Mikel Arteta: New Contract Signed

[Batman]

What I feel the mental issue in the squad is that may begin with Arteta now that I'm thinking about it is too much of an internalization of the club's long term struggles. I think this is common in a lot of teams that are in a drought in terms of meeting expectations. I get the sense that Arteta feels like the entire 20 year title drought is on his shoulders because he was part of it as a player as well. Similarly he was obviously part of our futility in the CL before we dropped out of it all together when he was a player. The issue when you put the entire history on yourself and transmit that to the players is that you end up adding pressure that you don't need to carry.

It's easier said than done and you can see examples of other clubs like Liverpool who had this issue before overcoming it but you have to get history out of your mind. When you play a CL knockout match for Arsenal in 2024, it's not to exorcise the demons of CLs past. You have to play for your own modern history. You can't put the pressure of righting past wrongs on you as well. It's the same as you should never play against the shirt. If you go away to Madrid, yeah they're the biggest club there is and yeah they have really good players but they're 11 men. You aren't playing against their whole history. You have to just turn up on the day and put your 11 against theirs and think only of how you win that match, nothing else.

I think understanding that is easier said than done when you haven't won anything yet and you feel the pressure to get that first one so people will shut up about how long the club has failed at doing it but you can't internalize all of those prior failures. You have to just live in the here and now and back what you are now to be good enough to get the job done and without demonizing Arteta, I think that he has a hard time doing that and also passes that on to the players in some of these fixtures.

 

[Farzad]

Would be our luck if Taremi returns and turns into R9 for that second leg. He’s looked like a handful whenever I’ve seen him play. Not even sure what happened to him but he’d be a threat.

Taremi is a player i generally don’t rate Iranian players they are technical but lack physicality and are lazy. Taremi is not like that and he is both physical and technical; also he is not a lazy striker

 

[fute]

We've spent money and upgraded the personnel over the years.

The mentality still has to change.

Part of it, you could say is the manager, but it also speaks to leadership among the players.

Ask yourself, who are the leaders or leader of this team?

If the players are nervous, jittery, somebody or some guys have to step and take ownership of this squad.

Maybe they are nervous because most of the squad is young or inexperienced when it comes to the CL. The guys with CL experience are either injured (Jesus, Zinny), past his prime (Jorginho) or inconsistent (Kai).

But we get them back at the Emirates. Hopefully the jitters go away and guys just play.

 

[Farzad]

If we want to be a club that wins one or both of the biggest club trophies in football; Mik is not that guy. A domestic cup, finishing near top of league is Mik’s ceiling. He is not a prodigy; he is more like Moyes than he is like Pep. Not every coaching prospect given money, authority, and time just turns into an elite manager. In fact most don’t become elite.

 

[Fallout]

What I feel the mental issue in the squad is that may begin with Arteta now that I'm thinking about it is too much of an internalization of the club's long term struggles. I think this is common in a lot of teams that are in a drought in terms of meeting expectations. I get the sense that Arteta feels like the entire 20 year title drought is on his shoulders because he was part of it as a player as well. Similarly he was obviously part of our futility in the CL before we dropped out of it all together when he was a player. The issue when you put the entire history on yourself and transmit that to the players is that you end up adding pressure that you don't need to carry.

It's easier said than done and you can see examples of other clubs like Liverpool who had this issue before overcoming it but you have to get history out of your mind. When you play a CL knockout match for Arsenal in 2024, it's not to exorcise the demons of CLs past. You have to play for your own modern history. You can't put the pressure of righting past wrongs on you as well. It's the same as you should never play against the shirt. If you go away to Madrid, yeah they're the biggest club there is and yeah they have really good players but they're 11 men. You aren't playing against their whole history. You have to just turn up on the day and put your 11 against theirs and think only of how you win that match, nothing else.

I think understanding that is easier said than done when you haven't won anything yet and you feel the pressure to get that first one so people will shut up about how long the club has failed at doing it but you can't internalize all of those prior failures. You have to just live in the here and now and back what you are now to be good enough to get the job done and without demonizing Arteta, I think that he has a hard time doing that and also passes that on to the players in some of these fixtures.

