Mikel Arteta: His Way or The Highway

[Farzad]

Arteta is so phony he pretends to take responsibility while making excuses simultaneously. He says he is responsible for thin squad size costing us CL but with 280 million last couple of years this was the best team he could have had. So you basically are pretending to take responsibility. This was the best he was allowed to build oh what a load of garbage after watching him throw away numerous promising talents and when Sp**s added a top attacker and we did absolutely nothing. This was not the best team you were allowed to build you were given 300 million pounds and we have freaking Holding and Cedric deciding our CL

 

[Farzad]

The Championship.

The PL is too football focused. There, Tets brand of Greco-Roman inspired football can definitely deliver the title

Tets would bomb away the Championship title with a monumental collapse in the last month

 

[Sapient Hawk]

Tets would bomb away the Championship title with a monumental collapse in the last month

He'll say that the hostile environment in the stadium rattled his "young players".

Mind you, it wouldn't be at Tottenham where he's made this comment but ****ing Huddersfield

 

[tactica442]

Apparently Gunnerblog said on some podcast that the club has lists of players to target prepared for CL, EL or no European football at all.

Imagine, spend 170m on an underachieving team that finished six points off CL footy and still make plans for the manager to sign players if you land outside of Europe again. This club is genuinely ****ing mental.

This kinda echoes Edu's avoidance with setting end-of-season target at the beginning of this season.
I don't mind the club has a contingency plan. But if this plan is so detailed that come with multiple lists, their commitment and expectation is very questionable. No wonder they gifted another 3-yr contract to Arteta staying, even before CL spot to be confirmed.

 

[Makingtrax]

People are eager for signings and think we are building for the future, but we don't have 22 Sakas's. We have Odegaards, Whites, Ramsdales, players every manager isn't going to like. We could be looking at yet another rebuild whenever Arteta is done.

Not a crazy scenario. Arteta starts off next season with a string of loses and by November KSE have probably had enough. You can’t hoodwink people in season 4 surely.

The next guy comes in and needs time to offload Tavares, Lokonga, Mari, Cedric, injury prone Partey, Tierney and Tomi, El Loco Ramsdale (as he’ll be known then), red card Xhaka, and Pepe. People will be saying he needs time to clean up Arteta’s sh!t. Rinse repeat.

 

[tactica442]

The way Mikel taking pss on key players like Auba and Özil is quite Pep-esque. There are stories on Pep clashing with key players like Eto'o. Only Mikel is way off Pep's calibre in terms of tacticts and management.

 

[Farzad]

He'll say that the hostile environment in the stadium rattled his "young players".

Mind you, it wouldn't be at Tottenham where he's made this comment but ****ing Huddersfield

He would make a pretty speech how he is responsible but he wasn’t “allowed” to build a better club with 300 million pounds. It is like being caught in bed cheating and trying to claim that the woman raped you and forced you to have sex with her you were not allowed to refuse sex you had no choice. And in fact honey I slept with my secretary to protect you.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

A-M acts like its a crime to compare the two.

 

[Squillaci]

Arteta is so phony he pretends to take responsibility while making excuses simultaneously. He says he is responsible for thin squad size costing us CL but with 280 million last couple of years this was the best team he could have had. So you basically are pretending to take responsibility. This was the best he was allowed to build oh what a load of garbage after watching him throw away numerous promising talents and when Sp**s added a top attacker and we did absolutely nothing. This was not the best team you were allowed to build you were given 300 million pounds and we have freaking Holding and Cedric deciding our CL

This is both his and Edu's fault. Edu shouldn't be selling every player that told Arteta his hair is a bit off one morning.
With better manager we would spend that money much better, as we definitely did not need to sell at least half of the players we sold or send on loan those that were sent.

With European games and United, Newcastle and Sp**s strenghtening, we all know it will all fall apart next season.

I don't like that I feel disconnected with Arsenal right now. We are playing like a mid club, I don't like that we have to use tricks like time wasting to preserve the small lead we have. I don't like that we rarely dominate teams. We are losing class altogether.

 

[2Smokeyy]

A-M acts like its a crime to compare the two.

Sexuals die a little inside when they hear “Teta at the wheel” but it’s a pretty fair comparison.

 

[SA Gunner]

Fair enough. But Conte making top 4 in just a few months, and Tuchel also, makes me want to add May 2020 to your figures. And then an average of 7th place in 3 seasons looks pretty poor considering what we’ve spent.

Look mate, I’m not going to try and convince you of my approach to Arteta at the club and the club’s project. I don’t think we’ll ever agree there.

What I will say is that the club are clearly not interested in the metrics that other managers and our managers past have been measured against. We will debate ourselves to death here if we continue to measure progress or regression with different measuring sticks, at least until the project is stopped or progress is undeniable.

 

[Sapient Hawk]

I think reverting back to a transfer policy where it's the club signing players rather than managers is the better way, that's how the big clubs are run. We've seen the worst of it with Pepe unfortunately, but overall I do feel this tends to work but we've reverted back to the Wenger model.

