• ! ! ! IMPORTANT MESSAGE ! ! !

    Discussions about police investigations

    In light of recent developments about a player from Premier League being arrested and until there is an official announcement, ALL users should refrain from discussing or speculating about situations around personal off-pitch matters related to any Arsenal player. This is to protect you and the forum.

    Users who disregard this reminder will be issued warnings and their posts will get deleted from public.

Mikel Arteta: Top Of The Klopps

El Duderino

That's, like, your opinion, man.
Moderator
I'm sure you've seen more of Willian over the course of his career than me with him being Brazilian. So I'd be interested in your perspective.

From what I've seen of him over the years and at Arsenal he's pretty much the antithesis of what I think of as a Brazilian winger.

He's almost robotic in the things he does on the ball to me, there's not a lot of flair or individuality there to me, so I find him quite a boring player to watch, irrespective of his qualities.

His CV and everything speaks for itself but for me I've always viewed him as a player who's stats exceed his performances generally. It's weird.

How highly is he thought of in Brazil?

I've talked about this before, he just seems like a very meek individual. He's not a protagonist at all, he's a supporting actor to other leading men, which is what I found REALLY odd about him being brought into Arsenal and spoken by management the way he was.

If anything, we needed a LW, having sold Iwobi and since Saka was on the way up but not playing at his current level yet, and Willian was never that brilliant at LW.

Even at Chelsea he was like what you describe, he had the stats, but was very much hot and cold with his performances. A passanger for a lot of games and turn up for some.
 

Kav

Established Member
With respect to Arteta’s suitability for the job of leading us back into the champions league and challenging for the title. I have little confidence in his ability to do so. I do not think he has the necessary traits that successful Managers of the past and present possess to get this Arsenal team to where it wants to go.

Ultimately it is about what kind of project the ownership and board are currently undertaking. If it is truly a long term project the. I do understand the need to give the current manager time to implement his ideas and to give him the resources he needs to put his vision into practice.

My concern is that I am seeing mixed signals from the club. They say it is a long term project but all of the decisions they have made since Arteta came in have been short term and few have been positives.

1. Signings of Luiz, Mari, Cedric, Willian and Partey - all short term signings meant to address squad depth, balance and improve quality in the squad.

2. Firing of entire scouting network- Clubs scout to find talented youngsters to develop it is often the more cost effective way to acquire talent. Also when done properly clubs scan make significant profits from selling these youngsters.

3. Laying off of staff to address financial difficulties- This suggest the financial picture is much more murkier than the club is letting us know.

4. Taking out additional loans to secure operations. - Similar to the point above

Why are 3 &4 relevant? It goes to the impetus for the club to keep making these short term decisions because it is my opinion that our financial situation is a lot more dire than we are led to believe and that we actually NEED champions league football sooner than later.
Thus the facade that this is a long term project is truly broken away when you look at how the club position itself.

So my question is, if it is a long term project, why not focus on developing what you already have instead of acquiring aging talent that may not get you to where you want and will be difficult to move on?

If it is a long term project then why are 5 out of the 7 signings made under Arteta over the age of 27?
Do note I have not included the loan signings of (Ryan and Ødegaard ).

When taken all together it is clear to me that there is a strong urgency to get back into the CL as soon as possible and that this had been made known to Arteta. Therefore if that is the true objective then it may suit the club to hire someone who will do better than Arteta and who has more experience achieving goals.

If it is truly a long term project I would be happy to get behind the manager but he’s also not doing anything to suggest he’s building for the long term. He has two loan signings taking up minutes that could have gone to the development of our own academy players. He’s signed and retained two players over 32 over the last 2 years. Neither of which have been instrumental to our play this season. He has stated his aversion to playing too many young players and he has allowed the mediocrity of senior players (Bellerin, Xhaka, Willian) to persist for far too long when they were in bad form and showed no consistency but the moment a young player didn’t set the world alight he was yanked and dumped on the bench or reserves.

Arteta is playing and coaching for the now. The results right now suggest that he’s not good enough. I can only judge him on what I see from him not what I think he will do in the future. Based on current results and performances he is not the one who should be leading this great club.
 

Blood on the Tracks

AG's best friend, role model and mentor.
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Rice
I've talked about this before, he just seems like a very meek individual. He's not a protagonist at all, he's a supporting actor to other leading men, which is what I found REALLY odd about him being brought into Arsenal and spoken by management the way he was.

If anything, we needed a LW, having sold Iwobi and since Saka was on the way up but not playing at his current level yet, and Willian was never that brilliant at LW.

