Bournemouth reaction and player ratings

[Marc Overmars]

So you think the best way to deal with someone is to use passive aggressive tactics to humiliate them by making them train by themselves?. What would have happened if we couldn’t have got the Barcelona deal over the line

And he doesn’t have personal skills. When you hear the players talk they talk about how impressed they are with him tactically and his understanding of the game. There’s almost no personal interaction with the players one on one throughout the entire eight episodes. He’s clearly someone who is so introverted he cannot handle that kind of interaction.

All players are different though with how they react to coaches. Some enjoy having an arm on their shoulder while others just like being driven by what’s happening on the pitch. He’s their coach not their dad, so I don’t see it as big deal if he doesn’t quite have a personal relationship with them.

I remember Carragher and Gerrard saying Benitez was cold as shit but it didn’t stop them performing for him. Wenger was a dad to his players especially in the second half of his tenure and ended up with the most mentally fragile team I’ve ever seen.

Morale has been decent for a while now even despite the collapse last season, so you have to think whatever his personal skills are he’s still getting a tune out of them. Plus I wouldn’t use All or Nothing to draw conclusions from, there’s hours and hours of footage we’ll never see, footage that probably includes plenty of player interaction that was too dull to make the edit.

[HCZ_Reborn]

All players are different though with how they react to coaches. Some enjoy having an arm on their shoulder while others just like being driven by what’s happening on the pitch. He’s their coach not their dad, so I don’t see it as big deal if he doesn’t quite have a personal relationship with them.

I remember Carragher and Gerrard saying Benitez was cold as shit but it didn’t stop them performing for him. Wenger was a dad to his players especially in the second half of his tenure and ended up with the most mentally fragile team I’ve ever seen.

Morale has been decent for a while now even despite the collapse last season, so you have to think whatever his personal skills are he’s still getting a tune out of them. Plus I wouldn’t use All or Nothing to draw conclusions from, there’s hours and hours of footage we’ll never see, footage that probably includes plenty of player interaction that was too dull to make the edit.

And Benitez was ultimately a failure at Liverpool

I don’t care what business you’re in, you need to be able to interact with your staff one on one. And whilst I accept that you only saw certain things with All or Nothing….how likely is it in your view that a documentary that’s almost entirely centered on Mikel Arteta wouldn’t have shown him speaking to one of his players one on one if that actually happened.

It’s not about being a father figure it’s about understanding players on an individual basis, you’re less likely to end up freezing them out that way. It’s not different styles it’s inability to deal with people.

[IBK]

I don’t think he handled the Auba situation badly at all - quite the opposite. That invisible line you talk about was perfectly visible to me - Arteta very clearly outlined his ‘non-negotiables’ when he took over and made it abundantly clear that his first job was to reset the broken culture at the club. That’s exactly what a working culture is: a set of clear standards and behaviours that you all agree to so everyone knows what is expected of them and everyone understands what falls short. No grey areas. We’re not talking about cutting Auba’s throat after one mistake here - a misunderstanding because the rules weren’t clear - we’re talking about persistent breaches of discipline and a lack of professionalism by our club captain and highest earner. He nearly missed a NLD derby ffs! Arteta fought for him to get that big new contract and he gave him the armband so you can’t tell me it was just a random personal dislike - Auba just took the piss, persistently and over a prolonged period, and it eventually got him removed from the group.

Totally disagree about Arteta lacking personal skills - listen to the younger players, the newer players, the guys at City, etc - basically all the players with high professional standards - and they all love him. The only players I know of who have had a problem with him are all the bums and piss-takers who had incredibly low professional standards - players with terminal bad attitudes or who had been coddled and babied for too many years under Wenger and didn’t like their comfortable social club being turned into a serious place of work again. Who are we talking about here anyway? Auba? Özil? Guendouzi? Kolasinac? Mustafi? Is there anyone on this list of mistreated, misunderstood players who weren’t warned numerous times about their effort, professionalism and/or conduct and who didn’t bring it in themselves, many, many times over?

Again, for me Pepe is something completely different - he’s just a signing who unfortunately hasn’t worked out, but I don’t see any issues between coach and player there around professionalism. The biggest problem for Pepe isn’t the coach - it’s that the market in Europe has collapsed since the pandemic and it’s trapped him here.

[IBK]

So you think the best way to deal with someone is to use passive aggressive tactics to humiliate them by making them train by themselves?. What would have happened if we couldn’t have got the Barcelona deal over the line

And he doesn’t have personal skills. When you hear the players talk they talk about how impressed they are with him tactically and his understanding of the game. There’s almost no personal interaction with the players one on one throughout the entire eight episodes. He’s clearly someone who is so introverted he cannot handle that kind of interaction.

