Mikel Arteta, First-Team Manager

[DiamondGooner]

.............. yet we still lost.

I'm not saying Villa are some great team, I'm saying, and saying it again for those in the cheap seats.

We're Arsenal.

That is all.

[Santi]

Don’t know what people wanted from the lineup, other than maybe Martinelli up front. Otherwise it was sadly our best team we could put out.

Least the chambers being any good myth is over. Partey was pants too after I defended him in the game thread lol

Come on - we needed a striker

Yeah I said other than that? People talking like he put 11 wrong players out.

I also don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility to ask the 11 he put out in the first place to beat f***ing Villarreal lol

I don't know where this confidence about beating Villarreal has come from?

They are in the Semi's just like us and spent half the season in the top 4.

As opposed to us who are battling up from 15th.

This arrogance amongst our fans need to stop, its rife throughout the club as well, because of what another team did 20 odd years ago all teams must bow to AFC and scatter in terror?

We need a mentality fix among a number of other issues, we always lay out the bare minimum when it comes to effort, its tragic.

............. meanwhile Utd won 6-1.

We wouldn't even be bothered to score 6, we'd of scored 3 then shut up shop, we're a fkin disgrace of a team and club quote frankly.

Dg, we played fooking shit and were 2-0 down and down to 10 men and they only just beat us. This is not the Villareal of Riquelme's era

Exactly, we actually made them look even worse when we had 10 and they 11 lol. They were so bad and scored 2 shit goals, the only other one they really should’ve scored was the Moreno chance.

[DiamondGooner]

Mofo's in here acting like we weren't on the ropes until a dodgey penalty lol.

We didn't even score from open play.

JayRam was writing out his will and testament until Saka stole us a penalty.

I can't believe we're in a time where AFC fans are hyping up after a loss, a loss ffs.

[jayramfootball]

Mofo's in here acting like we weren't on the ropes until a dodgey penalty lol.

We didn't even score from open play.

JayRam was writing out his will and testament until Saka stole us a penalty.

I can't believe we're in a time where AFC fans are hyping up after a loss, a loss ffs.

Jeez, calm down fella.
Yes we were awful. Villareal were just as awful.
I don't think we're going to play no striker at home and play that badly again.
3/10 performance and we're through to the final.
relax.

[Highbury Hillbilly]

Villareal haven't lost a single EL fixture this season.

A 0-0 result is enough for them next week. We had one shot on target today and got an undeserved penalty, which is fine considering the # of times VAR has decided against us.

I can see Villareal keeping a clean sheet. I can't see us scoring from open play with this lineup.

[jayramfootball]

Villareal haven't lost a single EL fixture this season.

A 0-0 result is enough for them next week. We had one shot on target today and got an undeserved penalty, which is fine considering the # of times VAR has decided against us.

I can see Villareal keeping a clean sheet. I can't see us scoring from open play with this lineup.

It won't be that line-up and we won't be that bad again.

Tierney and Laca will be back for starters.

[starmandb]

If you needed to know Villareal's level, look how shit we were tonight and yet we are still in the game ! We can't possibly play anywhere near that bad at home.

^this.

They are so bad, this was like losing to Wrexham all those years ago.
That might have been our worst performance this season - brought about by the craziest formation you could imagine from Arteta.

They are Brighton level
Who beat Spurs and won at champions Liverpool

[jayramfootball]

If you needed to know Villareal's level, look how shit we were tonight and yet we are still in the game ! We can't possibly play anywhere near that bad at home.

^this.

They are so bad, this was like losing to Wrexham all those years ago.
That might have been our worst performance this season - brought about by the craziest formation you could imagine from Arteta.

They are Brighton level
Who beat Spurs and won at champions Liverpool

Yup, poor teams can always beat better teams on occasion - the beauty of football.
One thing though , Villareal are not as good as Brighton.

[DiamondGooner]

Could you imagine if we were in the Super League playing Barcelona and City every week lol.