I think this is a very important post that sums up the concept of football heritage quite well

However I don't think it starts with Arteta but rather would be an issue for most managers we could potentially have

Every player that comes into this club knows they are here to "get Arsenal back to where they belong" (you can hear concepts like this in many of their initial interviews) ... there is already a collective internalization of having to exorcize demons before a ball is kicked

Hence why we are easier to get rattled and play below ourselves in moments that are perceived to be critical

The fear of failure is in our DNA until someone manages to remove it from our DNA

That's why you get nights like tonight where the ball is in play ~50% of the match due to **** ref (as a poster laid out in the match thread) and suddenly players realize "this isn't going to plan" or "we aren't playing well" and become frustrated or scared or overly desperate and start forcing things to happen and misplace easy passes or make stupid passes that further destroy the momentum and end up losing us the match

We're too mentally weak to handle adversity and have been for a very long time, and will be until someone fixes it by winning things consistently

 

[Fallout]

^ by the way, our fans play into this a lot

Speaking about the groans you hear at the Emirates when "things aren't going to plan" or "we aren't playing well" midway through a match

Only ends up making us play worse

 

[GoonerJay24]

What I feel the mental issue in the squad is that may begin with Arteta now that I'm thinking about it is too much of an internalization of the club's long term struggles. I think this is common in a lot of teams that are in a drought in terms of meeting expectations. I get the sense that Arteta feels like the entire 20 year title drought is on his shoulders because he was part of it as a player as well. Similarly he was obviously part of our futility in the CL before we dropped out of it all together when he was a player. The issue when you put the entire history on yourself and transmit that to the players is that you end up adding pressure that you don't need to carry.

It's easier said than done and you can see examples of other clubs like Liverpool who had this issue before overcoming it but you have to get history out of your mind. When you play a CL knockout match for Arsenal in 2024, it's not to exorcise the demons of CLs past. You have to play for your own modern history. You can't put the pressure of righting past wrongs on you as well. It's the same as you should never play against the shirt. If you go away to Madrid, yeah they're the biggest club there is and yeah they have really good players but they're 11 men. You aren't playing against their whole history. You have to just turn up on the day and put your 11 against theirs and think only of how you win that match, nothing else.

I think understanding that is easier said than done when you haven't won anything yet and you feel the pressure to get that first one so people will shut up about how long the club has failed at doing it but you can't internalize all of those prior failures. You have to just live in the here and now and back what you are now to be good enough to get the job done and without demonizing Arteta, I think that he has a hard time doing that and also passes that on to the players in some of these fixtures.

You can't compare our twenty-year title drought to Liverpool or other clubs'. We weren't expected to win the league due to building the Emirates, which meant limited funds. It's important for fans to remember this. If anything, 2005 to 2012 was one of the clubs most impressive periods. Arsenal, do not get enough credit for those tears.

 

[Batman]

I think this is a very important post that sums up the concept of football heritage quite well

However I don't think it starts with Arteta but rather would be an issue for most managers we could potentially have

Every player that comes into this club knows they are here to "get Arsenal back to where they belong" (you can hear concepts like this in many of their initial interviews) ... there is already a collective internalization of having to exorcize demons before a ball is kicked

Hence why we are easier to get rattled and play below ourselves in moments that are perceived to be critical

The fear of failure is in our DNA until someone manages to remove it from our DNA

That's why you get nights like tonight where the ball is in play ~50% of the match due to **** ref (as a poster laid out in the match thread) and suddenly players realize "this isn't going to plan" or "we aren't playing well" and become frustrated or scared or overly desperate and start forcing things to happen and misplace easy passes or make stupid passes that further destroy the momentum and end up losing us the match

We're too mentally weak to handle adversity and have been for a very long time, and will be until someone fixes it by winning things consistently

I think that the bolded is true in a sense but let's say we hired someone like Carlo who is a serial winner but also has no attachment to the club. He's not going to feel the weight of these long term failings in the same way Arteta does because he's trying to establish himself at Arsenal and because not being able to win the biggest trophies as a player here adds the pressure of trying to deliver them as a manager. I think that Arteta being both a young manager and a manager who is more invested emotionally in the club than someone external who is overseeing a very young team all lends itself to nights like this where they don't handle the moment well.

