Mikel Arteta, success or failure? - Merged thread.

[SteveO 35]

I supported Emery and now have got behind Arteta.
Looking back though at the season and I think the only reason Emery got sacked was that he had one really bad month.

On 3rd October I posted this;

come on this is getting ridiculous now.
Emery was one win away from 3rd place last season and took us to a first European final in 13 years.

we all knew that there was gong to be quite a bit of upheaval because the squad needed to be revamped.
this summer saw a lot of changes and combined with injuries to defenders who will be expecting to be first team players it hasn't been the best of starts to the season.
despite all that we have only lost one game all season, away at the European champions. So sorry if I don't share your assessment on Emery.
he probably isn't up to winning the league, but was he ever appointed to do that ? If you want a really ambitious manager at this club you will need to wait until Stan Kroenke dies and his son loses interest. Until then Emery is probably about the best we can get.

Arteta might be a decent enough manager in time but it was a hell of a gamble appointing him when we did.
Emery was always our best chance which was why he got appointed over Arteta in the first place.

Probably the most sensible and balanced comment on here mate and absolutely how I see it too. The part that pisses me off even more is that the bad month was partly down to the fact that we were actively managing out some of the rubbish that has now come back into the side. Xhaka was a dead man walking, Mustafi trying to be shipped out to whoever might be interested, Ozil too. A fit Tierney would have put an end to Kolasinac's awful defending and the hopeless Lacazette was on his way to be replaced by Martinelli. That 'bad month' still only left us 7th and still virtually guaranteed to be through the Europa League but all perspective went out of the window. Who knows what might have happened if the January window had seen the rebuild continue and we'd have got shot of more of those jokers listed above.

Instead, those clowns are all now back firmly in the first team - surprise, surprise senior players who he has buddied up with. Lacazette has been nothing short of pathetic and yet his whole attack is based around him.

The decision to replace Emery with Arteta has set us back at least half a season. If he then decides to hang on to this selection of shit in a way that Emery would never have done, then we'll be back even further

[Jock Gooner]

I’m not saying we should be grateful to him. Like a huge proportion of our squad, he has found himself in a job and at a club he has no right to be at. My reference to patience was that people need to acknowledge that we are absolute dog shit and aren’t one good transfer window off challenging for the title next year. Patience means that we shouldn’t expect to be 2nd/3rd next year, not that we should be grateful to Arteta.

Which is exactly what we all said when emery was appointed, but 12-15 months later there was huge calls to get rid and it worked. Make no mistake, unrealistic bullshit expectations are as big as a roadblock for us now as a lack of funds - the same people lauding imaginary improvements now, will be the same one's going ballistic next season when we are nowhere near we need to be, but the reality is that there has been fcuk all improvement and nor will there be as long as we have sub-standard shite like xhaka, ozil and mustafi in the team

Exactly - the selective memories eh? Those very people now saying that Emery's 22 game unbeaten run was lucky were probably in the away end at Fulham singing "we've got our Arsenal back" or saying how the atmosphere at home to the scum when we beat them 4-2 was the best in years. Show me an unbeaten run that didn't have some elements of luck by the way - Invincibles at home to Pompey (and others), Mickeys with their VAR assisted results and scraping late winners/equalisers (Fabianski's butter hands).

Just out of interest, who exactly are "those very people"? During the 22 game run I was consistent with calling the majority of the football we played as dull and dreary, I know, I sat and watched it with my very own eyes. I said so on here and it wasn't a slightly contentious statement as it was fuc.king glaringly obvious. Yes, we were extremely fortunate to go for that length unbeaten but luck wasn't my concern, the problem for me was that no discernible pattern of play emerged from that period. A recognisable system was all I was looking for but it just didn't emerge. But during that period we had some moments, that is football but it doesn't make everything ok to anybody who has the slightest clue about the game. The Spurs game was a cracking atmosphere but as I said on here at the time, the crowd for once got off their arses and got behind the team and drove them on NOT the other way around. Very rarely does that happen these days but for an hour or so that day it did. As for the usual muppets singing that bollox at Fulham, well how much of that was just sounding out relief at finally having prised TOF's fingers off the club. After 10 years of TOF pissing about there was a degree of hope. Were they singing that Dick was the new messiah, maybe not.

