Good pointOriginally Posted by Xhaka Can’t
Good point
League table since Arteta took over
https://talksport.com/football/72805...-point-chelsea
Not great, not terrible #chernobyl
The thing that jumps out the most from that table is how it looks as if Manure are getting their shit together.
Pun intended.
I think its difficult to judge him properly on this season. The club was a mess when he took over thanks to Emery destroying most of the players confidence and they basically hadn’t got a clue what formation to play or what was required from them etc.
So Arteta had to effectively rebuild from scratch and he joined at a difficult time in terms of fixtures. I think it was just before Christmas so the games were thick & fast and always difficult to really rebuild during that time. The club had stupidly delayed making a decision for a while so that didnt help.
Obviously the Covid break didn’t help either & it looks like there won’t be much of a preseason this year to help him really get to grips with the players. The next season starts on 12th September so there is a six week break between the fa cup final & opening game. While appreciating the players had a few months off mid season, he has to be careful not to burn them out by making them train fully especially with the Euros next summer. You could have a situation where a lot of players play non stop from June this year until June 2022. That isn’t healthy.
There were signs of improvement, take the Liverpool & city games and he clearly has some idea of what he wants to do and is working on it. With emery, there wasn’t any idea of what he was trying to achieve but Arteta seems to know what he wants on the pitch. The Club needs to back him in the transfer window & some deadwood needs to go but i think given this season & the mess he inheritated, its harsh to judge too much.
if we havent improved by January then fair game
Random I know, and of course doesnt help, however, as an old time Gooner (53 years old), I have seen these ups and downs many times.
I used to stand on a half empty North Bank during the Terry Neil and Don How era and it was terrible. Similar to now, we would finish in the top ten and win the occasional FA Cup.
The only difference is now I guess is that people are angry because we left our beloved Highbury and were promised that we would be competing with the very best. Then Kroenke arrived and had other ideas.
We might have to get used to this for a few years my friends
Just note that the table puts Southampton in 5th ... i.e. it's pretty meaningless
all we know about Arteta is:
- he's probably slightly less crap than Emery, mainly because he looks a bit cooler and can speak English
- he's just as susceptible to brown-nosing from the likes of Xhaka, Mustafi and Kola
- like Emery he wants to play 'who's got the biggest willy' with our £350k per week most creative player
- he also won't play Guendouzi, the only player who actually shows any passion on the pitch, because he dared to talk back
- he also insists on playing our best striker on the left wing which then prevents our newly-resigned creative left-winger, Saka from playing in his best position
- he won't play Sokratis despite his probably being our best available CB at the moment
The only thing i can think of on the plus side is one good performance against City, plus he's got Ceballos playing much better - that's a player i think we really need to keep
Last edited by Mac76; 28-07-2020 at 08:54 AM.
20 games isn't a big enough sample size to judge anything really. I saw that same table going around a couple of weeks ago and it had us 3rd, behind only Liverpool and City - a couple of weeks later and we're down to 6th. Things change fast when the numbers are so small. It's encouraging, in as far as it goes - we're not languishing down the bottom or anything - but that's about all it tells you.
My take on it is I don't think Arteta has really started yet - not properly, anyway. I think the 2nd part of this season has mostly been about getting a grip on the shockingly casual attitude within the club and the appalling lack of professional (and personal) standards, and giving the players we're currently stuck with a crash-course in basics like shape, spacing between lines, making yourself available as an option, how to receive a f--king pass, and pressing (as well as trying to get the fitness levels up a bit).
Personally speaking, I'm just glad we've hired someone who a) recognises the problems, b) doesn't try to throw dust in our eyes about the gulf between us and the teams above us, and c) is approaching things in a methodical order. The thing I feared most about a new hire was that they would try to take us from zero to masterplan without addressing any of the many, many fundamental problems with the foundations that they're building on, and that it would all blow up after 6 months, same as it always does. Arteta (I hope!) looks like he's at least trying to do things the correct way round, and is trying to work on the foundations before he does anything else - boring AF to watch, but it needs to be done. We've already put it off for over a decade.
I'm not overly concerned about his rookie status and lack of in-game management experience - we're looking at at least 3 year rebuild, imo, so I think we can afford to let him learn that side of things while the team grows. My main concern with him is that I worry that he's going to be young and naive enough to think that he can change some of these players, when the truth is a lot of them are simply lost causes. Then again, maybe he won't have much choice but to work with them? I really have no idea how much (if anything) we're going to be able to do this summer at this point...
Last edited by I am invisible; 28-07-2020 at 01:54 PM.
That last part is right, we should have a clearout but i don't think it will happen
I for one won't believe we're going anywhere until we get rid of Xhaka and Mustafi, plus a few others
Favourite goal scored?
"When I scored against Peter Schmeichel when he was playing for Aston Villa in 2002.
"I received a long ball from Freddie Ljungberg, I put the ball over George Boateng and when I was in front of Schmeichel I lobbed him. I think he was furious about this."
Schmeichel
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
