Good point :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhaka Can’t
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Good point :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhaka Can’t
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
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 :upset:
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
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...
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
Pires
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53638722
:bow:
Favourite goal scored?Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
"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."
:lol:
Schmeichel :pal:
I LOVE that goal. Big fan of lobbed goals.
Schmeichel always looked pretty annoyed when he conceded a goal.
When he was lobbed he was fuming :lol:
Pires :bow:
I remember it like yesterday....Good times
https://www.arsenal.com/news/club-update-2020
There's no money, guv.
55 redundancies. Does that equal 1 Ozil?Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
No.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Ozil earns £18m a year.
Oh shit!Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
You could employ 606 people on £30k a year for what Ozil earns.
:doh:
And of course the word "earns" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
:lol: Yes, sorry. "Gets".Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
If you’re one of those staff being laid off you’ve got to wonder how the fuck Ozil still has a contract. I know it’s not as easy to dump him but still. :lol:
They should make Ozil tell these people to their faces.
hopefully the redundancies include MustafiQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
55 redundancies which will save us a few million.
In unrelated news...
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/a...navirus-426883
Honestly. Football is so shit :(
Well said.Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
As likely as the guy that is worth $10 billion and owns us.
Özil needs to fuck off as soon as possible, but this is entirely on the owners and the people running the club, IMO.
I suspect a lot of these redundancies will turn out to be either match-day contractors who no longer have anything to do, or will be down to the restructuring of the scouting / recruitment department that's clearly going on behind the scenes, but the timing is still really shit. Not a good look off the back of securing a load of extra income from European football and details being leaked of a big contract offer to Willian.
agreed that could be the cause of some/all of the redundancies but they should have thought about the PR element more as you say
I've been lenient on the Kroenkes up to now but this is also hard to justfiy given his net worth has risen
"Kroenke’s net worth stands at $8.3bn – which would pay the UK average wage to 55 people for approximately 4,300 years – while the proposed Willian contract is worth a reported £100,000-a-week and £7.5m per year."
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/a...ut-ozil-571989
Seems like most of the scouts have been let go.
so our signings will be just from Raul's dodgy agent mates - great...Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
To try and justify it as an unavoidable measure to maintain investment in the squad was disgusting, and more than a little patronising if they expect anyone to swallow it. I don't know what the saving is from these redundancies, but I doubt it amounts to more than £3m/yr - that isn't making any difference to anything. Frankly, anyone who co-signed that statement owes those people, the fans and the playing staff an apology.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
Seriously, what a bizarre statement to make? If they'd just said the club were restructuring the way we scout and recruit then I don't think anyone would have looked into it too much. If they'd said that because crowds won't be allowed back into stadiums any time soon then, regrettably, a number of jobs are now redundant, then I think most people would have understood - it's still shitty news, but I think most people would get that no business is going to pay someone a wage if there's not actually a job there for them to do. But what they've come out with is just stupid. It's a massive PR own goal, and they deserve all the blow-back they get.
I think that’s actually the strategy now. I read an article that suggested we’ve made a conscious decision to go down a more “contacts based” route, rather than the old school scouting style. More about who you know rather than what you know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
If it means more Martinelli's then great. More players with their best days behind them looking for a last big contract, then no.
Not allowed in the stadiums now I guess.Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
Martinelli was scouted. He's one of Francis Caggigao's signings, who has just been let go.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
:gp:Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
They've just replaced them with one man...Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-p...Arsene_415.jpg
:ninja:
Oh. Well in that case. :doh:Quote:
Originally Posted by GP
Well the scouts responsible for us signing players like Mustafi and Xhaka deserve to go :coffee:
They don't deserve to go, they deserve to get their heads smashed in :threaten:Quote:
Originally Posted by Penguin
Interesting... opinion on those scouting redundancies now seems to be shifting in favour of it being a smart move by Edu. The general feeling is that the previous set up was bloated and out-dated, with large, unnecessary teams of scouts in every country, going to watch players in person, and that we're moving towards something a little leaner, based around data and preliminary video assessments, before we sent anyone to watch a player in person. Guess that makes sense.
I've also heard that Caggigao and others were going beyond scouting and actually getting involved in brokering the deals, which seems unnecessary when we're hiring other people to sort out contracts.
Finally, I've seen some people suggest that adopting the 'contacts book' approach might actually be us getting ahead of the game for once? There's a growing feeling that dealing with agents is inevitable now, and that even 16/17yo nobodies from u23 sides are now well-represented in almost every league. I guess that's true when you look at kids like that Joelson at Lisbon that we've been sniffing around? Nobody's claiming that it's an ideal solution for clubs, but it sounds like me have to be pragmatic about it if we want to be in the running for the top talent.
Guess we'll have to wait and see whether we're being modernised or conned. In principal, I'm not actually opposed to this seemingly unholy alliance of data-driven scouting and super-agents - my concern is less about having to deal with agents, and more to do with the one specific agent that we always seem to go through. Hopefully this arrangement with Kia, whatever it is, will turn out to be short-term as we get this new thing up and running. Wolves had a similar arrangement with Mendes, but they're fans seem to think they're now starting to separate themselves from him a little now...
My issue with the data approach is that it's exactly what leads to signing players like Mustafi amd Xhaka, whose pass completion rates are high because mostly all they do is safe little passes backwards and sideways, but they don't create anything and when they get it wrong it leads to opposition chances like we've seen countless times when one of them fucks up
That's not the data's fault - that's the arseholes who punched in the wrong parameters and/or signed-off on the players without looking. The data is just numbers - you still need competent people there to analyse it and give it context. It just means that you don't need quite so many people, and don't need to travel anywhere near as much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76