I don't see it. Ahead of who?
19/20 - Would've gotten third, which got 65, points ffs.
20/21 - I think second.
Mikel Arteta | Lego Pep watch
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
19/20 - Would've gotten third, which got 65, points ffs.
20/21 - I think second.
Wasteman fam.
I just realised why I enjoy Arsenal failing so much, despite Pool, City and Chelsea being bigger rivals.
For some reason, there's a very high asshole ratio among the Arsenal supporters I've met in real life. In fact, if I made a top 5 list over the biggest assholes I've met, 2 of them would be Arsenal supporters. Seeing as the other 3 don't like football and are actual psychopaths, that's pretty telling.
It can't be a coincidence!
For some reason, there's a very high asshole ratio among the Arsenal supporters I've met in real life. In fact, if I made a top 5 list over the biggest assholes I've met, 2 of them would be Arsenal supporters. Seeing as the other 3 don't like football and are actual psychopaths, that's pretty telling.
It can't be a coincidence!
That's such an unbelievably bad plan, it can't be stressed strongly enough how bad of a plan that is. Pull the rip cord in the summer for fecks sake. Making the decision later based on some results early in the season is moronic and pointless, unless your assistant coach happens to be Hansi Flick, and fully dooms another season to throw away status.
Because you know next spring, it then will be like, 'oh the new coach hasn't even had a transfer summer, can't judge him', and then you can repeat the game year after year. And who knows what transfer decisions you will have taken that the new manager doesn't approve of.
If you sack him now, he'll 'rightly' be out of a job too, 8th in the league, what's the fecking matter with your club, have you lost all sense of proportion?
My partner is an Arsenal fan (poor her) so I've unfortunately been subject to most of those performances, and we would both agree it's been a dull fest most of the season. She was the one that showed me the stat about how consistently good the actual results had been in the 2nd half of the season, but we were both surprised by it. I thought you needed to get rid of Arteta until that, but now I reckon he's worth giving a bit more time.
Willian though, I called that one at the start of the season. What were you thinking giving a 3 year deal to a 30+ player who relied mostly on pace and set pieces, when you already have a '70m' young player in Pepe who's best attribute is probably his set pieces.
They're shell-shocked from being meme'd to death for over a decade. Also, I'm convinced that Arteta has a cult at this stage. Hypnosis may possibly be involved.
"Look deeply into my shiny hair. Yes, good. You're beginning to feel sleepy now. Sleepy. Sleeeeeepy. I'm tired, Robbie. Sleeeeeepy."
Even Spurs don't see 8th place as acceptable.
39 goals conceded is not really anything to get too excited about.
Correct.
The correlation between 'goals against' and 'points tally' in the top 10 is typically weaker than the correlation between 'goals for' and 'points tally.' I would imagine that clubs that can score more can afford conceding more meaningless goals.
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It seems to annoy everyone, that there's people out there that doesn't want to sack their manager first chance they get, that you must lack ambition if you dare settle for missing a target, without looking at the background of things. Never mind the fact that all metrics seem to have improved greatly since Xmas, so why MUST their be a change on a situation that already shows signs of improving?
Sounds about right, but as I mentioned on my earlier post, I'm not sure that stacks for us. In our poor early form we only scored 12 goals & conceded 18 in our first 14 games, however after the change in formation after Xmas we scored 43 goals & conceded 21 in 24 games.
What annoys me is Arsenal sinking deeper and deeper into midtable quagmire; and it should annoy you even more. You're the gooner after all, I'm just someone with a soft spot for your club. To think how militant fans were towards Wenger, and now this?
This thread lacks a lot of the nuance I loved about RedCafe (I’ve been a lurker for years). I’ve always thought this was the best forum for fans of other clubs. But now it seems to have descended to straw man arguments.
Suggesting the third best defence in the league over a 38 game season doesn’t need to be entirely replaced is... pretty reasonable. No?
United fans calling us delusional while a Bayern fan says we lack ambition. At least for the Arsenal fans here, neither is all that accurate.
We went from a team that was free-flowing but rarely concerned ourselves with the opposition to one that is not all that fun to watch, but with a quite a few victories against the bigger clubs.
We’ve had to clear out a lot of deadwood. After this Summer, for better or worse, it’s Arteta’s team. I’m happy to give him until Christmas. If we’re still playing tumescent football then, there’ll be no reason to think that it will ever improve.
This guy’s done an insanely long/complicated Arsenal season review which gooners may find interesting. I have zero intention of wading through it all.
