A turd in a teacup?
Is worth two in a bush.
What a shit manager Arteta is turning out to be. He was chasing a win and only made one substitute and later on says he envied out depth with our substitutes making a difference.
How his squad and substitutes be feeling. He chose them to sit on the bench, did not bring them on and then envied our bench as if these players on his bench are shite and not trusted. Great manager of morale.
And that was the 82nd minute.
Been always good at bullying the weaker teams and celebrating that like World Cup finals.
https://x.com/paddypower/status/1880711543031267364
The comments
Does it make @cynicaloldgit an Arsenal fan?
Shit - I’ve been on the wrong forum all this time.
Very damning sound bites:-
- long-proven failing nearly man
- the emperor has no clothes
- proven not quite good enough
- nobody has the courage to sack him
- doesn’t want to lose face
- his ego holds them back
- he’s a pale imitation (of Fraudiola)
- he’s far from irreplaceable
- pseudo-sophistication
I like this statement: Saying you love your players is not good enough; maybe they don’t love you.
This is interesting not for the validity of the arguments being made (“no one has the courage to sack him”…we are only about 1 month into the period of legitimate questions being raised about him), but because once something gets to where this level of a reaction is generated it is difficult to get back on track.
I’m no fan of Arteta and was extremely skeptical of his appointment when they brought him in but I do think some of the reaction to this season is a bit over-the-top. Do Arsenal fans not remember where they were just a few short years ago? They were an absolute mess.
He’s made them consistently competitive. There can be massive question marks over how he has done that (Not exactly the “classical music” style that Arsenal seemed to value so highly anymore) and the relative lack of success in terms of delivering trophies but it should be put into the context of coming up against Manchester City delivering 90+ point seasons and then an all-time great coach in Jurgen Klopp handing over a top class playing squad to a young and exciting coach with fresh ideas that re-invigorates Liverpool into the best side in world football.
He’s a little unlucky. He’s not as good as Guardiola, he’s not as good as Klopp… but what exactly are Arsenal fans looking for because, newsflash, there aren’t many better coaches around. I hope they do sack him and go and get a “proven winner” - someone like Tuchel - then all act absolutely baffled when it falls apart.
Net spend over the past nine windows is something like £300,000,000 higher
Yeah. I think Wenger gets rightly criticized for his “qualifying for the CL is the real trophy” perspective he aired, but our fans more than anyone should understand that winning cannot be the only thing. Arteta took brave decisions that put pressure on his shoulders and has resulted in the fans being delivered a team that is a more consistent and credible challenger than anytime since leaving Highbury. There are too many good teams for not winning to be considered a failure and worthy of this sort of response, and so if I was an Arsenal fan the thing I’d be more disappointed in is the move away from the fun football that got them here in the first place.
Ultimately there will come a time when not winning something will result in a change having to be made, but what I’d like to see from him is less caution in an attempt to help them make the next step.
As for the injuries, it’s clear they dont have too many options. But that is the path they took with the squad development. No one forced him to fund ANOTHER FB by getting rid of ESR. They have repeatedly overlooked the limitations with their attack in favour of bolstering their options at the back and they are where they are right now as a result of that. AND STILL they make a huge excuse of Saliba being unavailable.
I tend to think if he spent as much time coaching them to play football instead of trying to snide and shithouse their way to winning then they might have won the PL last season and maybe even this one.
Other than the dislikable aspects of Arty, and there are many, the only huge mistake imo is the consistent and stubborn refusal to seek out a genuine striker (assuming he plays a major roll in this decision). Other than that, the team is solid, and he’s just a undeniable dick.
I think he (and the players and the fans) have spent the last couple of years believing their own hype. And when you are a London based team doing well near the top of the league, there is a lot of hype.
A lot of the discontent around their fanbase and the resulting pressure on the manager, and a lot of the insanity around refereeing decisions and corruption, is based in the notion that this should be their turn. They were waiting for City to have an off year so they could be the anointed ones and be given their league title.
The reality is that they were never as good as their last couple of league finishes have suggested. They still have not broken 90 points under Arteta. Our league title under Klopp felt like a procession because were were that good, and had just come off a 98 point season and won the European Cup. We were the finished product with a body of work to back it up. They are a good team, possibly a great team, but one with work still to do.
The underlying anxiety is that Arteta doesn’t actually know how to do that work. He has fixed many obvious problems at Arsenal, but appears to have stalled out over the past couple of years. Instead of progressing into a dominant team, they have just doubled down on gamesmanship and shady trickery. There is enough of a football heritage around that club that people know something is amiss. Arteta has a lot of credit to burn, however at some point he probably needs to offer the next steps forward. Let’s not forget he has not been a manager before, and his apprenticeship under Guardiola involved essentially unlimited resources. Fundamentally, he is probably unsure of what those steps forward are.
They are the footballing equivalent of the Middle Income Trap concept in economics - it is much easier for a country to go from being poor to middle income than it is to take the next step. The things that are required to improve above being middle income are different than the things that got you there and attempting to make those changes to an economy eliminate your competitive advantage at the things you are already good at.
If Arteta isn’t the right person what does that say for every other manager bar Slot?
They’ve all spent, outwaged and beat Liverpool at every turn. Bar the one on the field thus far.
In fact you probably have to look at Brentford and Bournemouth for clubs that are well run also Brighton. It wouldn’t surprise me if we do indeed win it with say 80+ points we will get oh well everyone was off. Instead of it actually being a season when the most obvious obstacle of cheating was floundered for once.
It’s natural for a league to be won by 80-90 points. It’s not for a team getting 97 not to win it.
I remember a few years back Wolves and Palace being the only ones who didn’t pull their pants down when going 1 or 2 down to Man City. That’s happened a lot more this season. Credit to Brentford they fought on Tuesday and fought on Saturday.
Villa did the same on Saturday, oddly feels other teams are facing what we’ve had to face for years.
It isn’t so much that he is not the right person as the fact that he may have a learning curve to ascend, and that may or may not match the club’s expectations. We had the good fortune to get Klopp, who had already taken on a very similar challenge at Dortmund and spent 7 seasons learning how to close the gap on the Bayern monolith without recourse to matching resources. Best case, Arteta is where Klopp was year 2 at Dortmund, and likely under far more pressure than Klopp ever was.