Rojofiam
Full Member
- Joined
- May 11, 2017
- Messages
- 6,174
I don't know why anyone would prefer to be us, and suffer pain week in week out, knowing you will get casual battering from mid table teams pretty much every month but win the occasional cup competition, rather than be Arsenal winning almost every week, playing great football, being competitive both domestically and in Europe. That sounds utterly ridiculous.
Domestic cups aren't even that important. I bet most on here would not be able to name the last 3 winners of German, Italian or Spanish cups. They hold much more weight to smaller clubs because they are usually their only chance at silverware but the big clubs truly care about league and CL.
Arsenal are one of the best teams in the world, top 4 IMO, and have been basically since the start of the 2022/23 season, so over 2 years now, despite not winning one of the two major trophies: CL or PL. In fact, they haven't won anything, but are still infinitely more likely to win one of the big trophies than we are, even if we make the CL.
The 38-game league season will always give a much better indication about where your footballing project is, and how the future is looking like, than a knockout cup competition, especially domestic ones, where you often only have to face one or two truly good teams in order to win it. I'm not going to deny that ETH isn't a good knockout tournament coach, as we've deservedly beaten Barcelona, Liverpool, and Manchester City in such competitions under him. However, United's ambitions ultimately are winning the Premier League and Champions League, and not by fluking them, but by being the best team in the world. Arteta has done much more for that objective at his current club than ETH. No doubts about it.