I'm not sure that we should be expecting a new manager 'bounce' as such. There was so much wrong with Emery's team, both in terms of mentality and organisation that things were not, and will not be sorted overnight. What we have seen is greater solidity and better game management. What we cannot expect - particularly where there has been such a vast improvement in the fitness, talent and organisation of most other teams in the league, is the manager improving all areas of performance overnight. I was one of those who thought that we had talent in our team, but the past couple of results have shown that in fact we have a pretty small squad, and imbalance in terms of our goal threat. I see Arteta as trying to create a more solid platform, and I think that he has been quite successful in achieving this. More work, and personnel are required to convert this into winning performances.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Don’t think there’s even been a bounce tbh.
I suppose visibly we appear to be a little more structured (which is the barest of all minimums) but it’s a huge repair job. I don’t see anything changing until he at least has a summer to whip them into shape and weed out the rubbish, of which there is a lot.
He picked up a team with no culture or identity and it’s shown so far as we still can’t win games with any regularity. We’ve won 6 games, sit in 10th and have a negative goal difference after 23 games. He can’t really do much worse, at this rate this crop are set to be the worst Arsenal team of the PL era.
Last edited by Marc Overmars; 20-01-2020 at 03:42 PM.
To me it looked like all signs of improvement from prior matches disappeared in this one. Very much back to the Arsenal of old. No tempo. No confidence on the ball (excluding Saka and Martinelli). A really ponderous transition from back to front, often involving repeated sideways and backwards movement. Very sloppy mistakes across the team. Suicidal moments in defence again. Ozil back to his old tricks too. Disappointing performance that derails a lot of the building hope that maybe Arteta could do something with the current bunch of players. Maybe they are too set in their ways for any sustained progress.
Für eure Sicherheit
Maybe you've forgotten how bad it was under Emery!
I thought Torreira was as good as he has been lately and that Xhaka (a silly moment or two aside) was solid. Ozil struggled to really impact the game but I counted at least 3 tackles he made AND won the ball so he is at least trying. There was a game recently where we pressed like maniacs and yet was pretty ineffective. In the second half Arteta just got them to press higher. All sorts was said about hair dryer treatment, being arsed, running around and the usually lark, but I think when it came back to it, the key difference was that we pressed higher up the pitch.
Martinelli should have basically played every game this season and Saka though clearly targeted against Sheffield whatstheirname held his own. Even Laca is still trying very hard but is awfully ineffective right now.
I don't actually think we will get much better defensively than we are, so unfortunately we are going to need to score a lot more bleeding goals.