As I've said before we have appointed two perfectly decent guys who I have nothing against but neither of whom I expected to actually manage to do anything with the club given the quality of players we have or the lack of support or investment from above. There are not many managers who could do much with our current set up. The board/wiggy managed to fu.ck up when there have been highly qualified managers available and we are too snobby to consider taking a chance on a British manager. This all comes back to wiggy as far as I'm concerned, as nothing much is going to change until we have an owner who wants to invest in the club to fix our personnel problems. Until then it sounds like we are going to have to listen to arguments about whether this manger or that manager lumbered with this current shower of shite is better than the other.

[augie]

I’m not saying we should be grateful to him. Like a huge proportion of our squad, he has found himself in a job and at a club he has no right to be at. My reference to patience was that people need to acknowledge that we are absolute dog shit and aren’t one good transfer window off challenging for the title next year. Patience means that we shouldn’t expect to be 2nd/3rd next year, not that we should be grateful to Arteta.

Which is exactly what we all said when emery was appointed, but 12-15 months later there was huge calls to get rid and it worked. Make no mistake, unrealistic bullshit expectations are as big as a roadblock for us now as a lack of funds - the same people lauding imaginary improvements now, will be the same one's going ballistic next season when we are nowhere near we need to be, but the reality is that there has been fcuk all improvement and nor will there be as long as we have sub-standard shite like xhaka, ozil and mustafi in the team

Exactly - the selective memories eh? Those very people now saying that Emery's 22 game unbeaten run was lucky were probably in the away end at Fulham singing "we've got our Arsenal back" or saying how the atmosphere at home to the scum when we beat them 4-2 was the best in years. Show me an unbeaten run that didn't have some elements of luck by the way - Invincibles at home to Pompey (and others), Mickeys with their VAR assisted results and scraping late winners/equalisers (Fabianski's butter hands).

Just out of interest, who exactly are "those very people"? During the 22 game run I was consistent with calling the majority of the football we played as dull and dreary, I know, I sat and watched it with my very own eyes. I said so on here and it wasn't a slightly contentious statement as it was fuc.king glaringly obvious. Yes, we were extremely fortunate to go for that length unbeaten but luck wasn't my concern, the problem for me was that no discernible pattern of play emerged from that period. A recognisable system was all I was looking for but it just didn't emerge. But during that period we had some moments, that is football but it doesn't make everything ok to anybody who has the slightest clue about the game. The Spurs game was a cracking atmosphere but as I said on here at the time, the crowd for once got off their arses and got behind the team and drove them on NOT the other way around. Very rarely does that happen these days but for an hour or so that day it did. As for the usual muppets singing that bollox at Fulham, well how much of that was just sounding out relief at finally having prised TOF's fingers off the club. After 10 years of TOF pissing about there was a degree of hope. Were they singing that Dick was the new messiah, maybe not.

As I've said before we have appointed two perfectly decent guys who I have nothing against but neither of whom I expected to actually manage to do anything with the club given the quality of players we have or the lack of support or investment from above. There are not many managers who could do much with our current set up. The board/wiggy managed to fu.ck up when there have been highly qualified managers available and we are too snobby to consider taking a chance on a British manager. This all comes back to wiggy as far as I'm concerned, as nothing much is going to change until we have an owner who wants to invest in the club to fix our personnel problems. Until then it sounds like we are going to have to listen to arguments about whether this manger or that manager lumbered with this current shower of shite is better than the other.

