Mikel Arteta: Aston La Vista To The Title?

[Bagels]

I still think the top teams rely on a CF to be the focal point, just look at Haaland who has made a real difference this season with his goals. It was the same as Benzema last season who pretty much dragged Real Madrid with his goals at key moments during their CL run. The main issue is there’s a lack of top strikers in the game in this modern day.

I honestly would love to see if anyone could name the top 10 CF’s in the 22/23 season. Expecting some underwhelming names in there.

Haaland actually seems like a bit of an exception, for City themselves and every other top team in the prem.

More than Benzema, who has come to play the way he does now out of necessity, leading an otherwise young front line that doesn’t score a TON of goals, I think of Lewa. Every time I watch Bayern play, he has a one track mind for goals.

Interestingly about Benzema though, was that he was a striker who really did sacrifice for a quite a while from an output perspective to fulfill his role on the team (thinking of the Ronaldo era). He always had this in him, his tactical role as a striker just changed.

Maybe he is actually a good example of what I describe, just in reverse lol.

As time goes on I suspect we will begin to re-evaluate what we consider a top striker. Think this is already happening with CBs for example.

 

[Batman]

Haaland actually seems like a bit of an exception, for City themselves and every other top team in the prem.

More than Benzema, who has come to play the way he does now out of necessity, leading an otherwise young front line that doesn’t score a TON of goals, I think of Lewa. Every time I watch Bayern play, he has a one track mind for goals.

Interestingly about Benzema though, was that he was a striker who really did sacrifice for a quite a while from an output perspective to fulfill his role on the team (thinking of the Ronaldo era). He always had this in him, his tactical role as a striker just changed.

Maybe he is actually a good example of what I describe, just in reverse lol.

As time goes on I suspect we will begin to re-evaluate what we consider a top striker. Think this is already happening with CBs for example.

It's been the age of the wide forward for a while now. George Weah and Romario brought the striker outside the box. R9 and Thierry took that and made the striker someone who could not just operate outside the box but do so with winger pace and dribbling ability but the physical stature and strength usually reserved for strikers. Messi and CR7 then basically became the first modern half space assassins putting up numbers we've never seen before from players who aren't out and out strikers and today that's still where most of the goals are coming from unless teams do have that outlier of a Haaland, Lewa, Kane sort. I don't think Haaland is going to usher in the return of the big 9 by himself. I still think that with the game becoming more and more positionless, the guys like Mbappe and Vini Jr who can move across the line if needed will remain the next evolutionary step of goal scorers as skill at pace is the hardest thing to try and nullify tactically but it will be interesting to see how the game evolves.

 

[Bagels]

It's been the age of the wide forward for a while now. George Weah and Romario brought the striker outside the box. R9 and Thierry took that and made the striker someone who could not just operate outside the box but do so with winger pace and dribbling ability but the physical stature and strength usually reserved for strikers. Messi and CR7 then basically became the first modern half space assassins putting up numbers we've never seen before from players who aren't out and out strikers and today that's still where most of the goals are coming from unless teams do have that outlier of a Haaland, Lewa, Kane sort. I don't think Haaland is going to usher in the return of the big 9 by himself. I still think that with the game becoming more and more positionless, the guys like Mbappe and Vini Jr who can move across the line if needed will remain the next evolutionary step of goal scorers as skill at pace is the hardest thing to try and nullify tactically but it will be interesting to see how the game evolves.

Agree with your analysis, I see it generally moving the same way.

Not only is it harder to nullify from an individual player perspective, it scales to the entire team.

If there is a single fulcrum, from which all goals are expected to come, it can be easier to try to address that than if the goals can come from multiple areas on the pitch from multiple players. We are actually a good example of this.

Didn’t we just break our league goals scored in a season? Our striker had 11 goals, but 4 players into the double digits.

That being said, goals are goals. Think there will always be exceptions, just as there were in the past.

 

[Kav]

2nd. We were second. Dear God.

Can't even call it a typo...Here is a Wikipedia link for the summary of the season: 2015–16 Premier League - Wikipedia

Arsenal: 2.1 PPM until weekday 20. Ended up at 1.8. Drew the next 2-3 games and lost a lot more later.
Leicester: 2.0 PPM until weekday 20. Ended up at 2.1. Lost only once the rest of the season.