The table in the tweet is interesting though. Have a look at the “opponent average points” of their last 10 games. That’s a far more plausible explanation for their strong finish than Arteta belatedly getting his team to play the way he wants.
It does my fecking head in. Saying stuff like "Arteta will have nowhere to hide when next season begins", or "the pressure on him will be massive" as posted above - this is madness. It's not about how Arteta does, it's Arsenal whose standing is at stake. How can you not get this.
Because it's not Arteta who will end up suffering, with nowhere to hide, and under pressure, really, but the club after another season is going down the drain. Arteta is a nobody who may have a career after, or not, who cares? But the club is seriously damaged. This is too long, far too long.
Because it's not Arteta who will end up suffering, with nowhere to hide, and under pressure, really, but the club after another season is going down the drain. Arteta is a nobody who may have a career after, or not, who cares? But the club is seriously damaged. This is too long, far too long.
Yeah, Lego Pep is riding high in the "last ten matches" table.
In fact, based on that, he'll probably win the league next season - or be in with a proper chance, at least. Could lose it to El Loco, though.
City won't get CL.
And so forth.
In fact, based on that, he'll probably win the league next season - or be in with a proper chance, at least. Could lose it to El Loco, though.
City won't get CL.
And so forth.
Do you actually believe that Arsenal have the 3rd best defense in the PL, though?
Arseblog rated the players and for the defense, 2 of them got a D rating, and 3 got a C+. Another website, Just Arsenal, gave a rating of 7 or higher to only 3 defenders (one of them Luiz, who you're losing). Player by player it doesn't seem great compared to other clubs.
Now, we have the objective data point of '3rd best defense in the league over 38 games.' But with a bunch of caveats. First one, that the 39 goals they conceded is not a particularly great defensive tally (compare them to, for example, Atletico Madrid, who haven't conceded more than 30 goals in a league season in 7 years). Second, that a bunch of other teams were close enough in final tally to be within what we could call a reasonable margin of error. The gap was considerably smaller just two games ago, even. We can believably say that Arsenal are capable of having a defensive record comparable to their peers, in some circumstances. Hard to extend it further.
Isn't this just a PL thing? Managers (in the public eye) have 100% control over transfers, so naturally everything becomes even more focused on them and with the ownership model success or lack thereof and spending aren't as clearly correlated as for clubs that live hand to mouth. For all we know another disappointing season might actually prompt a spending spree.
This is actually his first job as a manager. Yet at the beginning people thought he would be the next Pep just because he sat next to Pep at City and carried Pep's water bottle (during which he might have taken a sip from in order to transfer some of Pep's abilities). So 8th seems apt to me.
I think I believe it to the extent that you’re suggesting. It’s a crude metric that you can definitely apply caveats to. However 38 games is a large enough sample size to draw some conclusions from. And the opinion that we don’t need a whole need back line is a fairly rational one.
When you list our players, very few neutral fans would rate them. In fact, the jury is out with many of our own fans. However, how a unit performs does not always correlate with how players are viewed. Liverpool’s midfield is a great example of that. English and European Champions with players that were not that highly thought of three or four years ago.
I’m more concerned with performances than reputations. Defensively we’ve been pretty solid - especially this calendar year. Offensively... that’s a different story, unfortunately.
You can debate about various models of managership and authority along with their merits and problems, but it cannot be a debate that applying a Ferguson/Wenger type understanding of the mangerial role, and the kind of long winded, patient, optimist approach that goes with it, to a complete and utter newbie with no record whatsoever is batshit crazy.
Over 38 games we do, it's a fact. It's a tribute to the coachs that we got that considering the players we're talking about. It's also very unfair to try and compare Arsenal to Simeone's Atletico who are known to be insanely solid when we've been the exact opposite for decades. We were scoring so much that we didn't bother defending and it kinda worked (relative to getting top 4 with a lesser amount of money). Improving that aspect (alongside having lesser players obviously) came with a massive price and that's a midtable attack.
Mixing everything together: the changing system, the schedule, the few weird decisions in some games and looking at how "close" we were to break in you can say that we don't need to scrap it all. A good RB, cover at LB, giving a chance to Saliba or buying a partner for Gabriel will do.
Whoever we sign upfront will not transform us into City but playing a full season with a functionning (and fit) #10 and scoring 10/15 more goals should be enough.
The last few years has been about who is going to feck up less to know who will be in the CL. Can't see West Ham maitaining that level, Everton are an enigma that usually deceive, Spurs could find life very difficult if Kane gets his move. So you might be facing Leicester/Chelsea for that 4th spot. There is a lot of work to do but it's not as impossible as some would think.
