Alongside the usual sicknotes who you can't really count as genuine absentees (Tierney, Tomi, Zinch), we've had Odegaard, White and Saka out for months too which we haven't had before. Rice with a broken foot which is clearly still affecting him as him and Calafiori are in and out of the team and never seem to be fully 100% fit. Merino who had no pre-season and no gelling in training because of injury. And we're still on track for 78pts and possibly 2nd even with those. When Liverpool lost VVD for 2020/21 they finished 3rd on 69 points (even though they got 97pts in 19/20 and then got 96pts the season after in 21/22). They then had further injuries in 22/23 and finished back in 5th on 67 points again. City lose Rodri and they're on course for about 70pts and maybe/probably top 4. I just don't see how you can look a team missing so many of their best players and get annoyed at them not winning anything and think it's simply just the manager who is at fault. He's clearly made a mistake or two - one of those being not resolving the striker situation and leaving us too threadbare in attack so that we've lost our swagger. But we were only a Son-missing-a-sitter away from the title last season with the same defective striker situation. It's proven that Liverpool and City drop right off just as much when they miss important players. It's ludicrous for social media warriors and pundits to say "you can't use injuries as an excuse". Every team in the prem that has significant injuries to their best players drops right off and wins nothing. It's not an excuse, it's fact. Liverpool didn't sack Klopp in 2021 or 2023. Admittedly he had a league and CL to his name to give him some clout. But come on. This season is damage limitation. If we do somehow win one of the big trophies with this injured squad, then that doesn't say much for the quality of the opposition I have to say. Try and get as far as we can in the CL for the money, make sure we get CL for next season and then just go again and hope we don't miss so many of our best players for such lengthy periods. And resolve the striker situation. Nico Williams and then one of Isak (unlikely), Gyokeres, Aghehowa (my preference) or Sesko please.
I'm not saying injuries aren't an excuse, but my point is, we didn't plan properly and cover all the positions we needed ahead of this season. We could have at least minimised the damage by having sufficient depth in the positions we needed. And let's be real, we got pretty lucky with very few significant injuries that last 2 years, this year we weren't so lucky. But we were well aware that this was going to be a longer season with more games and we didn't factor that into our squad building. So the club only have themselves to blame. Regarding who the blame lies with, let me clarify. 1) The club have given Arteta too much power too early on his career. This is his first ever job in management and he has too big a say in matters that he shouldn't be intimately involved with. Arteta has made a lot of mistakes, but ultimately, KSE are the ones who chose to centralise the responsibility to Arteta and made the same mistake they did with Wenger. The difference being, at least Wenger had the success of previous years to somewhat justify it. Arteta doesn't. So this was a risky and bold move that didn't need to happen. 2) Arteta's squad composition and style of play lead me to believe that he is hindering us. There have been so many reports of the club's hierarchy having reservations over certain player (Havertz, Merino, Calafiori...), but Arteta pushing for them, and eventually getting his way. That's why he's so desperate for the big money ones, like Havertz, to work because it will reflect extremely poorly on his judgment that he insisted so hard on a transfer that hasn't elevated us. His flaws as a coach (leaning too much into seniority, takes too long to react, questionable attacking patterns of play, overemphasis on physicality etc) have stunted the project when we were on a upward trajectory. But the reason why I say this is more worrying than the transfers is because it won't really matter who he signs if he keeps misprofling players and doesn't lean into the strengths of the team. We're not expansive in attacking transitions, we don't ever want to progress the ball in central areas and we continually play the ball wide to minimise defensive transitions. We don't have players that receive the ball inside the block now, it's always on the outside. This is by his design. His instructions. Until he stops instructing the team to be so risk averse, we will continue to have these struggles and will be no closer to winning the trophies we want. If he wants to persist in playing this way, we will suffer and he will get closer to getting axed. Fans aren't going to accept this if we play like this in the long-run.
At the same stage in each of the last three seasons (where we've been near the top) 2022/23 - xG 41.3, xGA 19.0, xGD 22.3 and xPts 41.9 2023/24 - xG 40.6, xGA 19.7, xGD 20.9 and xPts 39.2 2024/25 - xG 43.3, xGA 20.4, xGD 22.9 and xPts 40.7 You can't look at that and say our attacking is less effective. We're creating the same levels of chance. We've had poor patches in all three season. 2022/23 we were pretty naff in second half of season. In 2023/24 we were pretty naff in first half of season (hence why those figures are worse for first 20 games in 23/24). This season has been a middling ground. Unlikely to reach the heights of the second half of last season, but unlikely to be as naff in the second half of 22/23. We're on track for 2nd and hopefully a title charge and doing all that with a smaller, and therefore inherently less resistant to injury catastrophe, squad than last year. But our conversion of chances is weaker. And that's not because of Arteta. What is on him, is making sure he pushes for more players that are better at converting those chances. But it's harsh for any manager to have to manage a squad where the same players collectively get worse at finishing from one season to the next. You can't squad plan for that sort of thing. Incidentally, 17 of the prem teams have less goals than xG so finishing throughout the league looks weak. Which probably actually means the xG calculation needs fine-tuning. But we're not really missing anymore chances than Liverpool are for example. And the same as Chelsea and City. Spurs are one of the only three teams overperforming their xG. Man Utd and Villa are far more guilty of underperforming xG than we are.