What do you regard as personal skills? In a football manager context these have to be skills that get your players playing for you; trusting you; working as a team and believing in the project. It is self-evident that this is happening at our club. What All or Nothing does show is that the collective is everything for Arteta, and there has been a profound culture change in terms of the players seeing themselves as part of a unit. You don't have to be the warmest personality to get the best out of most people - you just need to show that you care. AW in his later years created a Colney creche where players were far too comfortable, and where did that get us? Look at the age profile of our squad. Plenty of young players who generally require more nurturing than more seasoned profesionals, and they look happy. What more do you want?

As for Aubameyang, IMO Arteta did the rigth thing. If the player felt humiliated, then he shouldn't have taken the piss by thinking he was outside the rules that apply to everyone else. Particularly as club captain and someone the other players looked up to. By all accounts he was a serial offender. What was the manager supposed to do if he refused to fall into line?

[IBK]

Don't agree, Emery was weak and needed support so jumped at the chance of having a sycophant like Xhaka there, Freddie likewise and Arteta's been learning on the job and like Emery had a problem with talented players who didn't see the point in running around traffic cones all day

Xhaka's just a talentless creep, any well-established manager with balls would tell him to do one

So much misdirected hyperbole in your post that I don't really know where to start. Wenger signed Xhaka and every one of our managers since has had him as a 'first on the teamsheet' player. For all that he dropped off, Wenger's pedigree and experience is undoubted; Emery didn't flourish at Arsenal, but is hardly unproven or unsuccessful; Arteta came without managerial experience, but has shown that he is not afraid to ditch senior players, and is extremely progressive in how he wants to play the game, and has shown that he has a very clear vision for this. He worked with some of the best players in the worls under Guardiola and should be able to spot a dud one when he sees it. To dismiss the opinions of all these managers in favour of your own shows clear and unjustified bias. But then your description of Xhaka as a talentless creep actually makes my argument for me.

[HCZ_Reborn]

What do you regard as personal skills? In a football manager context these have to be skills that get your players playing for you; trusting you; working as a team and believing in the project. It is self-evident that this is happening at our club. What All or Nothing does show is that the collective is everything for Arteta, and there has been a profound culture change in terms of the players seeing themselves as part of a unit. You don't have to be the warmest personality to get the best out of most people - you just need to show that you care. AW in his later years created a Colney creche where players were far too comfortable, and where did that get us? Look at the age profile of our squad. Plenty of young players who generally require more nurturing than more seasoned profesionals, and they look happy. What more do you want?

As for Aubameyang, IMO Arteta did the rigth thing. If the player felt humiliated, then he shouldn't have taken the piss by thinking he was outside the rules that apply to everyone else. Particularly as club captain and someone the other players looked up to. By all accounts he was a serial offender. What was the manager supposed to do if he refused to fall into line?

I can tell you from personal experience what it’s like to be treated like that, the thing is you have absolutely no idea what the reasons were for him coming back a day later than agreed. We know already that Auba’s mum has been ill, and it doesn’t matter how much you earn you still have human feelings. Arteta doesn’t confront the situation head on he’s going on about all these notes he’s kept of when Auba has been late for training and to me it gives every impression of trying to justify his treatment of a player who is out of form.
Arteta cannot seem to handle players who have big reputations and cannot handle anyone who might question his dictatorial bull suit and passive aggressive personality. But isolating someone and making them come in for pointless training by himself was simply an attempt to humiliate a player he had no interest in using anymore. It forms a pattern of behaviour and it suggests that it will happen again to other players. Arteta is simply hoping that if he continues building a team of players who won’t think for themselves he won’t eventually lose the dressing room.
It’s utterly toxic behaviour and three wins against teams we should be beating doesn’t change that. I went into All or Nothing with an open mind but it utterly cemented to me how Arteta should not be in this job and his inability to deal with people on a human level is why. This goes beyond the hubris of this tactical set up and his transfer philosophy.
I genuinely don’t think the guy is in his right mind, and I hope the board intervenes to relieve him of his post when invariably things go bad (and I just cannot see how they won’t….you’ve got all the ingredients for disaster there)

[Mac76]