I do think you have the squad to be top 6 at least, not favorites to be top 4 but definitely possible. Not with that manager though, your attack is poor as feck.
Right... the point is to try and apply some healthy skepticism to this statistic.
I mean, hell... we know for a fact Liverpool have a better defense. They were just injured for large parts of the season (and still fairly close to you in GA). That would make you, even if we take GA this season extremely seriously, the 4th best defense.
Last season the "4th best defense" was Sheffield United.
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Surely you realise the two are connected? Even if you only looked at goals for and against you might wonder if Arsenal were perhaps reluctant to commit players forward because of issues with their defence. If you actually watched them play, though, the problems at the back become even more obvious.
Look how often you played five defenders, with two defensively minded CMs in midfield, constantly passing the ball backwards, close to zero goals from central midfield, barely any shots on goal etc etc etc. And you still conceded over a goal a game. Doesn’t exactly point towards a quality set of defenders at your club, does it?
Either your defenders are crap, or your manager thinks your defenders are crap. Either way, he must surely be looking for some new ones. If not, God help you. Because you’re in for another season of shit on a stick football.
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It's like Us under Van Gaal similarities are uncanny to be honest.
I was just talking about why someone could possibly frame it that way. I think the real madness was all these clubs hiring former players to begin with. But now I don't know what their objectives are or how their actual games were looking. If their goal is to make top 6 and they think there was some development this season they might as well give him another try.
Our conservative nature definitely contributes to general solidity. I say general because, as has rightly been pointed out, when our defenders make mistakes they tend to be monumental ones.
However, we dropped five at the back fairly quickly this season. We only brought it back for Chelsea to match them. I don’t think we played it primarily to cover defensive deficiencies. I think it was more about fitting David Luiz into the team for his progressive passing.
In short, I don’t think our decent defence is the cause of our lack of creativity. In fact, I would prefer it if this was the case. I think the reality is actually worse for us.
Although we’ve become known as a team that plays good football but is porous at the back, we are nothing like that anymore. I think we all assumed Arteta could coach an attack because he played for Wenger and coached under Pep. And our FA Cup victory and early 20/21 season featured repeated choreographed goals that clearly came from his brain.
But coaching players to play with unified attacking principles is a lot harder than rigid pre-determined moves. My worry isn’t that Arteta can’t improve our attack without sacrificing our defence. It’s that he might not be able to do it at all.
Yeah, we can see it does your head in!
Listen, there's lots off Arsenal fans agree with you. There's some on here that agree, go on to Arsenal Mania & most agree with you. I'm not saying you or they are wrong by any means. I just think there's a good manager in there, that's I've seen some improvements, with the opportunity to improve it more in the summer. So for those reasons I've chose to be patient. I had the same opinion with my other team Rangers when some were calling for Gerrards head last season. I seem to have more patience than the average fan, but that's just me.
It's not just the last 10 games though, it's since the change of formation an Xmas, so 24 games. Now, we can break that down like many have into different segments of games, but at the end of the day that's still almost 2/3 of a season.
The five defenders were nearly always played the first portion of the season. That's when we really struggled to create. However, we also let in our most goals per game in that time. Our goals scored & conceded actually improved when we switched to the more attacking formation & playing with a number 10 again.
I just want to point out to everyone that by no means am I saying we've had a good season, or we have a great defence, or anything of that nature. What I do think is that we have a decent platform to improve from.
We'll sign a new right back, & either play Saliba or sign a new right centre back, & also cover for Tierney.
We'll also sign at least 1 midfielder, & 1 attacking midfielder. So that's probably 4 first team players, so there is a big realisation that we need to improve, & no-one is trying to say otherwise. Like most other clubs, how we deal with the summer will likely dictate how much we improve.
did my head in so much I edited my post like 10 times and I kept making spell errors for every one I got rid offYeah, we can see it does your head in!
Listen, there's lots off Arsenal fans agree with you. There's some on here that agree, go on to Arsenal Mania & most agree with you. I'm not saying you or they are wrong by any means. I just think there's a good manager in there, that's I've seen some improvements, with the opportunity to improve it more in the summer. So for those reasons I've chose to be patient. I had the same opinion with my other team Rangers when some were calling for Gerrards head last season. I seem to have more patience than the average fan, but that's just me.
Look, sorry to take it out on you, and of course you as a fan are perfectly entitled to your stance and don't need someone to tell you about it.