If we had maintained our form for the rest of the season, we would have been champions easily. Especially considering that we went back to 1st in Jan IIRC.

Sp**s were never really a threat...just hanging by their teeth...never actually got into 1st. we were 1st for long periods of time. It was between us and Leicester


Yup, since he (and you) can't seem to read or recall the final league position.

Carrots are good for the eyes too... Vitamin D. Good ****.

That was a typo but it doesn’t appear obvious to you, I’m not surprised because you are the same person who says we lost the league at match day 20.

Right.

 

[krackpot]

Hmm, my eyes are good enough to see that your brain is lacking in any form of critical thought. A secondary school education is good for the brain, and for developing maturity too.

Also, who is talking about the final league position you absolute wet wipe.

Just because we finished that season 2nd in the table, doesn't automatically imply we "lost the league" to Leicester ("losing the league" in this context meaning that we built up a lead in 1st and then lost it at some point fairly close to the end of the season or competed closely with Leicester till the end of the season; we didn't).

That was Kav's point, we didn't lose the league because we never lead at any point close to the run in or we were never close to Leicester leading to the run in.

Let me quote what he said, and let's see if your two brain cells can piece together what he said and understand it:



To really "lose a league" to another team you've got to actually remain in contention till late in the season. Otherwise you could say that we "lost it" to City in 2013/14.

Similar to 15/16, we topped the table by match day 20 with 45 points. But by match day 31 we were already 7 points behind City. Also, bear in mind that I don't think Transfermrkt's "match day", takes into account how the games in hand would've made things look.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would say we were even close in 2013/14; sure, we started strong but we folded like a pack of cards after Liverpool away.

Similarly in 2015/16 we topped the table by match day 20 with 42 points. By match day 23 we lost the lead to Leicester and never regained it. By match day 29 we were already 8 points behind Leicester and I definitely remember being out by then.

Sp*rs came from the rear (giggidy), towards the run in and were on Leicester's tails only being 5 points behind on match day 34, but I wouldn't even say they "lost it" to Leicester as they were chasing them but never overtook them and fell away by match day 35.

I was always talking about the final league position, you abhorrent cactus tentacle.

We were in contention. we were the only team that beat them twice. When Welbeck scored THAT goal, I really thought they would fall away and we had a big chance because the big teams including $ity were comfortably behind us.

That was a typo but it doesn’t appear obvious to you, I’m not surprised because you are the same person who says we lost the league at match day 20.

Right.

Well, I stand by my original point.

It was harder to lose the league to Leicester than to $ity. $ity had games in hand over us, and we had to play them too. Never really considered us serious contenders. It was a league which $ity had to lose for us to win. they can almost put out two teams this season who could potentially challenge for the title.


But during the Leicester season, we WERE contenders. There was no one except Leicester and us. If we had anyone other than OG as our forward we would have comfortably won the league. Özil was mesmerizing, Alexis was a champion. we should have won the title that season. End of.

 

[Makingtrax]

Agree with your analysis, I see it generally moving the same way.

Not only is it harder to nullify from an individual player perspective, it scales to the entire team.

If there is a single fulcrum, from which all goals are expected to come, it can be easier to try to address that than if the goals can come from multiple areas on the pitch from multiple players. We are actually a good example of this.

Didn’t we just break our league goals scored in a season? Our striker had 11 goals, but 4 players into the double digits.

That being said, goals are goals. Think there will always be exceptions, just as there were in the past.

There are more goals scored by the top 4 teams these days than there ever used to be in the days when Wenger first came. The top 4 teams scoring more than 300 goals was a rarity, but these days it's common. It's all part of the ever widening gap in revenues between the few teams at the top and the rest of the league.

The points totals for the top 4 teams are also much higher these days in a similar pattern.

 

[Rex Stone]

Not sure about world class but the general level of strikers has dropped significantly in recent years. Take a random year like 2008 for example, you had:

Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Eto’o, Torres, David Villa, Drogba, Ibrahimovic, Forlan, Henry, Aguero, Adebayor, Fabiano, Diego Milito, Anelka, Higuain, Dzeko and Klose.

Probably forgot a few but that’s off the top of my head. Majority of the guys above would probably be hot properties in today’s game.

Some of those guys weren’t at their peak though right?

Aguero, Higuain and Dzeko were years away from their prime. Milito I wouldn’t have as world class just yet either. I’d push back on Anelka and Klose at that stage of their careers if we’re truly talking about world class strikers

Adebayor one season wonder as well and then I think the numbers aren’t that dissimilar to now.

