Mikel Arteta, First-Team Manager

[Power n Glory]

Arteta was out of his depth. Totally bossed by Liverpool and I couldn't work out whether we were trying to play possession football or counter attacking.

Team selection was wrong either way. We were pinned back into our own half for most of it and pummeled. With so many poor performances across the pitch, it's a tactical problem as well as quality.

[swipe right]

If you ask me, it’s the quality of the squad that’s keeping us tenth and not lower. A weaker group of players under Arteta’s management would be sitting just above the relegation zone. If Arteta were managing Fulham or Newcastle he’d be heading for the drop for sure.

[Angelito]

Meh.

Useless.

I'm sure he will be rewarded with a new contract in the summer as some Arsenal fans will continue to blame everyone under the sun apart from him for having allegedly improved under him.

Some irony there.

[Power n Glory]

If you ask me, it’s the quality of the squad that’s keeping us tenth and not lower. A weaker group of players under Arteta’s management would be sitting just above the relegation zone. If Arteta were managing Fulham or Newcastle he’d be heading for the drop for sure.

[Salibatelli]

The guy is out of his depth, he was never qualified to manage us and it shows, he’s a poor manager who gets a free pass because this club decided to employ some overhyped nobody instead of doing the sensible thing and employing someone with experience who had proven to be a good manager.

This Arteta experiment was always going to be a disaster, how could it not be, I know a select few bought into the hype and thought we could have the next Klopp, but there was no evidence at all except for some of his pals bigging him up which doesn’t mean much.

Klopp who has had a poor season himself showed the gulf in class yesterday when he schooled Arteta, Arteta will probably get the to stick around as this club never really does anything the right way, but it won’t work so eventually he’ll be on his way and we’ll be back to square one having wasted more years being nowhere.

[theHotHead]

Just seen his post match conference, fair play he said that was the worst he has seen and was shocked by it. Damn straight! He took the blame and said it was his job to improve performances, correct again, 2 for 2.

Jermaine Jenas said we looked like a team that didn't believe in the manager's philosophy and that if the players are not good enough to play out from the back - stop playing out from the back. Well that's not f***ing rocket science, but apparently Arteta thinks he is too clever to do the obvious. His arrogance has no boundary, clearly.

[Ach]

No identity. No plan.

Shocking manager

[Power n Glory]

https://arseblog.com/2021/04/arsenal-0- ... el-arteta/

If Mikel Arteta was hoping a decent performance and result would give his team a boost ahead of Thursday’s Europa League quarter-final, he is left instead picking up the pieces of a demoralising, disappointing, disastrous night at the Emirates.

I’m someone who believes there has been improvement since that red letter day on December 26th when we beat Chelsea, but last night’s shambles was well and truly a return to the worst of this season. It was like the clock was turned back to November/December because what we saw was nothing like the post-Christmas Arsenal at all.

The manager refused to put this down to absentees: Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe weren’t fit enough to start; Granit Xhaka was ill; and David Luiz’s knee injury may well keep him out for the rest of the season which, despite my endless worries about him, would be a blow. Any team would miss those players, and I do think it was a factor, but it’s no excuse for what we got last night.

Liverpool were good, no doubt about it. They’ve been through a terrible period, but they remain an excellent team. However, as good as they were, we made them look better by our own ineptitude and inability/unwillingness to compete properly. Jurgen Klopp praised his side afterwards for how intense they were, winning the second ball time and time again, but they could have all had a great big goblet of opium pre-game and looked sharper than us.

We were lucky to be level at the break. Milner missed a glorious chance, Salah made a mess of a break and a pass from Mane, and it was all Liverpool. We had one attempt on goal in the first 45 minutes, and that was a tame Pepe header late in the half which Alisson could have caught with his moustache if he wanted. Losing Kieran Tierney was obviously a blow, and probably put paid to a half-time sub which would have been more than warranted. Take your pick from Ceballos, Pepe, Aubameyang or Lacazette who could have come off and had no complaints.

