Mikel Arteta: Aston La Vista To The Title?

[MikelHadADream]

After this summer window, where it looks likely we will be spending over 100m net again, Arteta's NET spend over 3 years will be over 300m! We should be expecting a serious title challenge let alone bloody top 4.

 

[Makingtrax]

After this summer window, where it looks likely we will be spending over 100m net again, Arteta's NET spend over 3 years will be over 300m! We should be expecting a serious title challenge let alone bloody top 4.

After Covid problems and no European income, how can we possibly be out investing City. Where's the money coming from?

 

[MikelHadADream]

After Covid problems and no European income, how can we possibly be out investing City. Where's the money coming from?

Yeah, you'd think the Kroenke's would want to see a return on investment relative to what the other teams have done. Wonder how much klopp spent at Liverpool before he got then established as a CL club...

 

[Sapient Hawk]

After this summer window, where it looks likely we will be spending over 100m net again, Arteta's NET spend over 3 years will be over 300m! We should be expecting a serious title challenge let alone bloody top 4.

The man has made his fanbase accept finishing 8th twice as a necessary evil in his master plan. Spent a quarter billion pounds & missed out on the CL.

If he stays here for the length of his contract, he'll easily pass the half billion threshold & the team will still lose to championship level teams in the FA Cup.

 

[ArsenesCoatMaker]

Wenger finished 6th in his last season and Emery finished 5th and got us to a final. That's stability and slight improvement despite the flaws.

I think this argument ignores the diminishing squad and XI vastly

Wenger finished 6th with Özil playing in his prime, Auba in his prime, Alexis in his prime for 6 months, Ramsey playing well and Mkhitaryan/Iwobi playing well. Kosceilny also was still there and performing.

Emery had much the same, minus the Alexis loss in his first season and except Özil was past his best. It should be noted that our games when Ramsey didn't start this season were mid table level of consistency. I think we won 2.5 points a game with Ramsey and something like 1.5 points a game without him.

So we lose Kosceilny, Monreal, Ramsey with Özil and Auba in the retirement home. Then Emery takes us to mid-table and we're conceeding 30 shots a game against Watford. We were in dire straights.

What Arteta has had to cope with a mid table squad quality and since then Özil and Auba permenantly checking out or simply being past their prime and Lacazette's legs completely giving way on him. He took over a vastly diminished squad way past without a striker capable of performing.

TLDR Arteta took over a mid table team full of pensioners and bums and where we finished in prior seasons is not reflective of what that squad was capable of. Taking us to 5th is an achievement and fixing the defense and midfield is an achievement.

 

[MikelHadADream]

The man has made his fanbase accept finishing 8th twice as a necessary evil in his master plan. Spent a quarter billion pounds & missed out on the CL.

If he stays here for the length of his contract, he'll easily pass the half billion threshold & the team will still lose to championship level teams in the FA Cup.

I'm not even in the camp where I think it was all rosey pre Arteta. I really didn't like most of the players and would happily have seen the back of a lot of him.

My gripe with him is he is obsessed with replacing keepers and defensive players because I think he's obsessed with build up, and neglected the most important area of the pitch, the final third. He's made far too many ego signings.

 

[Penn_]

I'm sure we all feel as if the game is lost as soon as we fall behind, so I had a look at the statistics.

We are ranked 19th for points gained after falling behind. Winning back just four points, the same as Norwich.

 

[dka1]

TLDR Arteta took over a mid table team full of pensioners and bums and where we finished in prior seasons is not reflective of what that squad was capable of. Taking us to 5th is an achievement and fixing the defense and midfield is an achievement.

Oh goodness I think that's an exaggeration, an unnecessary one at that.

But I suppose making over the top statements is the currency of this forum.

I'd say our team was in a bad place when he took over, sure. But Auba and Laca at the time (especially Auba) were still near the peak of their powers.

We had an emergent Saka, Martinelli and Smith Rowe (the latter of which Arteta opted not to use until the mid-way point of the following season).

We had acquired Tierney by that time, and whilst David Luiz is not a personal favourite of mine, people keep reiterating how important he actually was to us.

Definitely not perfect, definitely needed additions. Midtable? Naa I'd say 6/7th.

Plus if people are really honest it's not even the 19/20 season that was so much of an issue because Arteta took over at a turbulent time.

However, we made enough additions that we shouldn't have faltered so badly during the 20/21 season and that's where I start to have serious issues with Tets.

Plus it's other aspects of his management that are worrying, like his poor man management.

If his man management alone was better and if he didn't have a habit of unnecessarily alienating a lot of players I think people would be more forgiving of him, but now that's spilling into a different topic.

 

[MartiSaka]

On what basis do you disagree? The decline during late-era Wenger into Em*ry is very well documented and easy to demonstrate statistically, and a reverse in that decline since Arteta arrived is also easy to document.

