Quote Originally Posted by IBK View Post
I kind of get whet you are saying, but let's face it, the owners have spent money. I'm not sure that its 100% fair to label the ownership as not prepared to invest. Most people saw the case for bringing in a young manager and giving him some time to build sustained success, non?
The fans and the sponsors have provided money that has been misspent, that much I'd agree with. I'm not even suggesting we waste more money, not at this stage. It's the attitude that has to change. People are saying it's great that Arteta has pulled the team together into a more cohesive unit. True, he has. But what the hell? Isn't that what a team is supposed to be all about anyway? We're giving him a thumbs up for doing the absolute bare minimum, just because we had managers before that couldn't even achieve that much? I'm not criticising Arteta for doing his job, and I haven't been calling for his head. But I'm not getting excited about square one either.

I don't think it would make a blind bit of difference who we brought in while the attitude at every level of this club is so rancid. I think we might need a priest rather than a manager to solve the problems. Cast out all thoughts about scraping into a CL competition we don't stand a chance of competing in as some form of success. That's what got us into this decline in the first place, Wenger's Top 4 Trophy as we slid into this inevitable mid-table status, which people were warning about (myself included) for years, and being laughed out of the room for saying it.

With the current attitude remaining in place (second best is 1% from glory, don't lose rather than strive to win), a rookie manager that seems to appreciate the basics but shows no sign of taking it beyond that, so far, and owners that treat the whole affair as an exercise in balancing the books - we're getting the expected outcome. How could it be any different? If the manager is not going to change (because there's no point) and the owners aren't going to change then the attitude has to change. It has to become realistic rather than purely optimistic. It has to be about what must happen and how it will happen rather than what we hope could happen.

If I could hear Arteta essentially saying, fuck, we play shit, boring, pointless, soulless garbage and that needs to change pronto because that's not going to get us anywhere, then I might have some enthusiasm. Instead I'm hearing about the great spirit again, and I've heard all that shit before. And I'm hearing about the CL being the goal, not the title. It's unrealistic for us to win a title in short order, that's fair, but what's the PLAN for doing that, step by step? And is that plan being executed? I don't see it. The only realism I can see here is a "big" club settling down to be also-rans for the long term, maybe scraping a seat at the CL draw on a random basis. And people calling that progress.