Mikel Arteta Thread

[LDG]

He's not a defensive midfielder anyway

We haven't played with a defensive midfielder for years. And most teams with five midfielders don't either. The midfield all work to defend, be it zonally or not.

He's the pivot at the base of the trio, who lays the ball off and keeps the game moving. The role Denilson should have played, but was too lazy. You have to work fucking hard in that role, because you have to be available all of the time, and you also have to cover off gaps left by other midfielders (which is as defensive as it gets).

He's done superbly well at it.

[Cripps_orig]

Is he pointless or not? No, he's not Pirlo but neither are thousands of other players. He's not Messi either. But he does a job for us that, seemingly by your own admission, nobody else can do better. That's not the definition of pointless.

I don't work for arsenal. I'm not their coach or manager. I don't know who else can play there. You seem to have mistaken me for someone who does work there.

Do you think when Arteta gets the ball and him passing back to a CB countless times instead of looking for a forward pass isn't pointless?

I'm pretty sure any of our DMs in the youth set up can do the same.

More is expect from Arteta however and he has failed.

Denilson did the same as Arteta and was widely criticised by the same people praising the spaniard. That's how I know they are WUMming.

[Ollie the Optimist]

arteta was asked to be the base of the midfield and be more defensive then others, the team then improve defensively to become leagues second best. in what way has he failed there?

and with denilson, as LDG, teh problem was him being lazy, not tracking back or jogging back. clear difference there

[Dennis Bendtner]

Why don't you remind us all how of how great Gilberto was

[Özim]

No, your argument is Arteta is pointless. It's not his fault if we don't sign players, in fact he was in the papers this week urging Wenger to get the chequebook out. Fact is we didn't sign players. So who plays in that role then? Apart from this pointless player Arteta?

Noone is saying it's his fault, they're saying he's not very good at playing out of position. Hardly a criticism, it makes sense after all, he's an attackingly minded player not a defensive one and he's wasted where he plays.

You play to a player's strength you don't try and fit a square peg in a round hole, but that's Wenger allover, stubborn as a mule always thinks he knows best and because he doesn't want to spend money the team and to an extent player has to suffer for it

[Ollie the Optimist]

please explain to me, how playing a player "out of position" which ends up improving the team from being awful defensively the season before to the second best defence in the league is making the team suffer?

[Cripps_orig]

please explain to me, how playing a player "out of position" which ends up improving the team from being awful defensively the season before to the second best defence in the league is making the team suffer?

Stops us creatively.

[Ollie the Optimist]

Stops us creatively.

how? its his job to be more defensive minded, while cazorla, jack etc do the creative work.

[Özim]

He's hardly the reason for the sudden improvement in defence (we'll see how that goes next season I reckon this is a blip anyway), his performances have been average.

You pull out all these stats and yet despite being so great we achieve nothing all season, crash out of everything early and limp to 4th, our worst performance for a long time.

[Özim]

Stops us creatively.

Yup, Arteta would be much better if he was used to do what he's good at (like he was at Everton).