Only Lego Pulis could blame the ball.
Lucky for Newcastle that they were able to play with a different ball
Lucky for Newcastle that they were able to play with a different ball
Mikel Arteta | Lego Pep watch
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
When the excuses start to come out like that, you know the manager isn’t taking responsibility and is out of ideas, very Postecoglou-esque.
He needed another top attacker in the summer and continued to rely on Saka until he broke him.
The fact he is blaming the ball should be a worry to Arsenal fans. Arrogance is usually what gets these managers in the end and Arteta has it in spades.
He needed another top attacker in the summer and continued to rely on Saka until he broke him.
The fact he is blaming the ball should be a worry to Arsenal fans. Arrogance is usually what gets these managers in the end and Arteta has it in spades.
It's the same ball for both teams ffs
Imagine if they had to use that ball AND it was windy! Would be absolute carnage.
He just keeps getting cooked.Why isn’t he getting talked about as much? ETH = 3 finals and 2 trophies but he’s a failure. Yet Arteta is a genius.
If Ten Hag had us challenging for the title he'd still be here, regardless of how many finals he failed to reach
Doesn’t explain why Arteta gets a free pass though. He’s won jack all. Challenging for the title every year but never actually winning it should result in a manager change to take them to the next step.
This is text book Guardiola/Xavi type of excuses.
Another 1 of those clipped interviews that make it seem worse than it is.
He was specifically asked about the match ball and how it was different so he gave an honest answer, it's not like he brought it up out of nowhere.
Really, he should have just said it's not an issue so they can't clip him like that. Naive to say the least.
His team got 89 points last season. Failed to beat City to the title, sure, but that's still some achievement. And in every other case (including for ETH) people always use progress in the league as the true barometer for team progress. Our cup win last season actually worked against our progression as a club, because it just delayed the inevitable.
I'm not saying he shouldn't be replaced if the team fails to kick on, but he's done a good job with them to this point, and certainly a far, far better job than ETH did with us.
But surely if you was an Arsenal fan you’d want to be winning the odd FA cup? You can still do that whilst challenging for the league. City and Liverpool have challenged for the league and still won the odd cups inbetween. It shouldn’t be a case of one or the other. They’ll still be finishing top 3 even if they won a cup. But going season after season without winning trophies isn’t progress.
This. If I were an Arsenal fan, I’d be disappointed if this season ended trophyless. They need to winning trophies and challenging for the league.
Winning a cup trophy every few years isn’t progress, that’s for sure. As we well know. Liverpool only showed real progress (becoming a legitimate title contender) when Klopp took over. They won a bunch of cups in the decade leading up to that but were always a level below the top teams throughout that period.
He was competing with City the past 2 years, so people rightly gave him a pass for not being able to overcome Pep. He’s definitely going to come under more pressure if they finish trophyless this season, with City seemingly out of the picture. The Arsenal fans I know are already starting with the ‘we need to have some uncomfortable conversations soon’ chat.
To be fair to Arteta, he has actually won the odd FA Cup. It just happened before the team was any good.
But yeah, I agree with you. If Arteta achieves his third top three (or even top two) finish in a row, it would be a disappointment if a domestic cup or a solid CL run wasn't part of it. Maybe that's a conversation that happens after the season, if it ends up being the case. However right now, I can totally understand the lack of any real discussion about Arteta's future.
We do. The majority of Arsenal fans have backed him despite not getting over the line because the for the last few years we've seen real progress year on year,
However, this looks like it could be the first season where there's no real progress, so questions are rightly starting to be asked, and most go back to the summer recruitment not being good enough to kick on from where we were, leaving us short on quality and in numbers yet again in the attacking areas.
We've been unfortunate to injuries to some key players, but we've not done enough to help insure us against these potential injuries.
I think most Arsenal fans now realise that we don't have the quality in attack to get us over the line. The hope is Arteta and the club realise this too, so barring a major collapse, I think most Arsenal fans are willing to see if this is addressed in the summer. If not, then the groundswell of negativity towards him and the club will increase massively.
Exactly. City out the picture and they should be in front of the Que as winning the league without city. So technically they should be top not Liverpool who have come from nowhere to take advantage
I’d feel a lot more comfortable about future success if we’d have had the couple of years that arsenal have had.
