First of all the positives, again a much improved performance, better than anything we've seen this year against the top 4.
Now the result was pretty predictable. I said something in the last game about Arteta getting the team to play at a high tempo and how that plays to the teams strength for now but I questioned how long he could keep it up. This game was a perfect example. Once we dropped the tempo and the players tired, their was only ever going to be one winner.
And for those who love the idea having a rookie coach these are the kind of games that will keep exposing him. Everyone, including the commmentators were crying out that the team was getting tired and Chelsea's goals were comming, yet he left the substitutions late and they were all ineffective by that time.
Conversely, Frank, the guy with the "small club" experience, used his subs perfectly as early as the 1st half to change tactics once he saw his team was struggling and it ended up working out for him even though his team was quite below par.
I remember winning games under Emery in the first year, where it was clear we played poorly and thinking to myself our weaknesses will soon get exposed for the world to see- which happened after the initial run and rightly so we didn't recover.
From what I've seen so far from Arteta, we're going to earn our points the hard way i.e. when we win, it'll be be because we outplayed the other team and we deserved all the points ( a bit like Citeh and Barca).
Now we need to judge for ourselves how realistic this is in the scenario we are in and the bunch of players we are saddled with.
In short, our climb up the table is going to be pretty slow and painful, and his inexperience is going to have a lot to do with this.
Last edited by 21_GOONER_SALUTE; 29-12-2019 at 05:13 PM.
BTW I thought Luiz had a good game today, it really shocked me that he could raise his game (the winner was more of Mustafi's fault as DL had to keep his eye on 2 players while Mustafi just backed off like a wimp). Oh and the through passes from different players we've been seeing in the last 2 games have been pretty nice too.
The thing I like about this Arteta experiment is players are improving, or getting back to the form we know they once had, which really is a good thing if it can be sustained with the bad results that await us.
Last edited by 21_GOONER_SALUTE; 29-12-2019 at 05:14 PM.
Gutted about the result, but tbh after just 4 or 5 training sessions I’m more concerned with seeing signs of progress for now. We know we’ve got a flawed, brittle group of players here, who have been poorly coached for a lot of years, and that the defence is being held together by masking tape - we were never going to become world-beaters overnight. At least you can see some kind of plan or vision being put into place, so you get a hint of where it’s going if we stick with it.
Anyone read Tim Stillman’s column on Arseblog this week? At one point he referenced this part of a chat he had with Joe Montemurro (Women’s team manager)...
https://arseblog.com/2019/12/theory/“...To have a style of play that your players believe in, you need insurance policies. If you want your players to believe in your style, you have to give them something to fall back on, so they know that even if things don’t quite go for them in a given situation, they can still get something out of the game.
Once you’ve got that base and that confidence, you can make switches. You can move between systems, play with more width or more inside depending on what the game requires. We spent the first six months solidifying the core and from there, we made adjustments and started to develop...”
If I had to guess, I’d say this is what Arteta is focussing on to start with: building those insurance policies, and working on fundamental default behaviours and actions that the players can always fall back on. There’s already early signs of more structure and discipline there, but it’s clearly still a long way from automatic behaviour for this group of players - we can maintain it for long spells, but we’re having to consciously think about it, and as we saw today we can still lose it if our concentration wavers or energy starts to dip.
Promising though - it’s certainly the most confident and professional I’ve seen a defence containing Luiz, Mustafi and AMN look! Interested to see where this goes...
Last edited by I am invisible; 29-12-2019 at 05:36 PM.
we arent in a relegation battle, we are 6 points off 18th but also 6 points off 6th. proper mid table and while we have Auba we will be ok. He picks up an injury 1st Feb and we will be totally cattle trucked.
With the improved performances werent the early Emery performances the same though, playing higher tempo closing down from the front. Its just whether the players can keep it up if results dont pick up.
It was first time we lost after winning at half time for 9 years also first points Chelsea have got after conceding first.
Lampard made the changes but Chelsea didnt really look like scoring until the mistake, so Lampard is a rookie manager too and the fact they struggle when behind is when its shown up. i think arteta will be the same, we are fine when in front but chasing the game i think we will continue to struggle.
Another game another defeat. Poor result, but we allowed Chelsea to come back in the 2nd half and dominate and eventually paid the price. Arteta as very slow to make changes and didn't try and stem Chelseas' dominance early enough.
Not impressed so far to be honest, but what can you expect when you have a guy with no experience in charge, a game is 90 minutes not 35-45 minutes, we had the same thing under Emery.
Great post.
Typical rookie manager game, naively comes into the game wanting to us to play a certain way and thinking that if we do we'll win, that won't happen, you need to adapt to what's happening in the match and make changes, this reminds me of what Wenger wanted to do, play your game and not worry about the opposition which is a worry.
I still stand by the fact we should have got someone experienced given our situation, we need results, not 35-45 minutes of decent performances.