With Cedric at left-back, Liverpool had more joy down their right, and that the opening goal came from there was no real surprise. Aubameyang’s attempt to block the cross was half-hearted, and while taking nothing away from the quality of the delivery, it’s not the first time of late that Rob Holding has been out-jumped by a small man. I don’t think Bernd Leno covered himself in glory either, it was a powerful header met with chocolate wrists.

For the second Cedric is caught high up the pitch, a pass to Salah sees Gabriel go to ground and fail to get the ball, and Salah’s nutmeg finish on Leno made it 2-0. I thought Gabriel was probably our best player on the night until he very much wasn’t, and he was culpable for Liverpool’s late third, giving the ball away cheaply, and in the end Jota was there to get his second of the night. Poor defending, cheap goals, but no less than Liverpool deserved. No less than we deserved. It could, and probably should, have been more.



Elneny came on for Ceballos, a perfect encapsulation of how badly we need to upgrade midfield. We missed Granit Xhaka a lot, which in itself tells you more about the quality of our options in that position than the Swiss, and there was a run out for Gabriel Martinelli who replaced Aubameyang. If Arteta had taken him and Lacazette off at the same time and played with 10 men for the remainder of the game, I don’t think I’d have complained and I don’t think we’d have been any worse.

I think you have to question the team selection for this one. Even if Aubameyang hasn’t been scoring of late, it made little sense to have him running up and down the left wing. If the argument is that he was there to exploit the space left when Trent went forward, that only works if you actually do that. For me, the obvious thing would have been to sit him centrally on inexperienced two centre-halves who pushed high as Liverpool came forward, and use the energy and running of Martinelli on the left. Aubameyang can play wide, but more and more it’s obvious that he shouldn’t. If he’s not starting up front, he shouldn’t be starting at all.

The idea that Lacazette’s hold-up play is important has been well and truly overplayed for me. He was good against West Ham, no argument there, but this was a dismal showing from him. His touch and passing were off on the rare occasion the ball came to him, and this was a performance as poor as the one against Sp*rs a few weeks back. On that day, it wasn’t highlighted as much because he took a good penalty and we won, but for me displays like yesterday are further evidence that what we need to do in the summer with him is obvious (as I wrote the other day).

Martin Odegaard barely got into the game, despite trying to press early on. One man ploughing a lone furrow with no support won’t make a dent in a team like Liverpool. We have a £72m Joel Campbell on the right hand side, and a £50m midfielder who can’t do it alone against the likes of Thiago and Fabinho. I don’t know what’s going on with Ceballos at the moment, but he’d be lucky to get a game for Real Housewives, never mind Real Madrid.

Afterwards, Arteta said:

I apologise to our supporters for the display and the show that we saw today that I am very, very disappointed about. It’s unacceptable. At that level it’s unacceptable. To not be at 100% is unacceptable to our people and for a lot of work that we put in so what happened today is nowhere near what we want to do. It’s my fault.

And he called on his players to react:

Now it’s a challenge. A challenge brings an opportunity and in football, you have an opportunity a few days later. If you have courage and you have big balls and you represent a club like this you have to stand up and take it.

It’s odd to think that a win yesterday would have put us to within a point of Liverpool, because what yesterday showed was that the gap should be much, much bigger than that. What remains of our season now well and truly rests in Europe. We’ve lost 12 games in the Premier League and for a club like Arsenal, that’s simply not good enough. The chance of redemption comes in the shape of Slavia Prague, then the possibility of a semi-final and a final, but our wretched inconsistency is something we have to reckon with in Europe too.

Things may well be even more difficult depending on the seriousness of the Tierney injury, and we have to closely examine a situation where a near 34 year David Luiz, with all his flaws, remains our best central defender. He may not play again this season, and the options don’t fill me with much confidence.

For all the positives we’ve produced of late, yesterday was a reminder that this iteration of Arsenal under Arteta is a long, long way from being good enough. I’m sure that’s something the manager would readily acknowledge, but this is his team and he is responsible for the performances.

If it were me, I’d lean as far into the young players as I possibly could. Saka and Smith Rowe will make a difference when they come back. It’s time for more Martinelli as our experienced forwards continue to disappoint. It’s not something he can do in every position, but he needs to do something to demonstrate an intolerance towards what was produced last night. Saying it’s unacceptable is fine, doing something tangible about it is far more important.

