SingmeasongSong
Right Sometimes
Agreed, I don’t really care about beautiful fluid football, it’s nice but winning football is where it’s at.
I wouldn’t say Liverpool and Chelsea play beautiful football but I wouldn’t say they were boring either. As long as my team regularly creates more chances than the opposition to score goals then I’m happy and entertained.
I’ve been Arteta out longer than most but I think I saw a bit of progress against Burnley. This is the first game (against tricky opposition) in a long time where I’ve felt our defence and midfield actually created enough opportunities for our attackers to impact the game. Usually our forwards are starved of the ball but in this game they got more than enough service to create chances. It was a combination of poor finishing and final/penultimate passing from our forwards that let us down. I don’t see Pepe, Saka and ESR all struggling to control the ball and weight simple passes again in the same game and unless it continues to happen all season I don’t think you can blame Arteta for the unconvincing scoreline. And while it sounds like a cheap excuse the fact of the matter is that not many teams will go to the lengths that Burnley went (long grass, dry pitch) to ruin our game. On a different pitch/day we could have been looking at a 3-0 there.
This is all what-ifs and probably naive thinking of course but If Arteta really does now have the players to make his system work then I’m expecting to see more of the same against Sp**s. The win is the most important thing but just behind that is evidence that our forwards are continuing to get the ball in dangerous areas. If we can do that consistently then we are on to something even if it isn’t the prettiest football.
I really really like this post because it highlights something very rare on AM which is different original point of views sort of coming together.
I was personally a big Arteta-In guy whilst you come from the other side and yet, unlike the most nailed down views of most, we sort of agee now, 1,5 seasons in.
You've managed to acknowledge that it's not all ****, if Arteta gets the point record back on track whilst I was slowly but steadily losing a lot of hope on Arteta over the course of the midst of last season and the early days of the one now.
Arteta is on the ropes, even for me, for some time now, but I dont look away from the fact that our squad has been absolutely terrible in some key positions which makes it impossible to play like the top dogs without getting hurt by sticking to our style of play.
If he at least gets some fluid play and frequent dangerous attacking positions back in our game and manages to win most of games, I'll give him another chance to prove that he can achieve stuff with an actually solid squad.
His football has been unconvincing for some time, but I cannot forget that first half against Chelsea early on as well as the ManU game with Özil as 10 where we played like prime Arsenal and absolutely outplayed those 2 for fun.
Maybe he got very stubborn afterwards about risking more fluent play because he has seen there that the squad isnt good enough to do just that without losing too much in the process defensive wise.
In any case, Arteta needs to get a big run now, needs convincing displays and points asap or all that's been said is irrelevant and we'll find ourselves in the coach thread sooner rather than later.