Willian: More Like Wontian

You nailed it. What I don't get is the board seem very calm about the treatment of Pepe and Saliba. They greenlighted the purchases so it's confusing.

You see Lampard under all sorts of pressure to ensure Havertz and Werner work. I reckon the damage is done with our signings though.

 

Lampard wanted Havertz and Werner. They were his signings. Pepe and Saliba were not Arteta’s signings.

 

Does that mean that every time we get a new manager, we can flush our investments down the toilet because the guy doesn't fancy them? No wonder we are in this financial and squad mess

 

We need to have a long term vision. Trust in a manager and to let him build his own team with the players he wants. The Klopp way. Not have executives with little or no footballing experience buy players willy nilly that do not fit into any plan or philosophy.

 

Don't even bother with him, you can link all the journalists that credit Raul was influential in the Gabriel & Partey negotiations and he will just ignore it.

 

That’s what I mean we could be in a similar spot down the line if the Arteta project doesn’t work out lol.

Whatever though, the day is young and things quickly change in football. That goes for Willians form too - surely he has another Fulham like performance in him.

 

Bro

 

Look, I'm all in for trusting the manager, but that trust needs to be earned. I'm still waiting to see how Arteta performs when it comes to building a team. Some of the deals like this with Willian and the one for Luiz didn't inspire me, but I'm willing to wait and see (even though I did criticize him a lot).
He needs to learn how to protect the value of the players, when to move them on and when to give them contracts. He also needs to learn when to play someone just to bump his value before the sale.
If we have owners who are happy to see him wasting Pepe and his value, so be it, he should feel lucky to have a job like that where owners don't care about the business

 

His priority is the football and the results. He doesn’t have to play anyone to protect value or whatever. He will pick his best team. Pepe doesn’t make our best team and it currently looks like a terrible investment. It’s up to the board to cut their losses and sell him, recuperating all they can get.

 

Have a feeling Willian will find form soon.

Would rather he moved on.

Anyway Arteta has dropped him for 6 games now.

Shows he's not afraid to make hard decisions and he's not that invested in Willian as some think.

 

If Kroenkes and the people around them had any idea about football, they would investigate the details of the signing of willian and extension of david luiz. both signings smell flshy and costs more than £70m in total to Arsenal. how on earth they don’t ask any questons about these guys and their nunbers like it is somebody else’s money. unbelievable.

 

Not sure about that, Broski. He persisted with the wasteman 4 2 long, u get me?

The penny just dropped, innit, much like Willian (woz dropped).

 

Willian was definitely an Arteta signing...still think it was a good signing at the time on a free, 3 years was always too much, but if he could have given us a year or two of good performances it would have been worth it.

Love Arteta, but this is one he wanted and turned out wrong...no biggie. all managers make bad signings from time to time...least he is dropping him now.

 

The thing is a board is meant to have values and set the tone for the club (e.g. the Chelsea rule of not giving long deals to 30+ year olds, Wenger was the same). If you don't have strong leadership these things are more likely to happen. In an ideal world Arteta goes to the board and says "I want Willian, he will improve us", the board tell him the conditions which include him not being tied down to a long term deal for example. They negotiate, it doesnt work out. We move onto the next target.

With having the manager as the deciding factor in a transfer, there isn't really a continuation of our values and plans. Managers change so often in football, and if you don't have a strong set up above him you can lose sight of certain things. At the end of the day managers are well aware that their time at a club is short. I'm sure the average length of a manager's tenure in the PL is the equivalent of the "short term" for clubs- probably around 2-3 years. Manager's are going to want to do whatever maximises their results during their time there, to get results fast. This is Arteta's thinking with Willian.

This is the issue we saw at United. They kept bringing in new managers with different ideas, philosophies, playstyles. This causes havoc for medium to long term squad planning. They finally realised they had to stop and have reset in the last year or so. Tried to keep things stable and play the kids. The thing is, United will never be the same with Woodword and a bunch of "?s" running the club. They need a football man in the boardroom.

In my opinion, signings like Willian happen when you are run poorly. A strong board with medium - long terms targets (thats what is suited to our squad) would not have let us sign Willian on a 3 year deal on big money. If we had a strong board room, we would be trying to run our club like a slightly more rich Leciester. Mostly buy players between the age of 19-25, build them up, make sure they are never losing value on their asset (i.e. keeping on top of their contracts), and selling for extremely high prices when the player has his head turned. If you are on the edge of something successful, you perhaps buy some players already established and in their prime (as we are a big club and should use our power to spend money when its right). Its not easy because Leciester of course have extremely highly skilled people doing what they are doing, but we are so far from that. And our short sightedness is going to hamper how much we really make use of our plethora of fantastic young players. It could be the difference between mid table, 6th place, top 4 and the title in 5-6 years when our best young players really realise their potential.

We are sitting on so much talent and a gold mine value wise. Right now I am worried we don't have strong enough leadership to look after that. Lets see.

 

The Kroenkes were frustrated enough by the Pepe deal to fire Raul......... they certainly know that they ****ed up and are not going to get their 70 million investment back.

 

Wenger has no place for Gnabry, and got rid of !! Managers are only human, give Arteta some time because we seem to be moving in the right direction

 

God even if we take a loss we need to get rid of this dud in the summer

 

If he was able to at least do a job then he’d be a very useful squad player but he’s actually having a negative impact on the pitch.

 

If Ødegaard comes, does Wilian even make the squad?

I'd be damned if Arteta drops Martinelli.

 

Most likely one of Willock or Nelson will be the sacrificial lamb unless they force themselves a loan move. However, I can also see AMN being the fall guy too.