Bumley v The Arsenal 3pm Sat 18 Sep

[I am invisible]

On the play in the final third, I don’t think anything is going to click as such. It’s been painfully obvious since Arteta came that he is a safety first, conservative coach. Our attacking potency has fallen off a cliff under his guidance. He’s neutered the attack so we just have to hope that defensively we’re strong enough to continue winning games by fine margins.

Yeah, I’m not really sure where we’re going on the attacking side yet? Maybe nowhere? Hard to tell when there’s been this many changes and there’s a different shape every week.

Tbh, at this point I’m happy to just use Arteta and Edu for the next year (or whenever their contracts expires) to carry on with the clean up at the club: drive out as many of the bums and problem-players as possible, trim the bloated squad, get the wage bill under control, get contracts under control, overhaul our approach to player identification and recruitment, (re)build around younger players with sell-on value, and re-establish basic professional pride and standards. If they can knock a hole in that list, and Arteta can also turn us into a solid and disciplined (if dull) unit with a bit of fight about us, then I’ll call their time here worthwhile.

All of which sounds absolutely boring AF, but that’s about where I am right now - I’ve been waiting for someone to get a grip of this mess of a club for about 6 years now and, for all their faults, these two are the only two who have even attempted to do anything about it. If Arteta can somehow deliver champagne football and Europe over the next year then great! We can think about continuing. But right now I’d settle for someone resetting this club and leaving us somewhere close to where we were between George Graham and Wenger, with a solid base for the next guy to build on and no mile-long list of problems to deal with.