Delusions of grandeur.

[Power n Glory]

No idea why he'd experiment with Smih Rowe's position today. Xhaka was also bound to get found out as LB. The back up into the box thing is one of his many bad habits.

We have a lifeline with that save and goal. It would have been over if we lost 3-0. Arteta needs to stop trying to copy Pep and get back to basics. He's lucky tonight. It could have been a lot worse.

[jayramfootball]

Could you imagine if we were in the Super League playing Barcelona and City every week lol.

Delusions of grandeur.

That's an entirely different level.
One we are not even close to.

[swipe right]

Replacing Wenger with Arteta is insanity. There is really no other explanation. Insanity.

[Arsenal Tone]

Must admit I'm struggling to trust the process atm

[Nuggets]

Is he still here?

[Power n Glory]

https://arseblog.com/2021/04/villarreal-2-1-arsenal-gunners-get-lucky-as-arteta-gets-it-all-wrong/

There are times when a football result has little to do with a manager. He picks a good team, there are things he can’t legislate for, random events that are out of his control that impact the final score. There are other times when what the manager does directly impacts a game and last night was one of those for Mikel Arteta.

Let’s not beat around the bush here: Arsenal are very lucky to be still in this tie, having gone 2-0 down inside half an hour, and then been reduced to ten men with the kind of red card a blind man could have seen coming. In some ways we have to thank Unai Emery for being Unai Emery. Another coach would have smelled blood, but the man who lost his job with us could only smell his own fear and his decisions played a part in this game not getting away from us completely.

Arteta’s decision to play Emile Smith Rowe as a False 9 felt far too clever. It did look from the UEFA team graphic as if Nicolas Pepe was going to be used as a striker and, while unconventional, I wouldn’t have minded seeing that. Yet instead the Ivorian started on the right with the Hale End graduate ‘up front’. Much like the deployment of Willian there against Man City earlier in the season, it smacked of a decision designed to thwart the opposition coach’s expectations of our set-up rather than one to make his own team better.

I bet Emery didn’t really consider this was how we might play, because … well, why the hell would we? I know Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wasn’t 100%, Alexandre Lacazette didn’t make the bench, and Eddie Nketiah is a bit lightweight, but he had Gabriel Martinelli to play up front. He could do the pressing he asked Smith Rowe to do, and he has the ability in that forward position to cause the opposition problems. The disjointed nature of our plan was highlighted by the sight of Calum Chambers crossing repeatedly to our no centre-forward, and to attempt this kind of a system in a game of this importance was, to me at least, far more arrogant than it was foolish (although both ingredients made up that unpleasant cocktail).

Going 1-0 down inside 5 minutes wasn’t great either. Dani Ceballos couldn’t live with the forward burst of Juan Foyth – a man who runs like a constipated dinosaur desperately seeking some bushes – the defending wasn’t great, and when the ball broke to Trigueros he gladly helped himself to a smart finish beyond Bernd Leno.

Ceballos has been something of a disaster in the Europa League this season, and a terrible touch from a Thomas Partey pass gifted Villarreal possession from which they won the corner to score the second goal. There was a lot more wrong with what happened, but he almost has a reverse Midas touch in that everything he touches turns to shit. The corner came in, Pablo Mari was too static and didn’t attack the ball, Partey stopped tracking his man, and Albiol spanked it home at the far post. Arsenal had yet to have a shot on target.

Just before the break, Ceballos got roasted by Foyth again, tripped him up and got a deserved yellow card. Thankfully the free kick came to nothing (I was expecting it to hit the top corner and somehow count double), but it was as much evidence as Arteta needed that a half-time change was in order. Ceballos needed to come off and we needed to get Xhaka into midfield. We needed to do something to change what had been a dismal 45 minutes.



