CrimsönGunner11 wrote:I saw the highlights and Arteta must be dropped as a starting player if not this window then certainly the next. The second goal Soton scored revealed everything that's wrong with Arteta imo. Arteta gave the ball away in the middle of the pitch and was slow/showed little enthusiasm to track back. And this is not the first time he's done this too. He's like the midfield version of Mertesacker. He's intelligent and keeps things organized but if a player gets past him he's never going to recover without someone else bailing him out. He also thinks he's the only player on the field and dwells on the ball far too long which often gets annoying
It was much worse than the highlights suggested. We got absolutely destroyed in the midfield because Arteta simply didn't make himself available for a pass, when we got the ball (which was very rare) we had no options and simply had to hoof it go Giroud/Özil/Gnabry in the hopes that they would (when isolated), dribble past 6 Southampton defenders/midfielders and score.
Arteta should be thoroughly ashamed himself after his abysmal performance tonight. I really like the guy and he's been a good player for us but unless there's a radical change in his work rate and attitude he should be sold in the summer.
We can't have any more of this lack of determination and consistency if we want to win things, Arteta has no excuse for not trying to save the Lallana goal from going in. No excuse.