The big thing is that guys like Eto’o had already started to play wide forward for Barcelona and then Inter.

That’s the way the game has gone, it’s now more about forwards than strikers because teams roll with one striker instead of two.

I think if you pick any year from football history there’s only a small number of world class “goal scorers” it’s just instead of playing up top as a little man guys like Salah have moved out to the wings.

 

[SA Gunner]

 

[CaseUteinberger]

There are more goals scored by the top 4 teams these days than there ever used to be in the days when Wenger first came. The top 4 teams scoring more than 300 goals was a rarity, but these days it's common. It's all part of the ever widening gap in revenues between the few teams at the top and the rest of the league.

The points totals for the top 4 teams are also much higher these days in a similar pattern.

With that logic the league got easier between 1996 and 2006.

 

[Makingtrax]

With that logic the league got easier between 1996 and 2006.

Yeah, slightly. Shame Arsenal threw themselves into heavy debt instead of really being able to take advantage of the league getting easier.

 

[CaseUteinberger]

Yeah, slightly. Shame Arsenal threw themselves into heavy debt instead of really being able to take advantage of the league getting easier.

Actually a lot easier. It's a fairly stable development and 10 points difference between 1996 and 2006. Between 2013 and 2023 the points total increased much less so. With that much volatility you can argue it didn't change.

Was Wenger's league wins helped by the PL getting a lot easier during that period? What do you think?

 

[dka1]

I was always talking about the final league position, you abhorrent cactus tentacle.

We were in contention. we were the only team that beat them twice. When Welbeck scored THAT goal, I really thought they would fall away and we had a big chance because the big teams including $ity were comfortably behind us.

That was a typo but it doesn’t appear obvious to you, I’m not surprised because you are the same person who says we lost the league at match day 20.

Oh did you? Because it seems like you were saying that we competed with Leicester for the title and lost out to them in a similar way to losing out to City this season (2022/23). We didn't.

I've quoted your own words below:

Sp**s were never really a threat...just hanging by their teeth...never actually got into 1st. we were 1st for long periods of time. It was between us and Leicester

Firstly, I know we finished 2nd but that's exactly my point, just because we finished 2nd doesn't mean that any of what you highlighted is true.

Also, I'm not saying we lost the league at match day 20 (now who is the ignoramus that can't read), my point is that we weren't close enough to Leicester to say that we "lost the league to Leicester". We were never 1st for long periods of time.

You even linked a Wikipedia article of the 2015/16 season that says the following:

About Leicester:

"Despite winning their opening game against Sunderland and topping the table, they dropped back following a 5–2 home defeat to Arsenal in September.[13] However, aided by Jamie Vardy's record feat of scoring in eleven consecutive Premier League games,[1] they then remained unbeaten – and returned to the top of the table – until 26 December, when a 1–0 defeat to Liverpool dropped them to second place. They returned to the top after a 1–1 draw with Aston Villa on 16 January, and remained there for the rest of the season."

City started strongly and were leading, then Leicester went top for a bit. After that Arsenal did top the table near the middle of the season but only briefly (for about four weeks), and then we fell away after that and Leicester held top for the remainder of the season. During the last 9 games we consistently remained 8-12 points away from Leicester.

About Arsenal (from the Wiki page you linked):

"Arsenal, looking for their first title since 2004 and following a poor start, improved and in early January took the top spot from Leicester. However, a poor run of results, including draws with Liverpool,[16] Stoke City[17] and Southampton,[18] and a loss to Chelsea[19] saw them drop to fourth by mid-February. They remained in contention, but draws with West Ham United, Sunderland and Crystal Palace in April saw their title hopes vanish."

We actually finished further away from Leicester in the 15/16 season than we did from City in the 13/14 season, do you think we "lost the league" to City that year too?

We didn't. We really didn't.

Edit: Just to be clear this isn't meant to be a dig at Wenger, I'm just making the point that 15/16 wasn't some agonisingly close season that we "bottled" at the end, we were already far away from Leicester during the run in so the regret was more that we weren't able to get closer to them for the run in IMO.

 

[CaseUteinberger]

Oh did you? Because it seems like you were saying that we competed with Leicester for the title and lost out to them in a similar way to losing out to City this season (2022/23). We didn't.

