Mikel Arteta, First-Team Manager

[theHotHead]

Droopy will be in shortly to tell us it's all despite Arteta.

We are bossing the Czech first division. Party at my place Phil.

All wins are to be celebrated.

Maybe some people see a win as a a bit of a downer. No excuse to roll out the endless anti-Arteta rhetoric.

Job done is the only reaction worthy of moving on to the next round, anything more is excessive. But you are welcome to take out the fine crystal and champers if you want.

If we had lost last night the torches and pitchforks would have been out en masse.

As we won and got through to the semi finals that's just par for the course and any celebrations should be dismissed.

Either the competition is important or it's not.

The competition is important, as is the league, as is the FA Cup. Would we celebrate beating Shrewsbury Town in the FA Cup ? Of course not, we are expected to beat them comforatbly. Do we celebrate beating Quarabag in the EL ? Of course not. So why should we celebrate dispatching a team that any sane fan knew were no competition for us, across 2 legs ???

If we had lost last night Arteta would have been in a world of pain, and rightly so, or are you saying the loss would've been acceptable ? You fail to take the opposition into account with your comments. Had that round been against Villareal instead of Slavia Prague I could accept going overboard with the victory, they are a decent team.

[theHotHead]

Strange that after a convincing win the trolls, er posters here, have stopped posting. Nothing good or positive to say just about sums them up.

Knock yourself out mate, throw a street party because we beat Slavia Prague in a 2-legged tie

Joker.

Your only aim in life is to get MA out. Get a life man.

Wait ...... you claimed people were keeping quiet because we won, now people who have a life - that you claim we don't- and were doing other things besides sitting on a forum posting shit about football come back online its because my only aim in life is to get Arteta out ? LOL

Send me the name of the street you are having your party on, I'll pass through with some bunting and champers and get the party started

[jayramfootball]

Arteta and the team haven't achieved anything by beating Prague.
The only value to winning the EL is a spot in the CL (something we are unprepared for) . If we win the final, they have achieved something at least. Each of us can decide how big an achievement that is, but anything other than WINNING the tournament means NOTHING.

So why would there be big celebrations for nothing????

What do people want? An open-top bus parade for beating a bunch of pubbers?

[coach8smallball]

i'm sorry but as happy as I am that we advanced I find it quite disheartening to see that the team we handily beat still showed a style/purpose of play. imagine what that slavia coach could do with our talent.

I celebrated the win, but how anyone can't see how poorly coached we are is pretty incredible.

[Jedi]

The only value to winning the EL is a spot in the CL (something we are unprepared for) .

Lyon were sitting in 7th in Ligue 1 and played in the semis of CL last season...

Also we desperately need the money.

[Ach]

Trophy is more important. CL is a bonus

[Marsbar100]

I don't rate the trophy but I still think the players want to win it and getting another trophy gets us more accustomed to getting over the finishing line.

[jayramfootball]

The only value to winning the EL is a spot in the CL (something we are unprepared for) .

Lyon were sitting in 7th in Ligue 1 and played in the semis of CL last season...

Also we desperately need the money.

Not sure we need the money at all.
What are we going to do with this money?

[ag6789]

We build a better team with the money. Correct the past mistakes and remain solvent, including paying of any debts.
Win win all round.
We need this trophy badly, but any win in a competition boosts confidence and builds morale.

[jayramfootball]

We build a better team with the money. Correct the past mistakes and remain solvent, including paying of any debts.
Win win all round.
We need this trophy badly, but any win in a competition boosts confidence and builds morale.

Money does not mean we build a better team.
For us, it's quite opposite in fact.
We've wasted huge wads of cash.
The players that are really the stars in the squad right now costs relatively little.
Saka, ESR, Martinelli, Tierney - 4 players right there for less than 50m.
4 more of those for 50m and we have the makings of a PL winning side.
Transfer fees are not wholly correlated to quality - there are plenty of deals to be done for players that can develop into the kind of players we need.

