Rasmi
Negative Nancy
Country: England
Emery was the sacrificial lamb for us to realise some harsh truthsIn my opinion a decent percentage of the fanbase thought that Wenger was old, stale and holding the club back in his latter years, that was the narrative I saw anyway.
When Emery came in and didn't transform us back to what we were within 18 months the same fans turned on him too. If Emery wasn't an awful manager it would go against the narrative that they'd built up for years that Wenger was the one holding the club back from success.
I think since Emery's departure there's been a dawning realisation within a lot of the fanbase that there are serious issues with our squad / the way the club is ran and many Arsenal fans have given Arteta a bit more leeway. It probably helps that he's quite a well liked ex-player too.
build from the back? El nenny was as deep as the CBs.. This means you have your 2 cbs and 1 central midfielder and infront of them is all the opposition player. This makes it harder for the midfielder who dropped deeper to find a good option to pass to as infront of him is the attackers and midfielders of the other team and the only midfielder ahead of him is Xhaka. El nenny is not great passer, but the tactics makes it even harder for him and forces him to play nearest player.I've been saying the entire time that our attack needs to get better, and I expect it will. But he can only do so much with the squad he has in that area. I've wanted investment in attack going back to Wenger, particularly on the wings. I just don't think he has the players in that area that he wants for his system which is why it's been easier to fix from the back first. I think he's been smart in fixing the foundation with the limited finances he's been given and the contract situation he inherited.
And I don't think he's making a contract mess, barring the Willian contract. You can see why they wanted Willian though (close control on the ball, had the reputation of putting in a shift when at Chelsea; even Chelsea fans are bemused by his form under us) and only in hindsight can it be criticized at the level it is as a bad deal. With that being said, I'm not a fan of Willian.
This charge of agent links can be said with Sanllehi, not so much with Edu even though the latter's agent is Kia. Sanllehi is now gone. All the signings fans complain about as far as "agent links" were done under Sanllehi, including Mari and Pepe (who don't have Kia as their agent). But I don't think all these were bad signings in the long run, especially when you view their roles in the squad. I think Mari, Cedric, and Luiz have all performed fine. And if I were you, I'd expect another season of Luiz to save money for other areas of investment.
What the **** are you talking about? Of course the midfielders come deep for the ball, because we build from the back. I'm talking about the general nature of the passing. Elneny doesn't like playing passes in tight spaces, nor forward, only sideways or backwards. From my reading for why he played yesterday though is because he doesn't give the ball away like Ceballos does on the regular and that's dangerous against a team like City.
If you want to build from the back, then you need to have CB stepping up with the ball and making the passes. This frees your midfield and thats the great benefit of playing from the back. But to have a CM drop to CB position and start the build up from there is really bad tactics and makes it hard to build from the back