I've quoted your own words below:



Firstly, I know we finished 2nd but that's exactly my point, just because we finished 2nd doesn't mean that any of what you highlighted is true.

Also, I'm not saying we lost the league at match day 20 (now who is the ignoramus that can't read), my point is that we weren't close enough to Leicester to say that we "lost the league to Leicester". We were never 1st for long periods of time.

You even linked a Wikipedia article of the 2015/16 season that says the following:

About Leicester:

"Despite winning their opening game against Sunderland and topping the table, they dropped back following a 5–2 home defeat to Arsenal in September.[13] However, aided by Jamie Vardy's record feat of scoring in eleven consecutive Premier League games,[1] they then remained unbeaten – and returned to the top of the table – until 26 December, when a 1–0 defeat to Liverpool dropped them to second place. They returned to the top after a 1–1 draw with Aston Villa on 16 January, and remained there for the rest of the season."

City started strongly and were leading, then Leicester went top for a bit. After that Arsenal did top the table near the middle of the season but only briefly (for about four weeks), and then we fell away after that and Leicester held top for the remainder of the season. During the last 9 games we consistently remained 8-12 points away from Leicester.

About Arsenal (from the Wiki page you linked):

"Arsenal, looking for their first title since 2004 and following a poor start, improved and in early January took the top spot from Leicester. However, a poor run of results, including draws with Liverpool,[16] Stoke City[17] and Southampton,[18] and a loss to Chelsea[19] saw them drop to fourth by mid-February. They remained in contention, but draws with West Ham United, Sunderland and Crystal Palace in April saw their title hopes vanish."

We actually finished further away from Leicester in the 15/16 season than we did from City in the 13/14 season, do you think we "lost the league" to City that year too?

We didn't. We really didn't.

Good write up. I find the amount of revision around the 2015/16 season on A-M really strange. We really did not challenge for the title other that leading the league for a brief period like you note. The only ones really putting any pressure on Leicester in the second half of the season were Sp**s and we only got second when they fell away at the end. That season was so different from this one we just had. Only real similarity is our final league position, which is I guess what clouds the minds...

Regardless, thanks for trying to bring sanity into this madhouse!

 

[krackpot]

Oh did you? Because it seems like you were saying that we competed with Leicester for the title and lost out to them in a similar way to losing out to City this season (2022/23). We didn't.

I've quoted your own words below:



Firstly, I know we finished 2nd but that's exactly my point, just because we finished 2nd doesn't mean that any of what you highlighted is true.

Also, I'm not saying we lost the league at match day 20 (now who is the ignoramus that can't read), my point is that we weren't close enough to Leicester to say that we "lost the league to Leicester". We were never 1st for long periods of time.

You even linked a Wikipedia article of the 2015/16 season that says the following:

About Leicester:

"Despite winning their opening game against Sunderland and topping the table, they dropped back following a 5–2 home defeat to Arsenal in September.[13] However, aided by Jamie Vardy's record feat of scoring in eleven consecutive Premier League games,[1] they then remained unbeaten – and returned to the top of the table – until 26 December, when a 1–0 defeat to Liverpool dropped them to second place. They returned to the top after a 1–1 draw with Aston Villa on 16 January, and remained there for the rest of the season."

City started strongly and were leading, then Leicester went top for a bit. After that Arsenal did top the table near the middle of the season but only briefly (for about four weeks), and then we fell away after that and Leicester held top for the remainder of the season. During the last 9 games we consistently remained 8-12 points away from Leicester.

About Arsenal (from the Wiki page you linked):

"Arsenal, looking for their first title since 2004 and following a poor start, improved and in early January took the top spot from Leicester. However, a poor run of results, including draws with Liverpool,[16] Stoke City[17] and Southampton,[18] and a loss to Chelsea[19] saw them drop to fourth by mid-February. They remained in contention, but draws with West Ham United, Sunderland and Crystal Palace in April saw their title hopes vanish."

We actually finished further away from Leicester in the 15/16 season than we did from City in the 13/14 season, do you think we "lost the league" to City that year too?

We didn't. We really didn't.

We were predicted by the BBC to finish 2nd which made us challengers. The odds of Leicester winning the title was like 60000 or something. That's why it was very frustrating and hurt me so much.

