Mikel Arteta: Aston La Vista To The Title?

[Plutarch]

Arteta's interviews after the Chelsea game were terrible. When your team has just had a notable win, fans don't want to see their manager ranting on about his treatment by the press. As far as I could tell, he was upset about being misquoted. Well, that's always going to happen. Just deal with it calmly and move on. Don't spend the entire interview ranting in a barely intelligible way about how angry he is at journalists. Compliment the team for how well they played and be positive. Awful interviews, un-needed negativity.

 

[Abhishek Arora]

And for what it's worth I think we will sign Grealish, Bissouma and a quality right back this summer and EVERYTHING will change next season.

Grealish and Bissouma will get offers from clubs playing in champions league..highly unlikely they will choose Arsenal.

 

[Blood on the Tracks]

I like to separate the EL from the PL in terms of Arteta's performance.

Personally I'd have favoured sacking him after the Villareal debacle. Maybe that was an emotional response to the manner of our defeat, I'm not too sure.

The PL is a bit different though. After our awful run up till Christmas everyone was saying he needed to turn results around or be sacked. Well by hook or by crock he has. If we'd have sacked Arteta in December and the new manager came in and got the exact same results that Arteta has ( 3-4th place in the form table) we'd be saying what a good job he's been doing.

 

[Rasmi]

Hope the spineless board put him out of his misery at the end of this season.

The media has been fawning over him all season. The minute he's getting anything resembling criticism after the shambolic way we got knocked out of Europe he's out there like a crybaby. If you don't like the pressure of managing a club of Arsenal's size, just **** off. Take your **** football with you too.

Yeah the way he acted post match shows how big his ego is. He has been protected all season and you could see he can’t handle any criticism. For a nobody he truly has massive ego

 

[Kobi]

I don't even care about the results, this was his first interview on being appointed



18 months and I haven't seen this blueprint once, only the park the bus and hope for the best blueprint and the Kieran Tierney overlapping blueprint.
The only time we ever dominate is on the very rare occasions we come up against a team even more gutless.
Klopp, Guardiola, Bielsa etc you could see their philosophy pretty much from game one, obviously it came with mistakes, it wasn't perfect you need time to tune it, but you could see it.
18 months in and Arteta is playing an end of season dead rubber (thanks to him) like a damage limitation exercise.

The worst thing is this coward has people convinced that it isn't possible to do any better, watching some of our rare forays forward yesterday I was thinking, Aubameyang, Saka, Smith-Rowe, Ødegaard, Partey, Tierney these are good players.
Certainly better than West Ham, better than Everton, Sp**s apart from their front two are dreadful and I would say probably on a similar level to Leicester.
Put it this way if we had Rodgers and Leicester Arteta I'm pretty confident we finish above them, we should be challenging for fourth place, Emery finished one point off plus a cup final and got slaughtered (and subsequently sacked) for it.

Why is this man still here?

 

[Xanth]

It has been broken down many times in these threads over last few days. It is skewed by five matches from Boxing Day (2nd). After that the form dropped back down to 8th.

You could remove the easiest fixtures from any team's record in that period and their form would plummet. Just because ours came in a row in January that doesn't mean we should discount them. Any team looks considerably worse if you disregard the games where they can be flat-track bullies.

 

[Iceman10]

Arteta's interviews after the Chelsea game were terrible. When your team has just had a notable win, fans don't want to see their manager ranting on about his treatment by the press. As far as I could tell, he was upset about being misquoted. Well, that's always going to happen. Just deal with it calmly and move on. Don't spend the entire interview ranting in a barely intelligible way about how angry he is at journalists. Compliment the team for how well they played and be positive. Awful interviews, un-needed negativity.

Auba looked very odd after he was subbed and sitting on the bench, even for him. There are things we don't know but it is quite possible that players were on Arteta's case pre-match. They looked up for the match, but some of that might have actually been helped by anger. A write-up in The Athletic indicates divisions at the club as to Arteta's explanations for poor results/season.

 

[Tree Points]

Bro we want Ole to have 10 years

10 more years of United finishing much higher than Arsenal and winning European trophies?

That’s just weird mate.

 

[Macho]

I legit can't believe he's still here comfy, the guys complete sh*t.

 

[Abhishek Arora]

I would honestly be against signing Grealish btw.

Fix our midfield, and I mean properly fix it with two signings (One Aouar, one backup), and relegate Xhaka as second backup and we will get top 4 next season. Go after attackers or defenders and we're midtable

A midfield of ESR-Partey-Aouar (It can work), with Xhaka and one more good player as backup with no Ceballos or Elneny to destroy life, and Willock as another backup is very deep and very good

I know this is not a wishlist thread but i would prefer someone like Buendia,Lingard etc who would not need time to adjust in the league.

 

[Iceman10]

You could remove the easiest fixtures from any team's record in that period and their form would plummet. Just because ours came in a row in January that doesn't mean we should discount them. Any team looks considerably worse if you disregard the games where they can be flat-track bullies.

If we were genuine flat track bullies this season we would be higher up the table with everyone below City and United dropping a lot of points. Think about it. Those weren't our only matches against lowly teams, quite obviously, not since Boxing Day, let alone the season as a whole.

 

[Sapient Hawk]

It was a joke, I would never have said that if he was actually dead

The mere fact that you mentioned the two in the same narrative is ban-worthy.

George Graham was a double winner as a player & then went to Anfield at the height of Liverpool's power & beat them to win the title after 19 barren years.

Arteta fluked an FA Cup win, humiliated us in the league to an extent I've never seen in my 28 years supporting the club, is taking us to a competition that has the word "Conference" in it, and shamelessly complains that the media's against him!!

