IW8Goalmachine wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 11:47 pm
King Henry wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 10:49 pm
A dismal performance but one we've come to expect. I think that Arteta deserves at least one full season before fans start calling for him to go
Why does he deserve a full season?
He has shown us enough times what he is and that's a rookie out of his depth.
Time to pull the plug while the season is still salvageable.
I think it's unfair to judge without having a full season, I had the same opinion with Emery too, especially when they take over mediocre squads and need to get ideas across. You may be right with your opinion but we'd end up sacking managers every 4 months, even some of the best managers, like Klopp took a season or so to start showing improvements once they took over. I think there are positives, the cup win beating Sheff Utd away, City and Chelsea was impressive and I don't think was a fluke either, we deserved to win those games. We've also improved defensively and become more solid, we can now go into the big matches with some expectation that we're not going to be 4-0 down at half time. Also, Arteta deserves a chance to change things, if we're sitting here in a few months and nothing has changed then we will be much better positioned to make a decision.
In terms of the season being salvageable, I'd actually argue that Arteta has shown so far to be a decent cup manager, setting us up well in the tough games but this hasn't translated well in the league. If we could win a cup this season, particularly the Europa League, then I'd say the season has been a big success so that's probably what we could hope for. Even if we hired someone now (who?) I don't think there's any guarantee that we'd do significantly better.
We are in desperate need of a creator, Ozil was a great player but past his best for 3 seasons now. I don't think we will but if we could get someone decent in January we'll be a lot better off and we will improve in attack. We were definitely in for Auaor, and Arteta wanted him, but we didn't pay what they wanted. I'm hoping Arteta changes the tactics and maybe someone can get a go in the number 10 position, maybe even Saka or another of the youngers like Smith-Rowe who's now back from injury, has shown some promise. We definitely have to improve overall but I think it's a bit too early right now to have made a final decision that he's out of his depth.