Till tomorrow, when James and I will discuss all this in more detail on the Arsecast Extra. Have a good Sunday

[swipe right]

He needs to go back to first principles. Start with identifying a settled playing eleven. Who are his best eleven players? Then work out a system going forward where we can score more fluently. Then tighten the defense where there are holes. I know most of you don’t like the sound of Wenger any more but this is what he’d do when he was under pressure and had to squeeze out top four in the last ten games. He’d get super practical, settle on a playing eleven and stop stupid experimentation.

[KG3]

He needs to go back to first principles. Start with identifying a settled playing eleven. Who are his best eleven players? Then work out a system going forward where we can score more fluently. Then tighten the defense where there are holes. I know most of you don’t like the sound of Wenger any more but this is what he’d do when he was under pressure and had to squeeze out top four in the last ten games. He’d get super practical, settle on a playing eleven and stop stupid experimentation.

Easier said than done Arteta is not Wenger, our previous manager wouldn’t be wasting all those talented youngsters at his disposal

[DiamondGooner]

We played more expansive football with the 3-4-3, look how we bossed Utd away from home, beat all the top 4 winning the FA Cup plus the prem games end of last season.

Liverpool 2x, City, Chelsea, Utd .......... beat them all.

The reason we failed with it is because Arteta never truly believed in it and was always looking for a excuse to go to 4-2-3-1, after the uncharacteristic loss to Aston Villa he went full panic mode then changed and never went back .......... and put us on an 8 winless streak.

Now here we are.

Now 3x teams out of the top 4 are using a version of it, Chelsea, City and Leicester.

I'm not saying we have to play 3-4-3 but I wanted a new manager to bring in a different philosophy and perfect it, not like what Arteta is doing and playing some rigid version of Wenger lite.

[theHotHead]

For me the issue is more system than formation. Formations can be deployed that adopt different systems, the system either seems too defensive or too disjointed, not enough in-game options.

I liked the improvements we saw with ESR in the team and with Odegaard we had reason to be hopeful. But the issues crept back in, mistakes, overplaying, a midfield incapable of linking defence with attack. All of this are due to the manager's decisions he must take the full blame.

Now, its one thing to pay lip service and take the blame, its another to actually mean it and look at yourself and admit the mistakes you made. I think he admitted blame for the cameras. We will see in the next game ........

[Santi]

Oh stop crying, since Chelsea in December we've been playing more attacking football and been looking better. One shocker and suddenly we should go back to the shitty 3-4-3 that was all about crosses and the same guy suggesting it moans about crossing too much

4-2-3-1 is fine, just drop Auba for now and put Martinelli or ESR on the left. If Laca doesn't do good for 3-4 games then put Auba up top again in his place. I used to like them both together but it doesn't work anymore when one is lazy.

Also Auba-Laca-Pepe doesn't work because it's two dopey players who can't keep the ball on either side, has to be one or the other. Shame as it sounded like a great front line when we bought nico.

[jayramfootball]

We could play any system we could care to imagine and we'd end up in the same place, simply because the players are not good enough.
It's way past time to just accept that fact.
We put a gloss on players ability because they play for us.
The number of times I hear, "we must be able to do better if Leicester can be in the top 4", or "our player are better than theirs". The problem is our players are not better than the Leicester players, or the West Ham players, or the Everton players and certainly not the City, Chelsea, Utd, Liverpool players.

[Santi]

We could play any system we could care to imagine and we'd end up in the same place, simply because the players are not good enough.
It's way past time to just accept that fact.
We put a gloss on players ability because they play for us.
The number of times I hear, "we must be able to do better if Leicester can be in the top 4", or "our player are better than theirs". The problem is our players are not better than the Leicester players, or the West Ham players, or the Everton players and certainly not the City, Chelsea, Utd, Liverpool players.

Completely agree. One or two players can get carried by a system but when you have so many inconsistent players with bad attitude then it's always going to be tough.