It's just when I first started reading discussions about English football online, I witnessed this war over Wenger, and an unhinged impatience and mercilessness with his late work among the Arsenal fan base. I understood some of it, don't get me wrong, but I also thought quite some were over the top, and regurgitating clished anti-Arsenal (frankly somewhat xenophobic at core) media narratives. Now, just a few years later, I'm looking at a situation turned completely inside out, and I'm struggling to understand it. I believe you have a serious, serious lack of authority and above all identity at board level. To me, Arteta isn't sacked because there's noone there that can lay claim to the power of sacking him. Too many newbies who can't afford failure. Which is why I feel Arteta has a surreal position of power in the imagination of the club, compared to what he represents, and how he's performing.
Arteta is elite level at one thing, we must admit, getting Arsenal-fans to lower their expectations, one step at the time without much backlash.
Emery never could do that, once it went south he was fired because it wasn't good enough, Arteta has somehow managed to get away with it, despite being worse, thats really something.
Yep it's exactly the same.
I think we had a pretty good defensive record under LVG, Smaling looked a really good defender under him for example.
But the reason we had a good defensive record was because we played an ultra cautious negative system that was torture to watch. Very similar to Arteta and his Arsenal side.
did my head in so much I edited my post like 10 times and I kept making spell errors for every one I got rid off
Look, sorry to take it out on you, and of course you as a fan are perfectly entitled to your stance and don't need someone to tell you about it.
It's just when I first started reading discussions about English football online, I witnessed this war over Wenger, and an unhinged impatience and mercilessness with his late work among the Arsenal fan base. I understood some of it, don't get me wrong, but I also thought quite some were over the top, and regurgitating clished anti-Arsenal (frankly somewhat xenophobic at core) media narratives. Now, just a few years later, I'm looking at a situation turned completely inside out, and I'm struggling to understand it. I believe you have a serious, serious lack of authority and above all identity at board level. To me, Arteta isn't sacked because there's noone there that can lay claim to the power of sacking him. Too many newbies who can't afford failure. Which is why I feel Arteta has a surreal position of power in the imagination of the club, compared to what he represents, and how he's performing.
No, you are quite correct in that post. This is a massive problem at Arsenal. We've lost our identity, our leadership, right from the top down. You hear many ex Arsenal players talk about this, it's been part of Daniel Ek & guys like Henry's takeover talk. It was always a club that you sensed the history, liked to try & pride itself in having a bit of class (although some may disagree with this). However, it seems now its just a bit of a corporate shell, not really knowing which direction it's going in.
That's why I think Edu & Arteta have been hired, to give it that link to the past, to help give it that Arsenal identity. Not sure if they are the best guys for the job to be honest, but the problems seem like they stem from above them, that's why I'm not sure simply changing managers of such would ultimately make that much difference. There's constant changing of staff behind the scenes, constant restructuring it seems, always searching for a formula perhaps not realising that continuity can play a big part as well.
As for Wenger, I don't condone his treatment, but I think that many seen the protests as the only way to get change, as it seemed Wenger basically could pick & choose when he would leave & was under no real pressure from within the club, so to get changer pressure had to come from outwith.
Emery was probably the eye opener for the support. Not that they didn't think change was necessary, but the fact that simply changing the manager wouldn't be the magic solution. It was clear we still had a lot of the same failings as before, a culture change was needed more than anything. Where I think Emery was unlucky was his treatment by the media & fans, & ultimately the players, was that it got personal & he became a joke figure, which just isn't right.
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And then when Mourinho took over and got us a bit better going forwards (and feck me, how negative does a manager have to be for Mourinho’s appointment to make the team more attack-minded?!?) he immediately - and correctly - realised our defence needed a major overhaul despite our decent goals against record under Van Gaal.
Not so sure thats entirely the case when every metric points towards an upwards curve for Arsenal.
Also the 'opponents average points', what ever the feck that is, could be attributed to the fact that maybe Arsenal played them in that time and beat them?
Love how all the Arteta haters are quiet and have nothing to say now that Arteta has led Arsenal to 8th.
https://7amkickoff.com/index.php/2021/05/24/was-it-really-that-good/
I found this an interesting read.
It helps explain why Arsenal's football didn't pass my eye test despite the improved results.
I found this an interesting read.
It helps explain why Arsenal's football didn't pass my eye test despite the improved results.
Silenced the critics
You're being ironic, right?
Your laughing, yet your team hasn't won a trophy on 5 seasons despite the money you spend.