So much misdirected hyperbole in your post that I don't really know where to start. Wenger signed Xhaka and every one of our managers since has had him as a 'first on the teamsheet' player. For all that he dropped off, Wenger's pedigree and experience is undoubted; Emery didn't flourish at Arsenal, but is hardly unproven or unsuccessful; Arteta came without managerial experience, but has shown that he is not afraid to ditch senior players, and is extremely progressive in how he wants to play the game, and has shown that he has a very clear vision for this. He worked with some of the best players in the worls under Guardiola and should be able to spot a dud one when he sees it. To dismiss the opinions of all these managers in favour of your own shows clear and unjustified bias. But then your description of Xhaka as a talentless creep actually makes my argument for me.

you're ignoring the core of what i said which is that managers like Arteta and Emery for different reasons feel a need to prove themselves and belittle players who don't do the teachers' pet act.


yes there needs to be discipline but a manager with genuine gravitas is bigger than to put the captain out of the matchday squad because he was late, or criticise Pepe in public for being sent off then turn a blind eye when Xhaka gets a red - it's inconsistent and shows he is biased

you guys can carry on putting pictures of Arteta and Xhaka on your walls if you want but there's plenty of people on here and in the wider fan base who can see Arteta and Xhaka's relationship for the unhealthy arrangement that it is

[I am invisible]

So you think the best way to deal with someone is to use passive aggressive tactics to humiliate them by making them train by themselves?. What would have happened if we couldn’t have got the Barcelona deal over the line

And he doesn’t have personal skills. When you hear the players talk they talk about how impressed they are with him tactically and his understanding of the game. There’s almost no personal interaction with the players one on one throughout the entire eight episodes. He’s clearly someone who is so introverted he cannot handle that kind of interaction.

It wasn’t passive, though - everything was straight-up, to his face, and 100% fair. The rules were made very clear, everyone was given plenty of warning, and Auba breached those rules, over and over again. He was given plenty of second and third chances - this wasn’t a brutal example made after his first offence. We even made him our highest earner and gave him the armband! I’m not sure how much more we could have tried before it came to taking a hard line with him? He really has no one to blame but himself.

I’m with MO on this - Arteta is their manager, not their Dad, and these are grown men at a place of work. If they don’t like how the consequences of stepping out of line feel then they need to grow up and stop pushing boundaries like a bunch of children. I expect the manager to have his players’ backs on a lot of things, particularly external criticisms -fuck anyone not at the club! - but he still has to enforce some basic professional standards otherwise everyone just does what they want, when they want, and it all falls apart.

We tried managing certain players differently for years under Wenger, stepping lightly around them, stroking egos and giving them special treatment, and all it got us was a squad full of pampered, lazy, weak-minded babies who crumbled under any kind of adversity or pressure. None of them deserved the special treatment they got and none of them even responded to it - all we ended up doing was ruining them and the club. We all wanted to see and end to those days - we wanted the culture reset and our standards back - well this is what standards look like.

[I am invisible]

Confirmation bias

Tbf, we all do it. I’m sure my opinion is very much being influenced by one of the guys I have working on my team right now. In terms of his output he’s one of my best designers - we’d really struggle without him - and on a personal level I love him, but he literally never wants to come into the office. We’re only in on Mondays and Wednesdays anyway, but every week I get a messages from him - “Mate, I need to work from home next Monday because…” and “I need to work from home this Wednesday because…” It’s always something… childcare, trains, illness, the weather, he hadn’t read the wfh policy properly, he hadn’t read the extreme weather policy properly (even though he acknowledged that he had), he’s got a delivery coming or a dentist appointment or his front door won’t shut, etc, etc… always on a Monday or a Wednesday. Never anything on its own that sounds unreasonable, but when you look back at the HR records for the year he’s worked from home almost every Monday and Wednesday for nearly 9 months!

I’m not unsympathetic - I’ve sat down with him numerous times now to try to get to the bottom of it, to see if there’s anything we can do to help, because there’s obviously something not right there (his story changes every time, but reading between the lines I think he’s got himself in a lot of debt and is desperately trying to save money where he can on travel and childcare). I approve what I can and fight his corner every time the owner starts asking what’s going on with attendance, but there’s also no getting around the fact that it’s causing problems.

We’ve had to rewrite our wfh policies several times now because of him, my other designers are starting to ask where he is and if they can also wfh to save some money, he’s not around to help mentor the graduates and the juniors, and we’re just spending more and more time having to manage his situation instead of getting on with work. There’s no animosity there between any of us, but there’s no denying that it’s not working for anyone either.