I'm old school Jock - I was brought up in "boring boring Arsenal" years, so I quite welcomed a return to the dull and dreary but ultimately successful football. There are a lot of Gooners that were brought up in a time (in the early wenger years) where we played a scintillating type of football that we hadn't seen before and probably will never see again, and there are also older Gooners who have forgotten the "traditional" Arsenal defensive way (not saying that is you btw), and expect to be entertained all the time now - I actually want a (short term) return to the defensive AFC that I grew up loving, partially to bring a dose of reality to some of those "entertainment fans". If emery had of won the Europa league and clinched top 4 playing that dull football you refer to, I would have been borrowing rodder's bath salts and barry white album, cos this is a results based business at the end of the day, so for me you slate emery for blowing what looked a nailed on top 4, but not for the football we played

[herbert]

We all got behind Emery and we all need to get behind Arteta

Wrong or right decision? at this moment in time it is impossible to say

We have a great history with ex employees taking over as manager and there is a 50/50 chance that it turns out he was the right man for the job.

COYG and Arteta

[Jock Gooner]

I’m not saying we should be grateful to him. Like a huge proportion of our squad, he has found himself in a job and at a club he has no right to be at. My reference to patience was that people need to acknowledge that we are absolute dog shit and aren’t one good transfer window off challenging for the title next year. Patience means that we shouldn’t expect to be 2nd/3rd next year, not that we should be grateful to Arteta.

Which is exactly what we all said when emery was appointed, but 12-15 months later there was huge calls to get rid and it worked. Make no mistake, unrealistic bullshit expectations are as big as a roadblock for us now as a lack of funds - the same people lauding imaginary improvements now, will be the same one's going ballistic next season when we are nowhere near we need to be, but the reality is that there has been fcuk all improvement and nor will there be as long as we have sub-standard shite like xhaka, ozil and mustafi in the team

Exactly - the selective memories eh? Those very people now saying that Emery's 22 game unbeaten run was lucky were probably in the away end at Fulham singing "we've got our Arsenal back" or saying how the atmosphere at home to the scum when we beat them 4-2 was the best in years. Show me an unbeaten run that didn't have some elements of luck by the way - Invincibles at home to Pompey (and others), Mickeys with their VAR assisted results and scraping late winners/equalisers (Fabianski's butter hands).

Just out of interest, who exactly are "those very people"? During the 22 game run I was consistent with calling the majority of the football we played as dull and dreary, I know, I sat and watched it with my very own eyes. I said so on here and it wasn't a slightly contentious statement as it was fuc.king glaringly obvious. Yes, we were extremely fortunate to go for that length unbeaten but luck wasn't my concern, the problem for me was that no discernible pattern of play emerged from that period. A recognisable system was all I was looking for but it just didn't emerge. But during that period we had some moments, that is football but it doesn't make everything ok to anybody who has the slightest clue about the game. The Spurs game was a cracking atmosphere but as I said on here at the time, the crowd for once got off their arses and got behind the team and drove them on NOT the other way around. Very rarely does that happen these days but for an hour or so that day it did. As for the usual muppets singing that bollox at Fulham, well how much of that was just sounding out relief at finally having prised TOF's fingers off the club. After 10 years of TOF pissing about there was a degree of hope. Were they singing that Dick was the new messiah, maybe not.

As I've said before we have appointed two perfectly decent guys who I have nothing against but neither of whom I expected to actually manage to do anything with the club given the quality of players we have or the lack of support or investment from above. There are not many managers who could do much with our current set up. The board/wiggy managed to fu.ck up when there have been highly qualified managers available and we are too snobby to consider taking a chance on a British manager. This all comes back to wiggy as far as I'm concerned, as nothing much is going to change until we have an owner who wants to invest in the club to fix our personnel problems. Until then it sounds like we are going to have to listen to arguments about whether this manger or that manager lumbered with this current shower of shite is better than the other.

I'm old school Jock - I was brought up in "boring boring Arsenal" years, so I quite welcomed a return to the dull and dreary but ultimately successful football. There are a lot of Gooners that were brought up in a time (in the early wenger years) where we played a scintillating type of football that we hadn't seen before and probably will never see again, and there are also older Gooners who have forgotten the "traditional" Arsenal defensive way (not saying that is you btw), and expect to be entertained all the time now - I actually want a (short term) return to the defensive AFC that I grew up loving, partially to bring a dose of reality to some of those "entertainment fans". If emery had of won the Europa league and clinched top 4 playing that dull football you refer to, I would have been borrowing rodder's bath salts and barry white album, cos this is a results based business at the end of the day, so for me you slate emery for blowing what looked a nailed on top 4, but not for the football we played