Man City were the favourites this season. We were barely in the reckoning for top 3. Even when we were leading everybody knew that $ity would overtake us when they played their games in hand.

So no, even though we might be closer to first this season, the gap in quality is simply too much.

If you're deluding yourself by saying that we ran $ity close in the title race, let me remind you that they are in for the treble. We had nothing but the league to focus on.
Nope, $ity have cruised to the title in third gear. They let us do our thing because they were busy elsewhere.

 

[dka1]

We were predicted by the BBC to finish 2nd which made us challengers. The odds of Leicester winning the title was like 60000 or something. That's why it was very frustrating and hurt me so much.

Man City were the favourites this season. We were barely in the reckoning for top 3. Even when we were leading everybody knew that $ity would overtake us when they played their games in hand.

So no, even though we might be closer to first this season, the gap in quality is simply too much.

If you're deluding yourself by saying that we ran $ity close in the title race, let me remind you that they are in for the treble. We had nothing but the league to focus on.
Nope, $ity have cruised to the title in third gear. They let us do our thing because they were busy elsewhere.

Ahh well now I agree with some of this. Yes it's true that we may have been predicted to finish 2nd in 2015/16, and yes the odds of Leicester winning the title was about 5000/1 with the bookies.

I agree that before the season, and given our respective predicted positions we may have expected to finish ahead of them.

The expectation was there, but again, none of that really means that "we lost it to Leicester", in the sense that we ran a really close race with them, we didn't really, we did very well in the 1st half of the season, took the lead well in December/Jan but fell off after that.

This season was different though, I mean the 2015/16 we ended match day 20 with 42 points (a good achievement) but we ended match day 20 this season with 50 points.

In terms of the part I bolded, well, we sort of did get close though. Sure City were always expected to overtake us, but the facts are that by the end of match week 32 the top of the table looked like this:

Position	Team	Points	Games Played
1.	Arsenal	75	32
2.	Man Sh!tty	70	30

City ended up winning their games in hand so you could say with both teams having played 32 games it was 76 points to City and 75 to Arsenal.

That's still very much in the title race, 1 point behind City with 6 left to play is the very definition of a title race. As a comparison we were like 10 or 12 points behind Leicester by match week 32.

In fact we could've taken City to the last week (and finished with 90 points) if our lads didn't b*tch out against Brighton and Forrest.

Not only that but this season we actually led the table for the majority of the season. It's completely fair to say that we lost the title to City because we literally did in every sense of the word.

 

[El Duderino]

I don't think Haaland is going to usher in the return of the big 9 by himself.

He's the outlier, anyway.

With fitness regimes the way they are in the modern game, pace and power football only goes so far.

The playing field is much more level on that front. When mostly all players are super fit, being a physical beast with ok technique only takes you so far and you need to be a right out physical monster to get around that and go into the elite bracket.

 

[Farzad Stoned]

Bad football manager, somehow has cultish following. Arteta has had one great half season in Pl in 3 and a half years; no need for flow charts or spreadsheets and complicated statistics; the boffhead wagered his season on Holding safety valve 2 years running and those opportunities are gone forever.

 

[Rasmi]

He's the outlier, anyway.

With fitness regimes the way they are in the modern game, pace and power football only goes so far.

The playing field is much more level on that front. When mostly all players are super fit, being a physical beast with ok technique only takes you so far and you need to be a right out physical monster to get around that and go into the elite bracket.

Being physical beast with ok technique takes you very far in the PL. That’s basically players like Ivan Toney who are better than being very technical and limited physically

We have a player in vieira who is a write of because he lacks physicality

 

[Bloodbather]

He's the outlier, anyway.

With fitness regimes the way they are in the modern game, pace and power football only goes so far.

The playing field is much more level on that front. When mostly all players are super fit, being a physical beast with ok technique only takes you so far and you need to be a right out physical monster to get around that and go into the elite bracket.

There's also the mental side of the game in addition to technique and physicality. As much of a physical monster Haaland is, one of the things that sets him apart is his off the ball movement and desire to hunt for goals. He's the sort of forward that always keeps the defense honest.

 

[Farzad Stoned]

Being physical beast with ok technique takes you very far in the PL. That’s basically players like Ivan Toney who are better than being very technical and limited physically

We have a player in vieira who is a write of because he lacks physicality

Rasmi what is wrong with this world when a stoner like me and reprobate like yourself are the only ones talking sense.