Not saying trajectories can’t change as they do, but can’t deny he’s done well.
Wheels are coming off a little now, he seems to have a blind spot for a proper centre forward and maybe (hopefully) we are going in the other direction but I’d rather have had arsenal’s last two seasons as opposed to ours.
Even at a very basic level, if your team gets 80+ points in a season then the fans have watched their team win more games (and score more goals) in that season than a club with 60 something points and an FA Cup. So they’ve had a more enjoyable season overall.
I’ve had a thread idea…
Liverpool haven't come from nowhere. I think people forget that Liverpool were top of the league for big spells last season, and there was 1 point between the 3 teams going into April, before Liverpool had a late fall off. There was never much between the 3 teams at all going into this season.
What you've seen this season is City lost their most influential player where they have little quality cover, and Arsenal losing their influential attackers where they have little quality cover, and Liverpool taking advantage because most of their main guys have been fit all season.
Like that milli vanilla song,
Blame it on the ball that was flying higher
Blame it on the grip, was different tonight
Whatever you do, don't put the blame on you
Blame it on the ball, yeah, yeah
Blame it on the ball that was flying higher
Blame it on the grip, was different tonight
Whatever you do, don't put the blame on you
Blame it on the ball, yeah, yeah
You finished 2nd 2 years on the trot. So realistically you should have been in a position to take the next step and be 1st. Liverpool finished 5th and then 3rd and now there 1st.
We probably should have. But we haven't, because we didn't do enough in the summer to improve the attack, and we haven't had the same luck with keeping key players fit like we had the previous season.
I was very surprised with your summer window when you decided to spend another 40 odd million on another defender. Even the Merino signing for 30m doesn't make much sense. Wouldn't it have been better to spend 50-60m on some attacker
I think Havertz was the wrong signing. The money you spent on him should have gone towards a proper number 9. I think if you had someone like Isak then you’d probably have won a league by now on or course to. Same boat we’re in, strikers are quite hard to come by and probably cost more than most positions.
Absolutely, anyone who didn't see Liverpool coming weren't paying attention. The only question was if Slot could keep them at such a level.
Agree with that 100%.
If you had a top quality centre forward I think you’d be top of the league.
Every team would miss saka and you haven’t had to do that the last couple of years so it’s probably a bit alien to arteta at the moment.
They finished 5th a couple of seasons ago.
I could see the sense in the signings in isolation.
At left back, Zinchenko was a weak link and injured a lot, Kiwior not really good enough, Tomiyasu always injured, Timber coming back from ACL.
In midfield, we never got the left 8 sorted after Xhaka.
But we all expected at least 1 signing in the attack, and to end up with just Sterling on loan has turned out a bit of a disaster. So your left questioning the other signings when the priority position has been neglected.
It's looking increasingly like that way.
All this talk about strikers, or rather a lack thereof makes me wonder: why is that. Why are there seemingly so very very few proper strikers in existence today. I feel like even those not first choice at the top clubs in the past would start just about anywhere today. I know the game has changed with the introduction of the false 9 etc - but surely that cant be the only reason?
The Arteta excuses for being a failure are embarrassing. Since that FA Cup win before he had his own team, he has went on to spend over £700m and won 0 trophies.
Yes they have came 2nd twice in the league and were only a few points off the eventual winners City, but 2nd is meaningless if you never win anything and then drop off from there, with that being the peak. At least when Klopp came 2nd to City he was still winning other trophies here and there. Arteta has done nothing of real note. Top teams and managers win trophies, they don't 'nearly' win trophies.
Yes they have came 2nd twice in the league and were only a few points off the eventual winners City, but 2nd is meaningless if you never win anything and then drop off from there, with that being the peak. At least when Klopp came 2nd to City he was still winning other trophies here and there. Arteta has done nothing of real note. Top teams and managers win trophies, they don't 'nearly' win trophies.
Apparently in the full length interview he mentions the ball first, hence the he journalist asking the question.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-Fergusons-excuses-losing-football-match.htmlThis is text book Guardiola/Xavi type of excuses.
Honestly looking at their team, aside from their defense I'm not sure where all that money went.