Well I date back to watching Terry Neil football at Highbury so I guess that makes me old school as well. I'm not complaining about dull and dreary per se, I've got a phD in watching dull and deary football. I wasn't just having a pop at UE for the football, I made that statement in the context of the earlier comments about luck. My point was that during the 22 run we were not in control of matches whether the football be expresive and flowery or dull - as it was, it was frequently dull and quite tedious at times. My full comment was that under Emery there was no system that emerged which you could link to the way we were playing. If that was the case I would have given him credit for the results but I know luck when I see it. With the likes of GG or DH you knew exactly what you were getting and why whereas with UE we quite clearly didn't. For a guy who made the "rather win 4 - 3 than 1 - 0" quote that wasn't exactly reflected in his football so I questioned his direction.

You will see from my previous comments on here that I have been one of the few who was critical of UE purely for missing top 4. I genuinely wasn't bothered about winning the ropey but to lose out on the top 4 slot was inexcusable and self inflicted from the Everton game onwards as he tinkered with the team. The irony of securing top 4 however would have been that we would have most likely got our arses seriously kicked in the CL but we would have generated some serious additional cash which would have played into wiggys hands. UE would have bought himself some extra credit and would have probably made it to the end of this season. Where we would have gone from there......anybody's guess.

[augie]

I always want to be the pikey chav c.unts, but at the same I too wasn't over distraught at losing the Europa league final. Losing the top 4 was a big deal for me and mostly cos of the way we blew it - the team selection against palace at home was awful, but the players performance was an absolute disgrace, and emery and the players totally screwed us over there.

[GoonerMuzz]

Simple question in terms of Emery, does anyone believe with the seeming player revolt and the downturn in performance and results he could of turned it around?

I personally don't believe he could have, all the cards were stacked against him, some of his own making some not, that is why i wanted him gone. When things are going from bad to worse there is no choice but to change things, you cant replace half a squad mid-season never mind in a summer so the only choice was to replace the person at the top. Like it or not something had to be changed and Emery and his coaching staff were the only available choice.

As an aside the football we were playing under Emery was more often than not as disjointed and poor as anything under Wenger in the last 5 seasons so he was hardly blameless no matter how people want to tint it.

Arteta was never the right choice with no experience at any level but still in my opinion better than sticking with what we had in that situation which again, in my opinion, could only have gotten worse.

As i've said previously there can be no judgement on Arteta's inexperience and how things are going if the same rules aren't applied equally to Emery's vast experience and until Arteta has also had a summer to change things and being fair two it is very disingenuous to compare like for like just to support an agenda.

[augie]

Simple question in terms of Emery, does anyone believe with the seeming player revolt and the downturn in performance and results he could of turned it around?

I personally don't believe he could have, all the cards were stacked against him, some of his own making some not, that is why i wanted him gone. When things are going from bad to worse there is no choice but to change things, you cant replace half a squad mid-season never mind in a summer so the only choice was to replace the person at the top. Like it or not something had to be changed and Emery and his coaching staff were the only available choice.

As an aside the football we were playing under Emery was more often than not as disjointed and poor as anything under Wenger in the last 5 seasons so he was hardly blameless no matter how people want to tint it.

Arteta was never the right choice with no experience at any level but still in my opinion better than sticking with what we had in that situation which again, in my opinion, could only have gotten worse.

As i've said previously there can be no judgement on Arteta's inexperience and how things are going if the same rules aren't applied equally to Emery's vast experience and until Arteta has also had a summer to change things and being fair two it is very disingenuous to compare like for like just to support an agenda.