But I'll ask the Mods to reconsider if you acknowledge that, much like Football & Basketball, Graham and Arteta are universes apart in the sports they manage

 

[LuanNguyen]

I'm just afraid that next season will be exactly like this one, he's close to the threshold of being sacked and he has the wins he needs to stay. And those damn stats will say we're making progress.

 

[Xanth]

If we were genuine flat track bullies this season we would be higher up the table with everyone below City and United dropping a lot of points. Think about it. Those weren't our only matches against lowly teams, quite obviously, not since Boxing Day, let alone the season as a whole.

We're not proper flat-track bullies but my point is that doesn't mean that our wins in so-called easy fixtures should be discounted. Not to mention even a couple of bad results we've had in the past few months can be explained by factors other than just the manager. Burnley and Fulham were both cases of us mainly squandering chances while they took theirs. Burnley capitalised on an error from Xhaka and Fulham won a penalty which was basically their only decent chance.

Adding to my previous points, people were laughing at United fans for constantly bringing up the "since we signed Bruno" table last season and what a surprise, they've been comfortably second or at least in the top four for most of the season. Turns out form/event-based tables don't win you trophies but they can certainly give you an indication of what's to come. Similarly, Liverpool ended last season in decline and while their current season is much worse than what they were trending towards and they've been admittedly unlucky with injuries, you can't exactly say their regression came out of the blue.

The final position in the table tells you a lot about a team that has been consistent all the way. We clearly have two very different phases, with the good phase not being enough to compensate for the negatives of the bad one. Arteta can definitely be held accountable for the bad start to the season but we can also acknowledge that he's mostly fixed the attacking issues plaguing those performances and that if we can build on our form since Christmas with the right signings, we could very well qualify for CL or at least mount a serious challenge for it.

 

[Sapient Hawk]

It has reached the point where the scientific method needs to be applied to reveal what must Arteta do to get the sack? Because clearly, on-field displays are certainly not going to be a deciding factor

 

[Iceman10]

We're not proper flat-track bullies but my point is that doesn't mean that our wins in so-called easy fixtures should be discounted. Not to mention even a couple of bad results we've had in the past few months can be explained by factors other than just the manager. Burnley and Fulham were both cases of us mainly squandering chances while they took theirs. Burnley capitalised on an error from Xhaka and Fulham won a penalty which was basically their only decent chance.

Adding to my previous points, people were laughing at United fans for constantly bringing up the "since we signed Bruno" table last season and what a surprise, they've been comfortably second or at least in the top four for most of the season. Turns out form/event-based tables don't win you trophies but they can certainly give you an indication of what's to come. Similarly, Liverpool ended last season in decline and while their current season is much worse than what they were trending towards and they've been admittedly unlucky with injuries, you can't exactly say their regression came out of the blue.

The final position in the table tells you a lot about a team that has been consistent all the way. We clearly have two very different phases, with the good phase not being enough to compensate for the negatives of the bad one. Arteta can definitely be held accountable for the bad start to the season but we can also acknowledge that he's mostly fixed the attacking issues plaguing those performances and that if we can build on our form since Christmas with the right signings, we could very well qualify for CL or at least mount a serious challenge for it.

I was sympathetic with these kinds of arguments until the matches against West Ham and Liverpool, and around there. If you want to claim credit for different/new tactics since Boxing Day, even though people have different opinions on whether Arteta "stumbled" on the ESR solution, then you also have to acknowledge over the last two months selections have been all over the place, often with iffy game plans and in-match management. That's why I lost patience because continuity of improvement was broken up and set back, consistent with our form slipping back to 8th after that run of five matches from.Boxing Day. At the end of the day my eyes and the stats therefore married up. Artera was often getting in the way of himself with things like persisting with Auba out wide when he didn't have to. This all was confirmed with erratic/crazy approaches in the two legs against Villareal that cost us.

 

[Xanth]

It has reached the point where the scientific method needs to be applied to reveal what must Arteta do to get the sack? Because clearly, on-field displays are certainly not going to be a deciding factor

Ah yes, because on-field displays are divorced from the stats and numbers that actually reflect them. I forgot titles were decided on vibes and not the numbers in the league table.

 

[HairSprayGooners]

No we definitely don’t want United keeping a manager who is enabling the likes of Bruno, Rashford, Shaw and co to have the best seasons of their careers.

We definitely don’t want United keeping a manager who seems to comfortably get top four and are now trying to push on beyond that.

???

You are hilarious. When United players are having good seasons it's down to Ole. But when Arteta players are having good seasons it's deffo not down to him.

Get in the bin.

 

[Xanth]

I was sympathetic with these kinds of arguments until the matches against West Ham and Liverpool, and around there. If you want to claim credit for different/new tactics since Boxing Day, even though people have different opinions on whether Arteta "stumbled" on the ESR solution, then you also have to acknowledge over the last two months selections have been all over the place, often with iffy game plans and in-match management. That's why I lost patience because continuity of improvement was broken up and set back, consistent with our form slipping back to 8th after that run of five matches from.Boxing Day. At the end of the day my eyes and the stats therefore married up. Artera was often getting in the way of himself with things like persisting with Auba out wide when he didn't have to. This all was confirmed with erratic/crazy approaches in the two legs against Villareal that cost us.

I’ll admit the Villarreal games were bad, I have no arguments for them. But in weighting them against 5 months of league data, I’d go for the latter. You mention the last two months as a negative but out form in that period has actually been good.

 

[HairSprayGooners]

10 more years of United finishing much higher than Arsenal and winning European trophies?

That’s just weird mate.

Winning the Europa league and finishing top 4 after spending 1.1 billion pounds on footballers? Lmao. Your expectations have been lowered since the Fergie days.