Arsenal v Southampton, 20:00 BST (21/04, SS Main Event).

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

This feels to me like Shaking like a shitting Dog syndrome. Now this absolutely does not absolve Arteta….for me he should have recognised it after the Anfield game and looked to address it, but it seems like he’s a rabbit in the headlights…sticking with the same team because he’s afraid to change things up at this late stage

This last post makes me think you are getting to the heart of the problem, at least what I think is the main cause of this collapse.

Everyone seems to be focused on the players shitting themselves or bottling it....but what if the person we should looking at ( and probably the most scared person in the room ) whose obvious mistakes are borne out of fear and affecting us the most is the coach?

I mean not realising when your team is 2-0 ahead (in a game no one thought you would win) that you need to keep the tempo up at all cost and not give back the initiative? ( note this is the same mistake the Southampton coach made today).

Not realising that there is something fundamentally wrong with your defence which you only fixed once a certain youngin from France was brought in this season straight into the starting lineup? Yes you tried to fix it with Holding but his dynamic is not working...why not try pushing White back or the new kid you bought for situations like this?

And Trossard your assist king, the guy who's been the January signing of a lifetime....is there not a way to ensure he's more involved instead of always coming in when we are chasing games?

Apparently after the West Ham game Arteta publicly said something like the players had lost their belief and were afraid and Xhaka (who whether anyone likes it or not is still the unofficial leader of this group) responded by saying he doesn't know what the hell the coach was on about....

Anyone or everyone can shit their pants, but when the leader of a group ( the manager) is doing the same thing but in denial... where the fuck do we go from there?

And like I keep saying, its not really his fault because he's obviously learning on the job.

Dixon just said the same thing in his analysis.

[HCZ_Reborn]

At the risk of being contrarian I think the Saliba absence is overplayed

You want someone better than Holding away at the biggest teams for sure

But we forget that we were pretty ropey defensively before Saliba got injured. Holding for sure has exacerbated that but if you believe football pundits you’d think Saliba was the reason we have dropped six points in the last three games.

I don’t

In fact I don’t believe there’s any one single reason.

It’s Saliba, it’s Arteta, it’s psychological fragility, it’s Partey being shit since he returned from Africa, it’s Saka not being dropped, it’s Xhaka, it’s Zinchenko, it’s Holding. It’s a mosaic of fecal matter

[21_GOONER_SALUTE]

At the risk of being contrarian I think the Saliba absence is overplayed

You want someone better than Holding away at the biggest teams for sure

But we forget that we were pretty ropey defensively before Saliba got injured. Holding for sure has exacerbated that but if you believe football pundits you’d think Saliba was the reason we have dropped six points in the last three games.

I don’t

In fact I don’t believe there’s any one single reason.

It’s Saliba, it’s Arteta, it’s psychological fragility, it’s Partey being shit since he returned from Africa, it’s Saka not being dropped, it’s Xhaka, it’s Zinchenko, it’s Holding. It’s a mosaic of fecal matter

But then were we perfect without lapses when we were winning and getting all the points? Hell no.

IIRC the fact that we had poor games and were still able to win was what gave so many people confidence that this was our year.

In fact you can still argue that though we've blown the last 3 games, the fact that we haven't lost any should make it crystal clear that there is still something special about this team....


Oh well, on Wednesday a lot of things should be clearerr.

[HCZ_Reborn]

No of course we weren’t perfect but at the moment feels like perfect shit storm

Defence at its worst, missing decent chances….sloppiness in midfield

[Mac76]

To think some are of the opinion that subs can't make that much of a difference.

IMO its a crime that the sane set of players were given almost 270 mins unfettered to kill our title dreams

Should a positive player like Nelson not have had more time in the last 3 games?

Should Trossard have at least not started one game?

Well, its still in our hands if we beat Citeh methinks.....and like I said before we crave punishment and love to do things the hard way!!

I should be thankful though, at least I won my punt!

Well done on the bet

Agree completely about Nelson and Trossard, Arteta just won't give some players enough minutes or change anything unless he has to, every opposition manager knows who's going to play and how they're going to play

While it obviously wasn't pretty, yesterday was a good match to be at as a self-contained event given the comeback, though quite a few 'fans' had left the stadium at 3-1

Citeh will duly thrash us and the narrative will unmistakenly be that we chucked in the towel, it would have been better if we'd been narrowly second all season and couldn't catch them but there you go

[KSE Comedy Club]

Has the phrase “still in our hands” ever felt more meaningless?

Is there a person alive who thinks Arsenal are going to take 3 points at the Etihad?

Yes, me!

[IBK]

This last post makes me think you are getting to the heart of the problem, at least what I think is the main cause of this collapse.

Everyone seems to be focused on the players shitting themselves or bottling it....but what if the person we should looking at ( and probably the most scared person in the room ) whose obvious mistakes are borne out of fear and affecting us the most is the coach?

I mean not realising when your team is 2-0 ahead (in a game no one thought you would win) that you need to keep the tempo up at all cost and not give back the initiative? ( note this is the same mistake the Southampton coach made today).

Not realising that there is something fundamentally wrong with your defence which you only fixed once a certain youngin from France was brought in this season straight into the starting lineup? Yes you tried to fix it with Holding but his dynamic is not working...why not try pushing White back or the new kid you bought for situations like this?

And Trossard your assist king, the guy who's been the January signing of a lifetime....is there not a way to ensure he's more involved instead of always coming in when we are chasing games?

Apparently after the West Ham game Arteta publicly said something like the players had lost their belief and were afraid and Xhaka (who whether anyone likes it or not is still the unofficial leader of this group) responded by saying he doesn't know what the hell the coach was on about....

Anyone or everyone can shit their pants, but when the leader of a group ( the manager) is doing the same thing but in denial... where the fuck do we go from there?

And like I keep saying, its not really his fault because he's obviously learning on the job.

Dixon just said the same thing in his analysis.

Some good posts here mate. While I was softer on Arteta for the Liverpool and West Ham away games, I am more critical of the manager for the Southampton game. The big difference here is that we came out of the blocks lacadaisical and lacking focus. That for me has to be down to match prep. Our loss of self control after we shat the bed may have been down to the players on the picth but IMO it is for the manager to calm the team down and remind it that there is most of the match to go and that they need to assert some control rather than trying to force the play. I think Arteta panicked as much as his players - and I don't think that the performance was because they were afraid, I think it was because Arteta was once we had gone 2 goals down (just like he was when Liverpool had got one goal back and were in the ascendancy at Anfield) - and I think that his team selection was based on thinking that we would blow Southampton away at home. The selection of Vieira in particular for me demonstrated that the manager thought the opposition wasn't good enough to exploit what seemed more like an experiment than a selection based on performance. What precisely was Vieira expected to offer in this match - based on what we have seen of him - particularly in an unfamiliar position?


I feel also that Arteta - like the team - started as though the focus was more on the Citeh game than the one in front of them.


As for team selection - I too am frustrated by the manager's perserverence with 'favourites'. Why isn't ESR trusted any more? Why did Viera start instead of Trossard? In the Southampton game I think that Jesus should have been hooked earlier, as should Zinchenko and Reiss Nelson in particular should have been given more time. The same mistake is being made with Eddie as it was last season - no playing time and then expected to work miracles from cold.


Inexperience is costing us at the hard end of the season and you are right to point our that the manager is showing this as much as his players.