01 Dec 2020 20:11:47
I was pleased with Artetas appointment, we looked different straightaway better football and better mentally. Topped it off Fa Cup first season GREAT.

This season never has got going at all. I don't like knee jerk reactions but I think this has got to big and to deep for a young manager like Mikel. The Ozil situation is bad, but my honest opinion is that I don't think he would have made that great a difference.

I know many you didn't rate Emery and perhaps he wasn't the right fit for us, but he had won 3 Europa Cups, so in that respect perhaps the players have to share some of the blame. We had a Wenger culture at our club that when we played bad or lost or both, Arsene use to trot down to the interview room and blame the referee, linesman, pitch, weather, injuries, suspensions, but never the players.

Arteta is very active on the touchline very verbal and I think certain players are not comfortable with it, my own personal view is I don't see any wrong in bollocking £150,000 a week footballer for not doing his job. But players didn't like Emery doing it and I don't think they like Mikel doing it.

I have heard no rumours or media stuff saying we are lining up a new manager so Mikel could keep his job for the time being. But ultimately the buck stops at him so he will be the fall guy and get the sack. I do think at times he has been stubborn/ clueless but some of them big money players should burden some of the responsibility, Most of them big money players I might add were pre Arteta.

Take care and stay safe everyone.

1.) 02 Dec 2020
02 Dec 2020 07:53:58
Good post

Pep Klopp Lampard JM all stand on the touch line giving verbal, if ours don’t line it, F Off . For £150,000 a week I’d take all the verbal abuse MA could throw at me.

2.) 02 Dec 2020
02 Dec 2020 09:50:47
No manager will be able to do anything with our squad. We literally have no creative players. January is massive for us.

3.) 02 Dec 2020
02 Dec 2020 12:43:47
What everyone is saying above is correct to a degree. However, if we as fans are going to protest and demand more in times like these, as is our job as a fan base, then we need to take the time to really examine not just the issues, but the root cause.
‘No manager will be able to do anything with our squad, we literally have no creative players’. I’m not having a go at you Olber, but this is indicative of our mentality as Arsenal fans for over a decade now. Isolating and reducing broader and more deep rooted issues to one area thinking this is our major issue, that, once fixed will see us make progress again.
Well let’s just take this issue and break it down.
No creativity in the team. What does that even mean on a basic level? The object of the game is to put the ball past your opponents into the net. The higher level you play the harder it should be. Our players are paid the top 3 in salary in the PL, so we can agree they should be considered elite and high level based on skill and athleticism. When a manager picks a side, you do not solely love and die by his tactics alone. Players are expected to have high levels of professional pride and application when they take to the field, they are to have problems solving skills and conviction and are to be ready to overcome the unexpected.
NOTHING has changed about how the game is played since they started playing at age 7 to now.
So explain to me how they can’t be bothered to even run hard or put their bodies in the way of a clearance or a shot? Explain to me why even the most incapable offensive minded player cannot have the fortitude to show some initiative and at least TRY to drive us forward? Xhaka is neither an offensive or defensive footballer, but for ****sake TRY moving forward at enough pace to hurt the opponent when we are 2-1 down and the games dying out!
They do not, none of them bar Tierney do I see frustrated or trying to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of being the one to make the difference. Is that tactics? Is it coaching? Is it bad luck and your down to 10 men? Is it form? Is it a supposed lack of creativity
No, it’s the culture of the players at the club. Brittle, carefree and weak because they know they’ll still get their salaries on payday and that the manager takes the stick for their lack of drive. You can be sure the lack of a presence from absentee landlord silent Stan doesn’t help in this regard.
But at the end of the day here, it’s 5 losses out of 10 and I challenge anyone here to point to one game where a hard run in behind or a hard tackle or block or a real push as a team to break an opponents defensive line was made in pursuit of a meaningful effort on goal to try and score. Everything is the soft and careful option, NOBODY RUNS AT AN OPPONENT! Nobody takes a player away with an off the ball run to draw the opponent out of position! Are you telling me these so called men are playing this game twenty plus years and don’t have the kop on within a 90 minute framework to try something different to be ‘creative’ in pursuit of reaching the goal which is to score and not only that but they have failed MISERABLY to even come close in these games to upsetting or threatening Brie opposition. It’s embarrassing and we’ve had it with Emery and Freddie also.
To me, Hector Bellerin encapsulates all that is wrong with this club right now. FOUR FOUL THROWS in NINE league games, TWO in one game alone. Against Villa he got shrugged aside like a child for their third goal. He neither runs hard to stretch a team or help out in attack, nor does he put his body on the line in defense, he plays it SAFE every game and they all do and they all think their doing it under the radar and that today’s PC culture should protect them from criticism because they have feelings and plant trees. Yet this guy starts every week. it happened under Wenger for years also. What message does it send when you allow this to be the standard? I mean compare him to Lee Dixon or Lauren. you can’t do it with a straight face.
It’s an absolute joke and none of them should be absolved from this criticism. Lacazette inhaling laughing gas. Mustafi falling on his arse every game me he plays and when you watch training clips he’s acting the clown EVERY time I see a video released.
And now the answer is to bring back Mesut Ozil, the footballer who applies himself the LEAST with regard to what he can offer in games where it might take more energy and exertion than normal to get his team over the line, HE is the answer now Give me a break lads.
The culture at the club is disgusting because the players don’t apply themselves to the fundamental basics of the game. Work harder and run harder than your opponent, earn the right to impose your personality as a team in the game from match to match and find the solutions on the field to get the win, not a draw, A WIN. But watch this team, watch their attitudes when the question is put to them, watch their individual and collective responses, everyone to a man retreats into the safety of sticking to their position and playing the easy pass and retreating into space because not one of them, bar Partey, have the stomach to push through and take the game to the opposition.
I’m absolutely sick of looking at these abject displays for years now and being told the problem is something else.
How can you have Arteta come from spending years at City who were the best pressing side in Europe a couple of seasons ago to here in this moment where NOBODY presses or gets close to putting a foot in either as a team or as an individual, please somebody explain how a defender like Hector Bellerin can go years without ever getting close to the oppositions byline to stretch them or out in a telling cross? He doesn’t block, he doesn’t tackle. but as soon as he’s fit he plays every week for Arsenal, and it’s not just him . but that’s the culture in this Shambles of a club right now and until more is demanded of these players it will never change. Last year it was the defence, this year it’s the creativity, ten years ago it was the strikers. I can’t listen to it anymore.
I’ll end by saying this.
All the players that left us that we turned on, some of whom left to play for rivals in the same league. What had they all got in common? DRIVE and COMMITMENT that matches their abilities . and do you know why they left? Because this club couldn’t match that ambition by changing the culture or investing in change of personel.
Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry. Pride, Power, Passion. Former captains who epitomised our identity.
Aubeymeyang and Lacazette wear that arm band now. While I like both players personally, don’t tell me this doesn’t just sum it all up. Get upset at that all you want, but there’s no leaders in this group.