gooner265 wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 10:12 pm
SteveO 35 wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 8:40 pm
gooner265 wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 5:36 pm
SteveO 35 wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 3:58 pm
Almunia is a clown wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 1:19 pm
I'm on record as saying Unai Emery was sacked too early & Arteta could well have been sacked during the covid era when Arsenal's form totally collapsed. From what I remember Artetas bad run of 10 games or so was even worse than Emery's.
A full stadium instead of a few thousand would possible have made the difference. Emery had to face the crowd discontent after the home defeat by Frankfurt, even though he had qualified for the Europa League knockout stage, Arteta had a few thousand fans mostly wearing masks in the stadium when he was facing his bad run of games.
I can't see the point of sacking Arteta, he possibly could have been sacked last season or the previous one but not after finishing 2nd in the league, despite the end of season collapse.
Getting a new manager in would mean having to rebuild the squad to suit the new boss & his tactics, this takes a few seasons or more as we know from recent history. I don't have faith in Arsenal even getting a new manager of the quality required anyway. Even getting a top manager often doesn't work out as has happened over & over again at the Swamp Dwellers.
So Arteta gets two more years for me, I expect CL qualification in both seasons & no more finishing outside the top 4 shite.
Next season we will have the three pimped fraudster clubs, Oil Cheaters, Chavski Nazis & Headchoppers to contend with, plus Munich Mancs & Heysel Mickeys fighting for top 4. I think we have proved this season we are the 2nd best team in the league, I also expect all the challengers mentioned will be taking more points off each other.
Maybe the Swamp Dwellers might make a challenge, alongside Villa & Brighton. I do expect a more competitive league apart from Oil Scum Citeh picking up anther fraudulent league title.
The main issue is will the Munich Mansc & Heysel Mickeys become part of the pimped fraudster money laundering cheating clique perhaps even with the Swamp Dwellers joining them?
If the above happens I won't be bothering anymore with this modern football bollox!
Pretty much how I see it. I'll never understand the difference between the treatment of the two managers and its there for all to see - in terms of time given, level of forgiveness for not finishing in the top 4 and respective transfer budgets.
Anyway, it is what it is. Arteta has used the additional funds to get us up into the top 4, Emery has moved on and made Villa an infinitely better team than Gerrard's relegation threatened losers.
Having now got us back into the top 4, its undoubtedly what comes next as that was the club's aim. It quite clearly isn't a cup of any kind as we had the chance to compete in 3 this season and fluffed them all with barely a ripple on the surface. Better to be out of the EL said the chorus of football snobs!
Well now the club and its modern day fanbase has what it wanted - CL football. I'll remind everyone who wanted Wenger gone (99% of us here) had got fed up with - top 4 as a trophy, continually failing to fill the key gaps in the team, a weak minded/leaderless culture, and being a continual embarrassment in the CL when it came to playing the big teams in the knockout stages.
By the same token then, I presume those same people won't just be swept up by the return of the CL and will judge Arteta by those same standards. Nobody expects the PL title or to win the CL. What they do expect (and rightly did from Emery too) is to correct those issues that have dogged us for most of the 15 years.....otherwise we might as well be sat here celebrating 27 years of the old fraud and giving him 400m to waste on more top, top, super quality
So which one is your option ? Agreed we need to go for the cups next year calling us snobs for wanting the higher prize is harsh though with a limited squad it was maybe a gamble to take but he ended up playing a stronish team anyway and cost us Saliba. Would you have rather we finished out of top 4 then?
As I stated in my earlier post they are clearly not settling for top 4 but the extra money should help us push on financially and attracting better players?
I don't give a shit about the top 4 - never have, never will. In the 45 years that have passed since my first game, I haven't got one lasting memory of a glorious 4th place position. I have however got wonderful memories of watching us lift trophies at Wembley and barring the PL trophies and of course Anfield 89, little will beat the feeling of beating Parma in 1994. These days most of our fans would demand that we played a weakened team in the domestic cups and a so called lesser European trophy, so those memories will soon be confined to distant history
As Augie has kindly pointed out - when people were claiming we didn't have the squad to compete on two fronts, I questioned what the bloody hell we would do when we actually made the CL!! If a group consisting of Bodo Glimt, PSV and FC Zurich, and a double header against the 4th best team in the farmers league of Portugal (spread over almost six months) is too much to bear for our delicate little flowers then what will being the second seeds in a CL spot mean?