Arteta changed nothing at the break. Ceballos made a foul within 60 seconds that ought to have set off alarm bells, klaxons, warning signs, whatever kind of signal that maximum danger was imminent. Arteta did nothing. To be fair, I thought the second yellow was pretty harsh, but if we could all see it coming, there’s no excuse for Arteta and his coaching staff. That one was entirely on the manager, and it was really, really stupid. His in-game management is not improving and his justification for leaving him on doesn’t stack up. He said:

We talked at half-time to say that we had to be very careful, there was a tackle very early and I was going to take him off but by the time that Gabi was ready to come on, that action happened and he was out.

All well and good, but he had 15 minutes at the break to make a change. A half-time substitution isn’t something to be ashamed of. If you can recognise your game-plan isn’t working, that’s good management. If you can acknowledge that a player is in danger of making your task much more difficult, that’s just common sense. There’s an intransigence to Arteta that is an ongoing issue, almost as if he’s unwilling to make decisions which say ‘I got it wrong’. But being unwilling to do that is a double-edged sword because he’s simply compounding the problem.

Two things though. 1 – We were better when Ceballos went off, which tells you something about the way some of the players responded, and also how little the on-loan Real Madrid man has brought to the table this season. 2 – Emery’s decision not to turn the screw at half-time, and instead make a defensive substitution, was one we benefitted from. The introduction of Francis Coquelin for Paco Alcacer was, I guess, designed to provide some midfield security, but born out of Emery’s inherent caution – something we saw on display many times during his time in North London.

Instead of going at a team which was defensively iffy, not least with Mari struggling and Xhaka being targetted at left-back (to be fair to him, he did pretty well and led the team with 5 tackles), Emery sat back. Even so, they could have made it 3-0 when Leno made a superb save to deny Gerard Moreno (again Mari was poor here), denying a goal which would have ended the tie and provided a Coquelin assist, of all things.

Bukayo Saka then won a penalty, and I use that term deliberately because it was very much that rather than an egregious foul. However, I view it as payback for Jose Mari’s dive in 2006, so let’s not dwell on it. Nicolas Pepe, with Arsenal down to 10 men, had the job under maximum pressure and slotted the ball home. Then we saw a touch of Spursiness added to proceedings when Capoue picked up a second yellow and had the red card issued to him as he was stretchered off the pitch having injured himself in the collision with Saka.

I would have liked a second goal, and it almost came right at the death when Partey’s brilliant pass put substitute Aubameyang through, but the keeper saved. To be honest though, I was just glad we didn’t concede another. There were a few too many moments at the back when we put ourselves under pressure to feel comfortable in the final stages, but 2-1 – while still a bad result – is nowhere near as bad as it might have been.

If we got out of jail last night, we have to admit we locked ourselves in there in the first place because of Arteta’s poor management of the game, while Emery was the dimwitted prison guard who left the keys of the cell in reach. The pressure of a semi-final can do funny things to players and managers, but this was as low quality as you could have imagined, and I enjoyed Andrew’s Tweet which pretty much captured why:


I suppose the fact we have to score goals to win next Thursday should see the manager use a system the players are comfortable with. Auba looked sharp in his five minutes or so, and if we have Kieran Tierney back, the experience of David Luiz (I can’t believe I’m clinging onto that, but here we are), Lacazette on the bench, and no Ceballos to nail our feet to the floor, a one goal deficit is certainly not beyond us.

But, Arteta needs to stop overthinking. He may have what he thinks are good ideas, and I’m not saying I know more about the game than him, but sometimes the most obvious thing is the best thing. What he did last night almost cost us our last chance at salvaging something from this season, and perhaps it was a decision made by someone who feels comfortable enough his job to make it in the first place. Too comfortable, perhaps?

I hope he takes the lesson, but if we play anything like that again, if we dick around with the formation and risk a new set-up in a hugely important game, we’ll end up with exactly what we deserve. Nothing.

And where we go from there is anybody’s guess.

—

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Podcast will be out around lunchtime, until then, take it easy.