Even at Chelsea he was like what you describe, he had the stats, but was very much hot and cold with his performances. A passanger for a lot of games and turn up for some.

Yeah, he does seem like quite a timid character. Whatever you think of Luiz as a player it's clear that he brings a lot of personality, leadership to the squad. You can't really say the same for Willian.

The way you lay it out it doesn't sound likes he's too dissimilar to Özil in terms of his personality type, obviously inferior to Özil as a talent though.

Doesn't like being the main man, prefers being a supporting cast member and flitting in and out of games.

It's not ideal. It's weird because Arteta made a big deal about him being a role model / leader for the younger players and it seems like he's just not that type of guy. Which is fair enough, everyone has different personalities but maybe he wasn't the sort of guy we really needed.
 

Mrs Bergkamp

Double Dusted
Dusted 🔻
Absolute load of tosh. The only thing that people were against was the 3 year deal, and that's the only way we couldve got him. As a player and coming off the season he had for Chelsea nobody can deny it was a good addition to the squad. End of story bro, look at the season he had for Chelsea and tell me its a **** signing at the time. You cant.

As for Cedric it's different to the players you mentioned due to Cedric being a competent backup at full back. Mustafi isn't a competent anything.

Let's be real you'll just say anything to bash Arteta and the club because you have an agenda. Why not just chill out, support the club, stop being a poo bag.
I was satisfied enough with Willian signing as I thought he'd inject that little bit of attacking thrust, guile, intelligence and experience in to the side. The rumours were that he was a cheap deal in terms of wages to. I had major reservations about the length of the contract and the fact that he was ex Chelsea. Hindsight as you say is great but we would have been better offering two years with a club option of a third than three whole years. We just caved under our own self inflicted pressure and saddled ourself with more old and useless rubbish.
 

CaseUteinberger

Established Member

Country: Sweden
No it wasn't, literally 99% of the fan base were against it.
Come on! That is re-writing history by a mile. Sure, it wasn't Partey level support for the signing, but a fair amount of fans and pundits were positive towards the signing as far as I recall. I personally don't think I was against it as far as I can recall. Guess it hasn't turned out great to say the least, but win some and lose some I guess...
 

Camus

Active Member
Trusted ⭐
Woah. This is news to me, I always thought the Willian deal was near enough universally not wanted by our fanbase. Even opposition fans were in unison at how bad a deal it was going to be. Only dissenting voices seemed to be from Chelsea fans that had a soft spot for him because he'd been at the club for 7 years.

Even without the figures involved I've always seen Willian as a nothing player. He's had a number of terrible, terrible joke seasons for Chelsea and even his "best" seasons haven't been all that to write home about.
 

Arsenal1508

Mods are unethical! Özil, come assist me please!
I still won't believe in him based on our league season but the guy has literally met his objectives (just not the way we expected).

I think the fairest way would be to let him keep his job, albeit on a very tight leash, I'd want him gone at the first sign of him showing that this current season is his level. In addition to that I'd give him less control of transfers. Partey and Gabriel were both initiated by Raul. Arteta did the Willian deal all by himself and it's looking like a monumental waste of money.
This.

Arteta needs to go back to Coach. Vinai was an idiot to promote him.
 

OnlyOne

‘Donkeys don’t have a peak, they remain useless’
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
You’ve given me a wobble now. I don’t think the EL is in the bag at all.

We need to get 6th place in the league ffs.

I don't want Europa next season if we we go out, I hope we finish 7th/8th.
 

mirrorstare

Well-Known Member
Results keep giving him a chance, that Newcastle win not only takes away distance from the top 4 trophy, it also demoralizes our next couple of opponents that might feel themselves now truly doomed to relegation

Feel with a better manager we would have been in the top 4 fight but with the amount of luck we're having maybe we would have been a clear 2nd.

Next season he has no preseason or covid excuses but neither do the other teams, who won't run into the crazy injury crises that helped make the table look like it currently does at the moment. If he has a bad start I just hope we wake up before AFCON just becomes the next excuse.
 

Preacher

Always Crying
Chelsea fans laughed at us for signing Willian on 3 years deal and they have watched him day in, day out. Enough said. It was, is and will be terrible deal.
 

OnlyOne

‘Donkeys don’t have a peak, they remain useless’
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
We need the money bro.

Nah we don't, I don't care for big signings, I want to see us use what we've got this year. We can still get a few signings from any sales.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
Nah we don't, I don't care for big signings, I want to see us use what we've got this year. We can still get a few signings from any sales.
Can never have too much money!

EL group stages is also very useful for developing youth.
 
Top Bottom