him with Mourinho.

I see no evidence that the league is any harder than it was. It’s a myth.
I agree Arsène was exceptional getting constant top 4 but I say its due to the fact that the league got harder that really made his achievement exceptional
The fans & tossers like Mourinho showed him little respect.
Top 4 became a a trophy because in later years it was so much tougher to get.
As i said on the 'Is The Prem tougher than it used to be thread'
Its pretty unequivocal the wealth figures are there in black & white, Its not even a debate in all honesty.

If you dont accept that i respectfully suggest you are not seeing things clearly for some reason?

Arsène has one of the the best minds in football & is also an economist, he was acutely aware the Prem was getting harder & the way things were going.
He probably saw it earlier than anyone.

I agree that Mourinho at Sp**s & Carlo at Everton should not be challenging for titles or even top 4 but it seems rather disingenuous that you give recognised top experienced managers leeway in these jobs but refuse do the same for a rookie manager at Arsenal?

As you correctly say squads are built over several years so thats why i say Arteta needs time to build his squad. Arsène got over 20 years to build squads.
Arteta hasnt even had 2!

Unfortunately i feel people refuse to accept squad building take time.
 

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