People are eager for signings and think we are building for the future, but we don't have 22 Sakas's. We have Odegaards, Whites, Ramsdales, players every manager isn't going to like. We could be looking at yet another rebuild whenever Arteta is done.

Arsenal, when Arteta took over, was that classy restaurant that had fallen on hard times due to its impresario of a chef refusing to adapt to modern times. He was replaced by one who, while competent, couldn't get his points through due to communication issues. Several head chefs & capable sous chefs were overlooked to give the janitor a shot in a bizarre "Everyone deserves a fair go" attempt at fostering a faux meritocracy.

That janitor, with thoughts well above his lowly station, has since turned the classy restaurant into a rodent haven dive serving salmonella-inducing fare.

To get back to the Michelin list, we need a man who is equal to the post as he is to the task.

 

[Sapient Hawk]

Sexuals die a little inside when they hear “Teta at the wheel” but it’s a pretty fair comparison.

Ole had a steering while. Tets has a parmiggiano one

 

[Farzad]

This is both his and Edu's fault. Edu shouldn't be selling every player that told Arteta his hair is a bit off one morning.
With better manager we would spend that money much better, as we definitely did not need to sell at least half of the players we sold or send on loan those that were sent.

With European games and United, Newcastle and Sp**s strenghtening, we all know it will all fall apart next season.

I don't like that I feel disconnected with Arsenal right now. We are playing like a mid club, I don't like that we have to use tricks like time wasting to preserve the small lead we have. I don't like that we rarely dominate teams. We are losing class altogether.

Thoroughly agree he has dropped standards so much despite 300 million pounds in transfer money. We have fans happy with Europa league. I’ll never celebrate Europa league qualification. Beating Arsenal is no big deal anymore for lower ranked teams. We are a glorified mid table team, and after 2 and a half years the project continues lol

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Sexuals die a little inside when they hear “Teta at the wheel” but it’s a pretty fair comparison.

It's sort of a tad insulting to Ole tbh. It all went very array at the end but he got them top 4 in his first full season and then comfortably 2nd in the next. But the problems at United started well before Ole and are continuing after him.

 

[SA Gunner]

Sexuals die a little inside when they hear “Teta at the wheel” but it’s a pretty fair comparison.

Yeah I’d say they’re just about at the same level.

Again it comes back to how you want to look at it. Either the absolute outcomes (trophies won, etc) or at the detail (football style, squad building, tactical nous, etc).

To be fair to Ole, I didn’t look at his Man United as closely, so I don’t want to conclude that he was a good or useless manager.

What I will say is that he stabilised them when needed and had them in the top four for more than a season. His 10 plus years experience kinda dilutes his abilities for me a bit, comparing him to a rookie. Again, I don’t know him well enough to be sure.

 

[Sanchez11]

So skipped 7 pages, quality posting upto that point. I see the drip squad have gone back into hiding again.

Anyway so looking at the situation we are exactly where we were when Unai got sacked! I see the excuses and the PR machine are in full flow, good grief.

Bring me Potter

 

[Paperino]

This is what Edu said about Lokonga and Tavares:

(If) you go to Nuno Tavares, he has the same characteristics because we have Kieran Tierney there to play, but we needed someone to cover him.

(In) the midfield, you have Granit Xhaka and Thomas Partey. So, for me and for Mikel it doesn't make sense to sign another player to be on top of them if they are the ones that are going to be playing. That's why we chose Albert Sambi Lokonga to help them.

 

[SA Gunner]

He probably won't challenge because of the gap between Sp**s and Pool/City but given they are in UCL, have a better forward line and will invest in the summer they are favorites for top 4 again which is fantastic considering Chelsea and City have oil money and this is Liverpool's best ever PL side.

Meanwhile at Arsenal:
-25% of games we do not score
-35% loss rate
-Manager falls out with players on a regular basis
-Manager has crap talent ID
-Can't handle adversity or pressure

All this after 2.5 years and 250m spent and his acolytes are trying to troll superior managers and talking about how fantastic it is to finish 5th to protect Arteta.

I was saying to Makingtrax that we aren’t measuring Arteta in the same way other managers are being measured, at least not at the moment.

Now we can take that as the club being unambitious, them being clueless, etc. Or we can assume that they have a longer term plan in mind and for our situation right now and the experience of the manager, a different approach is needed.

Not what you want to hear, I get that. My follow up question to you would then be… How do you remove Arteta and continue the work being done at the club, without having to completely rip out the carpets and begin again?

Is it as straightforward as just bringing in a new manager and starting again? How much time and money would we need for that different direction thereafter? And can we continue to restart new projects every 2/3 seasons?

 

[Macho]

Anyway so looking at the situation we are exactly where we were when Unai got sacked!

Not quite.

If Sp**s lose to Norwich, Arteta get's his statue.