DiamondGooner wrote: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.
Sheffield is dead last in the premier league. And Prague play in, well Prague. We should not be using performances against them as signs of a turnaround. The expectation with them is progressing without a hiccup. Of course he gets more conservative the moment he’s faced with better teams because they will expose his tactical limitations.