We’re all looking at this thing with Arteta and Auba and assuming there must be some animosity or conflict there, but maybe we’ve all got this completely wrong, myself included? Maybe something has changed in Auba’s personal life that’s changed his behaviour and demeanour, Arteta has noticed and arranged a sit-down to get to the bottom of it, and they’ve come to the conclusion that this isn’t the right project or club (or maybe even the right country) for him right now? Or maybe they’ve agreed that the direction that Arteta wants to take the club in isn’t how Auba wants to work or what he signed up for, that it’s causing him a lot of stress, and it’s best for both parties if they go their separate ways? Again, their doesn’t necessarily have to be any animosity there - we’re all just assuming there is.

[IBK]

I can tell you from personal experience what it’s like to be treated like that, the thing is you have absolutely no idea what the reasons were for him coming back a day later than agreed. We know already that Auba’s mum has been ill, and it doesn’t matter how much you earn you still have human feelings. Arteta doesn’t confront the situation head on he’s going on about all these notes he’s kept of when Auba has been late for training and to me it gives every impression of trying to justify his treatment of a player who is out of form.
Arteta cannot seem to handle players who have big reputations and cannot handle anyone who might question his dictatorial bull suit and passive aggressive personality. But isolating someone and making them come in for pointless training by himself was simply an attempt to humiliate a player he had no interest in using anymore. It forms a pattern of behaviour and it suggests that it will happen again to other players. Arteta is simply hoping that if he continues building a team of players who won’t think for themselves he won’t eventually lose the dressing room.
It’s utterly toxic behaviour and three wins against teams we should be beating doesn’t change that. I went into All or Nothing with an open mind but it utterly cemented to me how Arteta should not be in this job and his inability to deal with people on a human level is why. This goes beyond the hubris of this tactical set up and his transfer philosophy.
I genuinely don’t think the guy is in his right mind, and I hope the board intervenes to relieve him of his post when invariably things go bad (and I just cannot see how they won’t….you’ve got all the ingredients for disaster there)

Funny how you rely on the fact that I don't know the full background behind Aubameyang's departure, yet you draw a number of conclusions about the situation and Arteta when you are in precisely the same position. As a number of people have said on here, relying on All or Nothing to make conclusions as to the manager's relationship with his players is clearly flawed as the vast majority of these interactions do not form part of what is an entertainment show. If you think that we saw the whole story between Arteta and Aubameyang on this series, then you are being rather naive.

Instead, we need to look at the evidence that is available to us as fans and draw conclusions from this. It is obvious that there was no pre-existing issue between Arteta and Aubameyang. Arteta re-signed him on a massive contract - the biggest at the club, and made him captain. He would not have done so if he didn't value Auba and intend the player to be the focal point of the team. You say that Arteta cannot handle big reputations - well he seemed to do so just fine for 2 years - for most of which time Auba performed well, so that rather gives the lie to this general statement. Also - he has signed Jesus and Zinchenko, and worked with superstars at Citeh - so again this conclusion does not stand up.

Also, Aubameyang scored only 4 EPL goals for us in the 2021/22 season before leaving, yet until the fall out was a near ever-present in the team, despite some fans calling for him to be dropped. This suggests strongly that Arteta did not ditch him because he was out of form. Finally, given our dearth of strikers, it was patently obvious that not playing Auba would potentially be detrimental not only to the team but to Arteta as manager. It is unrealistic in these circumstances to suggest that the manager was merely pursuing some personal vendetta against him.

Next - look at Aubameyang's history with his club before Arsenal. He was dropped 3 times for disciplinary reasons when he layed for Dortmund - apperantly for unauthorised trips and failing to turn up to team meetings, and ultimately they got rid of him for repeat offending in this regard. Was Dortmund in on the conspiracy as well? I recall that some people warned of Auba's behaviour before he joined us, and while it is a credit to him that he spent a few years with us without serious issues, it is clear that this pattern ultimately emerged again at Arsenal.

At Arsenal last season, he was late reporting for the NLD - our captain late for the most important fixture in our calendar - yet was only dropped for this game, and not at that stage made to train alone.

I'm afraid that the available evidence points to the player being at fault, not the manager. When faced with repeated breaches of club rules/discipline, what sanctions were available to Arteta? If you are trying to change the culture at a club, why should a 'superstar' be given lassitude that other players are not? Again for me it is obvious that the issue from the manager's pespective was that any player should not be bigger thn the club. You say that being requested to train alone is 'humiliating'. Well failing to turn up on time repeatedly is humiliating for a magager in front of his players, and in these circumstances the player only has himself to blame for the consequences. His evident refusal to repent speaks to a player who has outgrown his club in his own mind, and his departure was the right thing for all concerned.

I think it's difficult to argue that Arsenal has not emerged stronger and more united for the whole sorry episode - and if this continues then for me the pain of last season will be justified.