Originally Posted by
I am invisible
Building blocks, for sure. A lot of this group will need to be replaced, but you can start to see that there's bits of a side there, and a few starting points.
I keep thinking back to the first half of the season, when teams like Watford were raining 30+ shots on our goal, almost completely unopposed... we're still a long way from perfect - even on a good day, our defenders could simply be outclassed by better forwards, and most of them will probably always have a self-destruct switch in them that could go off at any moment - but at least we've cut the number of heart-attack moments down from about 40 per game to about 4 or 5. At least it's not open season on our goal for 90 minutes of every game. Sure, we still have the odd horror show of a game in us, but I don't think that will change until the personnel change - there's a lot of damage there that probably goes too deep to coach out of them at this point.
Definite progress since Christmas, though. For me, anyway. Probably about as much as I was hoping for given our shell-shocked, incomplete, unbalanced side, that doesn't have a central midfield or a playmaker, is full of flawed players and is now largely being propped up by kids. Tbh, I was never really expecting Arteta to start implementing his own ideas (not in any significant way) until he'd had a chance to go shopping, and bring in some of the attributes he needs to make them work. If you listened to his interviews then the rest of this season was always going to be about re-establishing professional standards, getting a grip of the piss-poor culture at the club, giving the players a crash course in shape, positional discipline and pressing, getting them fit, and basically seeing what is salvageable for next season.
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