Speaking from my own point of view, I don't think so - the ONLY hope he was gonna have of turning it around was to rid the club of the c.unts like xhaka, ozil and mustafi (and a few more) in the summer, but it was obvious that he wasn't gonna be afforded that time. I loved the fact that he came in and assessed fairly quickly that the Armenian pussy, the Egyptian alex song, lard arse iwobi (and a few others) were shit and got rid - there is no way that that the club would get rid of them if he valued them, so I give him the credit for getting shot of them. This season he had already started to banish ozil and xhaka and that too was more progress, but for some reason ozil in particular became a better player in the eyes of the fans when he was out of the team

I have been consistant in my views over the past few seasons, that whoever took over from the french cock was going to have a massive job ahead of them, and a large part of the problem was gonna be getting rid of the shite that the other c.unt had accumulated in his last few years That part of his job was going brilliantly imo, but the reality is that he came into the club with a reputation of being unable to handle the star players at psg, so straight away he was going to be vulnerable - the senior players pounced on that imo, and as soon as he stood up to them, they set about undermining him and forcing him out.

All that being said, he also fcuked up on several occasions including the woeful run in last season, so isn't completely blameless either. The thing about judging them equally is my big gripe with the fans at the mo though - if emery's team had of produced the performances and results that arteta has against burnley, palace, Sheffield utd etc, there would have been uproar and the stadium would have been burnt down by now, and that is double standards imo

[Redarmy]

Which is exactly what we all said when emery was appointed, but 12-15 months later there was huge calls to get rid and it worked. Make no mistake, unrealistic bullshit expectations are as big as a roadblock for us now as a lack of funds - the same people lauding imaginary improvements now, will be the same one's going ballistic next season when we are nowhere near we need to be, but the reality is that there has been fcuk all improvement and nor will there be as long as we have sub-standard shite like xhaka, ozil and mustafi in the team

Exactly - the selective memories eh? Those very people now saying that Emery's 22 game unbeaten run was lucky were probably in the away end at Fulham singing "we've got our Arsenal back" or saying how the atmosphere at home to the scum when we beat them 4-2 was the best in years. Show me an unbeaten run that didn't have some elements of luck by the way - Invincibles at home to Pompey (and others), Mickeys with their VAR assisted results and scraping late winners/equalisers (Fabianski's butter hands).

Just out of interest, who exactly are "those very people"? During the 22 game run I was consistent with calling the majority of the football we played as dull and dreary, I know, I sat and watched it with my very own eyes. I said so on here and it wasn't a slightly contentious statement as it was fuc.king glaringly obvious. Yes, we were extremely fortunate to go for that length unbeaten but luck wasn't my concern, the problem for me was that no discernible pattern of play emerged from that period. A recognisable system was all I was looking for but it just didn't emerge. But during that period we had some moments, that is football but it doesn't make everything ok to anybody who has the slightest clue about the game. The Spurs game was a cracking atmosphere but as I said on here at the time, the crowd for once got off their arses and got behind the team and drove them on NOT the other way around. Very rarely does that happen these days but for an hour or so that day it did. As for the usual muppets singing that bollox at Fulham, well how much of that was just sounding out relief at finally having prised TOF's fingers off the club. After 10 years of TOF pissing about there was a degree of hope. Were they singing that Dick was the new messiah, maybe not.

As I've said before we have appointed two perfectly decent guys who I have nothing against but neither of whom I expected to actually manage to do anything with the club given the quality of players we have or the lack of support or investment from above. There are not many managers who could do much with our current set up. The board/wiggy managed to fu.ck up when there have been highly qualified managers available and we are too snobby to consider taking a chance on a British manager. This all comes back to wiggy as far as I'm concerned, as nothing much is going to change until we have an owner who wants to invest in the club to fix our personnel problems. Until then it sounds like we are going to have to listen to arguments about whether this manger or that manager lumbered with this current shower of shite is better than the other.

I'm old school Jock - I was brought up in "boring boring Arsenal" years, so I quite welcomed a return to the dull and dreary but ultimately successful football. There are a lot of Gooners that were brought up in a time (in the early wenger years) where we played a scintillating type of football that we hadn't seen before and probably will never see again, and there are also older Gooners who have forgotten the "traditional" Arsenal defensive way (not saying that is you btw), and expect to be entertained all the time now - I actually want a (short term) return to the defensive AFC that I grew up loving, partially to bring a dose of reality to some of those "entertainment fans". If emery had of won the Europa league and clinched top 4 playing that dull football you refer to, I would have been borrowing rodder's bath salts and barry white album, cos this is a results based business at the end of the day, so for me you slate emery for blowing what looked a nailed on top 4, but not for the football we played

