You deserve some medal or something for typing all that out.Just jumping in on that part here, because I've never had any Arteta-Neutral or Arteta-Positive come in with counter-arguments to any of my posts below, so I'd be curious if you think there's nothing about these that makes you go, "huh, maybe Arteta isn't the guy".
A lot of his own quotes are in this overview, and they go in many directions, and points fingers in even more.
And to add to that, this doesn't even include some of the other dodgy decisions he's made as there's only so much space.
When we lost to an injury-ridden Newcastle team with a horrible performance while only missing a few starters. That was something we've seen several times with Arteta. Lose some of the main players and we crumble. With just the 1 tournament since January as well we still somehow looked depleted of energy at the end. The lack of rotation we saw at large during the season is Arteta's responsibility, and likewise the decision to banish/loan/release so many players in January with no cover was also with his green-light.
There's the whole "culture" topic that's been resurfacing lately.
Arteta has definitely played a part in that illusion being created.
In reality, we have released and frozen out any player who strayed from Arteta's ideology, and yet, now what 2½-3years into his tenure we have both fixed the culture as well as realized we need to bring in consultants and work on "The Arsenal Way". The way we have handled (or not handled) disputes in the squad has at times been a farce. The Auba situation that you discussed before as well being a pretty clear one, where a player, captain and all, was publicly ostracised and subsequently had his value completely tanked to the point you'd think he was a 40yo striker who could barely move anymore. Paid him off to leave and then he performs well straight away at his next destination.
That has to be something that you judge Arteta's character and manager ability on.
Part of his job is literally to manage the squad. And using the media against certain players to build agendas, and paying off "trouble-makers" is not usually something people would call good managing.
This one is long, and only some of the parts in there are actually relevant to this post. Some of them are just either jokes or whatever, bu some of them are quite interesting again as they show stats, Arteta's comments after performances and how again he wanted to make it clear that Pepe was the reason we lost a game where Pepe got red-carded. When the same happened with Xhaka getting a red card it was a very different tune from Arteta.
Then there could be made further arguments and talk on many other points around how he handles things at the club, and how despite a full squad having changed the team to a vast extent, just look at the team when Arteta arrived, and the team almost 2 years after
And yet there are still people who have repeatedly excused him for not having his own players and that we need to give him more time to implement his playing style.
The excuse of young players comes up too, but when he arrived he tried to get experienced players in, and that blew up in his face at large, so a sudden change to youth was made, and that has not exactly been a clear success either.
I don't really mean to get too involved in this again, because it's a topic where little will change each's opinion, but curious if you still don't find anything thought provoking looking this through, even if you only glance at it.
I got caught up in it and posted half a novel the other day in response to a genuine question how Arteta's been underperforming. Literally no point to it when any and all arguments are ignored and the nonsense unfolding before our eyes for over two years is misconstrued or distorted to the point that there's something which clearly isn't there.
Not going to lie I try to question myself on my own views but I've watched too much football over the years - especially outside of Arsenal where clubs with a lot less do a lot more - to try to twist myself into seeing anything worthwhile with Arteta, and that's ignoring his odious character.