We can;t afford to waste more cash - the reason we have debts is because we wasted money by massively overpaying for players
I would like us to build a team from the bottom up - even if it takes 3-4 years. A real team that is capable of winning everything. It's possible, but not if we get sucked into buying supposed stars that turn out to be bang average.

[ag6789]

Have to be optimistic. People learn from mistakes and that's the hope we have in our club. Otherwise one should do an Ozim and bury their head in the sand.

[Salibatelli]

Have to be optimistic. People learn from mistakes and that's the hope we have in our club. Otherwise one should do an Ozim and bury their head in the sand.

Lol I literally don’t understand what you’re talking about.

I haven’t seen much evidence of learning from mistakes. As for the result, it was a decent win but as others have alluded to its a win we should get, made up for the poor performance at home at least.

As I said before, he has to win the competition anything else and the season has been a disaster and he should get the sack.

[Santi]

Loool any win is to be expected and any loss leads to hysteria


No wonder this place is toxic these days

Oh yes, the old "take what nobody said and use it as an argument" routine.

Santi, even you agreed that Slavia Prague are not a team we need to fear, that tells me you also agree that we should beat them every day of the week. So if we should expect to beat them every day of the week why should we celebrate beating them in a 2-legged tie ?

When we play the next round we will be playing a team that will no doubt cause us problems, I will cheer the victory however we get it

Except you did say it and it’s how you act all the time. You rarely if ever give any praise for a win and cry like a bitch when we lose.

Slavia are wank and we should’ve beaten them over 1 leg. We did it in 2 and we should celebrate the f**k out of it.

[theHotHead]

Loool any win is to be expected and any loss leads to hysteria


No wonder this place is toxic these days

Oh yes, the old "take what nobody said and use it as an argument" routine.

Santi, even you agreed that Slavia Prague are not a team we need to fear, that tells me you also agree that we should beat them every day of the week. So if we should expect to beat them every day of the week why should we celebrate beating them in a 2-legged tie ?

When we play the next round we will be playing a team that will no doubt cause us problems, I will cheer the victory however we get it

Except you did say it and it’s how you act all the time. You rarely if ever give any praise for a win and cry like a bitch when we lose.

Slavia are wank and we should’ve beaten them over 1 leg. We did it in 2 and we should celebrate the f**k out of it.

Mate calm down with the anger, its clouding up your judgement.

Tell me when I said ANY win is expected, I beg you DO ! Against teams we are clearly better than, I expect us to win, against teams that are closer to our level I hope we will win. Against teams that are better than us I hope we don't lose. Thats called common sense my friend, you should exhibit a bit more of it instead of going off on wild rants saying people act like bitches. I am guessing you don't read half of what you write because if you did you would see a grade A bitch in the mirror.

Take your beating fool, cos your "don Mikel" took us to 15th place and now firmly rooted into mid-table YOU cannot handle people criticising him. I suggest you man up and grow a pair before telling me I cry like a bitch

Go celebrate the f**k out of beating Slavia Prague, knock one out too if it makes you that happy. Meanwhile me and the rest of the normal fans will continue to call a spade a spade.

[DiamondGooner]

Its frustrating because Sheffield and against Slavia have shown that we are on the brink of easily being turned into a good team.

The issue is Arteta's hand brake, he's too cautious to dare to be great.

He deliberately changed the formation against Slavia to a 3-3-4 something City have done for half the season, but as soon as we scored the 3rd goal he instructed the team to revert back to 4-2-3-1 and Xhaka dropped into LB.

Which tells me Arteta knows that set up is our safety first formation, the hand brake, pass, pass, pass formation.

So for the record I think the changes he made against Sheffield (played a WF behind Laca) and Slavia (changed formation) were very good, as per the score line reflected.

............. however I can bet he'll revert to type as soon as we face any team higher than 10th.

We've got attacking talent worthy of top 6, he needs to unleash it and stop being so safety first.