NOTE: The location of this post has been moved and the thread title (which was previously Wenger is Leaving) has been manipulated by a notorious pro-Wenger moderator. What was previously a message that contained no profanity and made a comment on a real life event has now been manipulated by a deliberately provocative title. An old and crude propaganda and censorship technique.
I think this is what the bulk of Arteta's work in his first 6-8 months was all about - restoring structure and basically giving the players a safety net / insurance policy that they could fall back on whenever they felt those jittery moments coming on. We were never going to be able to eradicate all of those jitters overnight, but we could at least teach the team how to keep its guard up effectively instead of letting panic take over.
I wouldn't be surprised if this then caused a lot of our woes in the first half of this season? At some point we were always going to have to stop playing it safe and become more expansive again, but when the time came I think it proved more difficult than anyone was expecting to get the players to start taking risks again? I guess you can understand it - after so many years of playing in stressful, shambolic setups, never knowing when everything might fly apart at the seams around you, that feeling of security and control that came with sitting deep must have felt good - but you can't hide behind it forever. In the end it took the introduction of the younger players (players with the least cumulative damage) to inject that bit of fearlessness back into the side and nudge / shame the others into action.