All of the talk this last few days was about how sh*t we've been in the knockout stages in the previous few years we were in the competition and this is a team that played like they felt that weight when what they should have felt like was a team that was flying and capable of going in there and thumping a weaker opponent. It's very hard to be a young team with a young manager and I feel that the pressure of not having enough successes to draw upon and relieve pressure leads to nights like this one. This same young team with someone like Carlo at the helm maybe doesn't get as wound up because he's seen everything and transmits calm.

 

[GoonerJay24]

I think this is a very important post that sums up the concept of football heritage quite well

However I don't think it starts with Arteta but rather would be an issue for most managers we could potentially have

Every player that comes into this club knows they are here to "get Arsenal back to where they belong" (you can hear concepts like this in many of their initial interviews) ... there is already a collective internalization of having to exorcize demons before a ball is kicked

Hence why we are easier to get rattled and play below ourselves in moments that are perceived to be critical

The fear of failure is in our DNA until someone manages to remove it from our DNA

That's why you get nights like tonight where the ball is in play ~50% of the match due to **** ref (as a poster laid out in the match thread) and suddenly players realize "this isn't going to plan" or "we aren't playing well" and become frustrated or scared or overly desperate and start forcing things to happen and misplace easy passes or make stupid passes that further destroy the momentum and end up losing us the match

We're too mentally weak to handle adversity and have been for a very long time, and will be until someone fixes it by winning things consistently

There is no failure in our DNA. The times we actually failed, was between 2019-2022.

 

[Batman]

^ by the way, our fans play into this a lot

Speaking about the groans you hear at the Emirates when "things aren't going to plan" or "we aren't playing well" midway through a match

Only ends up making us play worse

In this sense I think it's still on the players. Every group of supporters behaves this way. Your job as a player is to give them something to cheer and get behind. What they want is effort and intensity and the groans really only come out these days when it looks like on or both is lacking.

 

[fute]

There is a pattern.

When will it change?

 

[Jasinho]

Sh* performance last night, it was very similar to the one against Lens in the groups stage so I'm confident we'll win the second leg by at least 3 goals, thereafter I'm really not sure what we've done to be classed as bigger favourites (4th behind City, Real and Bayern) to win the competition than the likes of Inter, Barcelona and Altetico

 

[Blood on the Tracks]

Got to put that one on Arteta. It's not the end of the world as we've got the second leg to go.

Away from home in the CL knockouts it's understandable to try to control the game and not take excessive risks. I'm okay either that.

What you can't do is play offensively with little to no purpose or intensity. Which is what we did last night.

We've just been smashing teams left and right. Sure Porto are a decent side but we should have gone at them with the intensity and focus we did against Liverpool. The tie would be over by now if we did.

 

[Xoxo]

Sh* performance last night, it was very similar to the one against Lens in the groups stage so I'm confident we'll win the second leg by at least 3 goals, thereafter I'm really not sure what we've done to be classed as bigger favourites (4th behind City, Real and Bayern) to win the competition than the likes of Inter, Barcelona and Altetico

Porto is not lens and they will have their main striker back in the second leg

 

[DUFFMAN]

Hopefully we get some of our big name absentees back for the second leg.

Jesus, Partey, Tomiyasu

 

[OnlyOne]

This'll start the decline for the rest of the season

I'm not so sure it'll start a decline but we set out to not lose this game which I don't think was the right approach but a 0-0 you're happy with.

To lose it and not make any subs when our squad is thin and we play on Saturday didn't seem smart. Granted the subs weren't ideal but a mistake there imo.

 

[North5]

I'm not so sure it'll start a decline but we set out to not lose this game which I don't think was the right approach but a 0-0 you're happy with.

To lose it and not make any subs when our squad is thin and we play on Saturday didn't seem smart. Granted the subs weren't ideal but a mistake there imo.

Just a FEELING.

 

[OnlyOne]

Just a FEELING.

We need some players back. Tomi, Jesus, Partey and Zinchenko all being out at the same time is ridiculous.

 

[HattoriHanzo]

To lose it and not make any subs when our squad is thin and we play on Saturday didn't seem smart. Granted the subs weren't ideal but a mistake there imo.

This was stupid of him.
He still doesn't trust to his players on the bench (same as last season) and it will cost us.