Whether Arteta is doing a good enough job is a big question, but whether he has stopped the decline and left the club better than where he picked it up is certainly an easy question to answer and rather irrefutable.

re: the question of if this is our first year of the rebuild or the concept of the rebuild started this year, meh, I'd have more qualms with that statement, though it could be said that this is the first year that the rebuild has occurred in earnest, though that does not alleviate potential blame for Arteta (because he has chosen to operate in this fashion, and it has always been about striking a balance between stopping the rot and making a true rebuild of the club for an interesting project with potential, and certainly we can debate about how well he has struck that balance or not...and in short, the rebuild starting this year as the poster says doesn't really mean anything, it's a rather arbitrary statement which doesn't really bring much to the conversation for me).

Where are the statistics that show Arteta has reversed any decline? what a load of crap.

 

[MartiSaka]

1) Have no idea how you can make a good, or convincing argument for this, tbh.
2) How does that make any sense, given the data I present above? Really a quite confusing statement, tbh.

What's really telling for me is that all of the people pushing the anti-Arteta agenda magically airbrush Em*ry's 19-20 performance or the actual state of the club when Arteta picked it up was (which is of course, directly related to Em*ry's 19-20 performance). It's really, really quite baffling to me, and amazing that people can feel comfortable completely comfortable removing such massively relevant and signficant inputs from the argument, and feeling that their argument is still coherent.

To me, like I say, it's really quite telling, and can tell you a good deal about who is a serious poster, who is someone really considering the facts and the argument, and who is just looking to confirm their biases and pre-conceived feelings.

Anyways, typical of my arguments in these threads, I started mentioning a major concern about Arteta (how we can be dominated so roundly by lower sides like Palace, Brighton, or Newcastle in full halves), to offering counter-arguments to radical arguments that are rather hard to accept or give any reasonable support. Which is typically what happens. It is hard to have any kind of interesting discussion when it is foam at the mouth times in this thread, or really even in the best of times.

Emery wasn't the low point of the decline, Arteta hit that point in the first half of last season. You look at the stats in that period and they were relegation level. I don't understand how you can believe what you are saying.

 

[SA Gunner]

Is this your way of saying you won’t be coming back?

I know @drippin runs away when things get bad and @SA Gunner took a hiatus. However I always respected the fact that you stayed and fought.

Needed that hiatus to be fair. Was starting to just fight in this place and that’s not what I’m here for.

But I’m back and back at it again, so yeah .

 

[Makingtrax]

TLDR Arteta took over a mid table team full of pensioners and bums and where we finished in prior seasons is not reflective of what that squad was capable of. Taking us to 5th is an achievement and fixing the defense and midfield is an achievement.

TLDR: Arteta hasn’t fixed our defence, we lost 13 games. He’s finished an average of 7th in 3 seasons and Conte took Sp**s back to CL in his first. And Arteta zealots can only justify our very poor performances in the last 3 seasons by rubbishing our previous 2 managers to pretend he’s had a lot of clearing up to do. Lol.

 

[Taxi Driver]

You see, it's quite simple: Arteta has improved us in the "dimensions" that are not quantifiable. Progress in which, naturally, completely offsets the problems in areas that can be objectively measured (points, goals scored, goals against etc.).

 

[Macho]

You see, it's quite simple: Arteta has improved us in the "dimensions" that are not quantifiable. Progress in which, naturally, completely offsets the problems in areas that can be objectively measured (points, goals scored, goals against etc.).

Yeah we need the xg equivalent for culture and expected lateness essentially.

 

[Makingtrax]

Yeah we need the xg equivalent for culture and expected lateness essentially.

Don’t forget he’s been held back by all the ‘bums and pensioners’ from previous squad mismanagement.

 

[Penn_]

Try to keep a balanced view but those that are clearly in Arteta’s camp always post nonsense based on pure emotion.

You often hear how Arteta fixed our defence and midfield. So our young prodigy took a team that finished 5th, fixed two key areas and took two years to finish...5th.

All I want is a sane reason, with evidence that doesn't boil down to young team, like these players, connected.

Make it make sense.

 

[Arsenal1508]

Very clever to announce new contract before we go on lose another 3 in a row. Don't think they would have had the balls to do it end of season.

 

[Oxeki]

The goalpost movement is unmatched ngl
Weren't some sexuals saying that Emery had better players than Arteta that's why he got 70 points and EL final? Now the narrative is that Arteta inherited búms from him?

 

[SA Gunner]

Very clever to announce new contract before we go on lose another 3 in a row. Don't think they would have had the balls to do it end of season.

It doesnt matter when the contract extension was announced when Europa was secured, as its clear from their actions that a return to Europe was a goal for this season, and was achieved.

Missing out on the CL is a failure yes, based on the raised standard by the team. I dont think we should view this performance and extension as some sort of diminished standards by the club, but rather a good base of youngsters built, who are capable of performing together.

We now see where the team is short, so the next stage is to attend to that in the transfer window.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Surely the sexuals have to at least acknowledge that no matter how hard they try, Arteta simply still has a lot of convincing to do. We had a good run from mid December onward for a few months very much, but Emery also had a 22 game unbeaten run and took us to an EL final. What has been seen since that run has been very worrying. The collapse in not only results but general performance has been almost incredible. We lost the ability to string a few passes together.