Well I date back to watching Terry Neil football at Highbury so I guess that makes me old school as well. I'm not complaining about dull and dreary per se, I've got a phD in watching dull and deary football. I wasn't just having a pop at UE for the football, I made that statement in the context of the earlier comments about luck. My point was that during the 22 run we were not in control of matches whether the football be expresive and flowery or dull - as it was, it was frequently dull and quite tedious at times. My full comment was that under Emery there was no system that emerged which you could link to the way we were playing. If that was the case I would have given him credit for the results but I know luck when I see it. With the likes of GG or DH you knew exactly what you were getting and why whereas with UE we quite clearly didn't. For a guy who made the "rather win 4 - 3 than 1 - 0" quote that wasn't exactly reflected in his football so I questioned his direction.

You will see from my previous comments on here that I have been one of the few who was critical of UE purely for missing top 4. I genuinely wasn't bothered about winning the ropey but to lose out on the top 4 slot was inexcusable and self inflicted from the Everton game onwards as he tinkered with the team. The irony of securing top 4 however would have been that we would have most likely got our arses seriously kicked in the CL but we would have generated some serious additional cash which would have played into wiggys hands. UE would have bought himself some extra credit and would have probably made it to the end of this season. Where we would have gone from there......anybody's guess.

Hate these JCLs ...Bertie Mee, Don Howe era matey

[SteveO 35]

Simple question in terms of Emery, does anyone believe with the seeming player revolt and the downturn in performance and results he could of turned it around?

I personally don't believe he could have, all the cards were stacked against him, some of his own making some not, that is why i wanted him gone. When things are going from bad to worse there is no choice but to change things, you cant replace half a squad mid-season never mind in a summer so the only choice was to replace the person at the top. Like it or not something had to be changed and Emery and his coaching staff were the only available choice.

As an aside the football we were playing under Emery was more often than not as disjointed and poor as anything under Wenger in the last 5 seasons so he was hardly blameless no matter how people want to tint it.

Arteta was never the right choice with no experience at any level but still in my opinion better than sticking with what we had in that situation which again, in my opinion, could only have gotten worse.

As i've said previously there can be no judgement on Arteta's inexperience and how things are going if the same rules aren't applied equally to Emery's vast experience and until Arteta has also had a summer to change things and being fair two it is very disingenuous to compare like for like just to support an agenda.

Speaking from my own point of view, I don't think so - the ONLY hope he was gonna have of turning it around was to rid the club of the c.unts like xhaka, ozil and mustafi (and a few more) in the summer, but it was obvious that he wasn't gonna be afforded that time. I loved the fact that he came in and assessed fairly quickly that the Armenian pussy, the Egyptian alex song, lard arse iwobi (and a few others) were shit and got rid - there is no way that that the club would get rid of them if he valued them, so I give him the credit for getting shot of them. This season he had already started to banish ozil and xhaka and that too was more progress, but for some reason ozil in particular became a better player in the eyes of the fans when he was out of the team

I have been consistant in my views over the past few seasons, that whoever took over from the french cock was going to have a massive job ahead of them, and a large part of the problem was gonna be getting rid of the shite that the other c.unt had accumulated in his last few years That part of his job was going brilliantly imo, but the reality is that he came into the club with a reputation of being unable to handle the star players at psg, so straight away he was going to be vulnerable - the senior players pounced on that imo, and as soon as he stood up to them, they set about undermining him and forcing him out.

All that being said, he also fcuked up on several occasions including the woeful run in last season, so isn't completely blameless either. The thing about judging them equally is my big gripe with the fans at the mo though - if emery's team had of produced the performances and results that arteta has against burnley, palace, Sheffield utd etc, there would have been uproar and the stadium would have been burnt down by now, and that is double standards imo

Pretty much how I see it too - other than I strongly believe that he would have turned it round next season. I said when he was appointed it would take 2 full seasons and all 4 transfer windows to sort out a mess that had accumulated over a decade. Perhaps people would do well to look at Klopp and Guardiola's first seasons when they too were being called into question?