It's amazing actually- the very people who were delighted to have binned off the Europa, suddenly started crapping their pants when they realised our snobbery in this competition suddenly meant we might be 3rd deeds, such is our pathetic European record under Arteta
So ask me what I want and winning trophies will far outweigh a top 4 finish. As I said above, we finished in the top 4 every year for 20 years but it didn't stop people wanting Wenger out. So why make it such an all consuming obsession again now?
That EL trophy was there for the winning. The 9th placed team in Spain versus the 6th in Italy will contest the final. The chance of outlasting City and getting the 95+ points needed was always a harder task than winning a trophy. When we chose to bin it off against Sporting - and we did - the top 4 was virtually a certainty anyway
Top 4 isnt an obsession for me , I wanted it as a munimum this year purely to get more money and attract better players to continue upgrading our squad , we'll see if that is the case in the summer.
Trophies will always be the aim for me , I was at Anfield and Copenhagen .
When I asked what you want I meant out of the three options I stated.
I'm just trying to gauge if people on here feel he's warranted another season to see if we kick on or they want a fresh manager.
Understood - I've said on here a few weeks back that he has definitely warranted another season. Wholesale change right now is not what's required, especially given the huge backing he has been given by the board
My question marks about him is whether he's Baby Pep or Baby Wenger and only time will tell. He's got us back into the CL and no doubt that was the board's top priority. However, they had a manager who did that for 20 odd years barring the last couple and it didn't take long before our fanbase became completely arsed off with it. The old arguments used to be that it was very credible to maintain a top 4 place in the aftermath of the new stadium, and whilst that was true to a point, there wasn't much of a credible contender to Chavski and Man U for much of that period. City's money came later, Liverpool were something of a joke barring a few cups.
In later years the fanbase were sick and tired of the same mental failings - 2010, 2013, 2016 etc - whenever we looked vaguely like being title contenders, the same shortcomings in the squad, lack of leadership and physicality would trip us up time after time. This season's collapse unfortunately looks very similar to me - to the point I could even predict that 'Wengerstyle' we would come springing back to life against Wolves as soon as the title was mathematically done....and so it proved. The statistic that spans 3 managers and goes back to 2005 when we last lost on the final day of the season (and now won 11 on the spin) isn't an accident - its the hallmark of a team that can display all the ability in the world when the pressure's off and defy the logic of 'fatigue' and 'thin squad' for the 6-7 matches that go before it when the pressure is on. If anything our squad for the final game of this season was more stretched and more fatigued than at any point - but just like Wenger's yellowbellies, the concrete boots were off and the goals started flying in again
Repeat - nobody expects us to win the league. Nobody expects us to win the CL. What matters is the moment when the chance emerges - 2016 we beat Leicester and were nailed on to win it. We bottled beyond belief. 2023 we get eight points clear and forget the draw at Anfield or the loss at the Etihad, we shit the bed against Everton, Southampton, West Ham and Nottingham Forest.
Reading the Tony Adams article on this thread (by the way I don't agree with all of it) - he makes the obvious observation about lack of physicality and lack of leadership. "Technical leader" seems to be Odegaard's tagline, and Wenger had plenty of those types in Rosicky, Hleb, Nasri etc. It's like repeating itself for me.
Will Arteta's men became the tough nuts of '89, '91, '98, '02 and '04.....or the pussies of '10, '13' and '16. He certainly deserves a chance to prove that one way or the other. Talk to the likes of Wenger, TA and GG about what made the difference back then and for every 'technical leader' you'll find some beasts who got us through the toughest tests. The famous back line, Kevin Richardson, Patrick Vieira, Gilberto, Lauren etc etc. We have absolutely nobody of that ilk and until he gets some of those in, we will forever be the nice to watch, nearly men who just fall short
I'm not giving emery a free pass here for his failures cos the collapse in the season he finished 5th was bad, but at same time it should be recognised that some senior players were causing issues behind the scene just like they did with arteta, and arteta couldnt manage them either.