If people weren't patient enough to accept that it would take a full 2 years - then Emery, nor any other manager would make a success of it. Klopp, Guardiola, Simeone, Allegri......name who you like. They would never have turned that sorry bunch of pricks into a bunch of winners. Add Ramsey and Cech to Augie's list above - everyone bangs on about Ramsey now but spent a decade moaning about his lack of consistency before then. As for the helmet headed c.unt.....well what else needs to be spent. Dick had weeded out most of the shit but still had Mustafi, Ozil, Xhaka and possibly Lacazette to go before truly getting rid of the rotten core -c.unts in every single important position there.

If he could have sold them all and more importantly got another 600k-700k per week off the wage bill......and brought in his own players in the Summer.....then who knows. Personally I couldn't have given a flying fuck if that meant finishing 15th this season. To me every place between 2nd and 17th is worth the same anyway - I don't personally make any money out of qualifying for a competition that we are a laughing stock in and will never win with this owner, so I don't give two fucks about it. The problem is that I'm in a very small minority - the modern day snobs couldn't handle another year of pain and missing out so we abandoned the rebuild when it was 70% complete.

Now we're back to giving this shower of shit a clean slate. Ozil and Xhaka will certainly stay next season now and I look forward to reading the comments in a year's time when the 500k+ per week they take out of the wage bill is being pissed up the wall.

I wish Arteta the best. I've said before (and you can dig up the posts), I defended his honour as a player long before he joined the Arsenal and even towards the end of his career when many here were writing him off. He isn't a bad bloke and he will undoubtedly give it everything. I just think abandoning a 2 year minimum project, going back to the start and appointing a novice to clear away the bad habits of a decade or more was not what we needed

Only time will tell.

[Jock Gooner]

Hate these JCLs ...Bertie Mee, Don Howe era matey

Yeah yeah Red we know that you're prehistoric rather than old school mate

When the old man took me to my first games Bertie was still the boss so I've been to a few games under his tenure but by the time I started to go with a couple of mates TN was at the helm.

By the way old chap, you make sure you look after yourself with the Coronavirus doing the rounds, it sounds like you could be in one of the age categories most at risk

[Redarmy]

Hate these JCLs ...Bertie Mee, Don Howe era matey

Yeah yeah Red we know that you're prehistoric rather than old school mate

When the old man took me to my first games Bertie was still the boss so I've been to a few games under his tenure but by the time I started to go with a couple of mates TN was at the helm.

By the way old chap, you make sure you look after yourself with the Coronavirus doing the rounds, it sounds like you could be in one of the age categories most at risk

52 years ago attended my first game at beloved Highbury

[Jock Gooner]

Hate these JCLs ...Bertie Mee, Don Howe era matey

Yeah yeah Red we know that you're prehistoric rather than old school mate

When the old man took me to my first games Bertie was still the boss so I've been to a few games under his tenure but by the time I started to go with a couple of mates TN was at the helm.

By the way old chap, you make sure you look after yourself with the Coronavirus doing the rounds, it sounds like you could be in one of the age categories most at risk

52 years ago attended my first game at beloved Highbury

Over half a century ago - I was 1 then

[Nos89]

I think one of the problems we've got in the fanbase with Arteta is that he is a manager with the expectations of the Emirates era, given that he was club captain in our new era. My expectation and I'd imagine a few on here have got expectations of our Highbury era. Challenging and winning league titles, as opposed to scraping 4th and winning the FA Cup. I've enjoyed every cup win but I've enjoyed finishing top of the league more.

[SteveO 35]

I think one of the problems we've got in the fanbase with Arteta is that he is a manager with the expectations of the Emirates era, given that he was club captain in our new era. My expectation and I'd imagine a few on here have got expectations of our Highbury era. Challenging and winning league titles, as opposed to scraping 4th and winning the FA Cup. I've enjoyed every cup win but I've enjoyed finishing top of the league more.

So basically entirely the same expectations everyone had for Emery - in fact worse for Emery because he was first in the seat post Wenger