Offical match day thread

what does this even mean? I no longer even know what positions we need to strengthen in the summer. I honestly don’t think any players we sign will take us to be a top 4 challenging team. How long is this Arteta project even supposed to last?? I personally don’t see a way forward that will actually lead to the club moving forward.

 

You think Arteta should be doing better but we can’t say he should be doing better with those players? That seems to be conflicting.

for the record I do not think we have the 10th best squad in the league.

and Arteta finishing 10th (when Emery finished 5th and Wenger finished 6th at his worst) is not good enough at all, and I’m not sure why so many fans are ok with this or are trying to justify it.

 

I think you should be doing better. I disagreed with Bears statement of those particular players being the reasons you should be doing better.

 

Let Arteta get rid of the remaining deadwood and bring in the players he wants.
This season has been a learning curve, and there has been some very poor moments and some rather good moments, so consistency is the issue, we need to stop errors and red cards.
we still need to get rid of:
Xhaka and Luiz as they are error prone which always costs us games.
Chambers and Nketiah as not good enough.
Actually sell all the players on loan as none are needed - apart from AMN, and I would also not take Ceballos on again as he underperforms.

let Arteta have next season to prove his worth with the squad he wants and let’s get behind the team

 

It’s down to the club to prove us wrong then. But honestly, everything I’ve read, even from before this season started, said that the club were gearing towards focusing their efforts on the 2021 Summer transfer window - presumably because we had a number of high-wage underperformers leaving. So I expect Arteta to be heavily backed in the market. If they don’t, then whoever we get in next will suffer the same issues. Rinse and repeat.

Also, I do think we shouldn’t always get on the manager’s back first thing after every result which doesn’t go our way. Saka spurned two glorious chances, Pepe missed a sitter, had one cleared off the line, should have had a penalty and we also hit the post. These are elite athletes playing at the highest level. They need to be putting chances like this away.

Where I will criticise him is the substitutions should have came on much earlier and I don’t think Saka should have played a full 90 mins, because a) he was having a bad game and b) I don’t want us to overplay him.

To reiterate what I said before - we’ve been architects of our downfall at times and you can’t keep making the mistakes we have and expect to get away with it.

The amount of red cards we’ve had this season unusually high. They’ve unquestionably all affected the results of the games.

Key injuries at various points to the likes of Partey and Tierney have hindered us as we don’t have the quality in depth in those positions.

We’ve been hard done by with VAR decisions at multiple points this season.

And we’ve had players making unforced/individual mistakes too often leading to goals.

Honestly, these types of events will affect 90% of results for any team.

Until we cut these individual mistakes out in matches, our results will continue to suffer.

 

As they say, these decisions and bad luck even themselves at the end of the season. I feel we have a better set of players than in Wenger's last years. Would he have challenged for the title with these set of players? Probably not, however we would definitely be in the mix for the top4! Arteta is a nice man, however this job is too big for him. You cannot tell me West Ham, Everton and Aston Villa have better overall than Arsenal. The key is we are under achieving. Arteta, should be under some pressure, with the teams poor showing this term and last season!

 

This is a cliche and I've never believed it to be true.

I don't think we do have a better set of players than in Wenger's last few years. In fact, we have 14 players still registered at the club who are Wenger-era players - several of whom aren't at the required level. And we do have a first team squad that has a lot of youngsters who haven't fully matured yet.

Don't get me wrong - I do think we have underperformed this season and we shouldn't be this low in the table. However, the reasons I mentioned will impact many club's results, and especially ours in particular when we're still transitioning. On top of that, we had some players in the dressing room who were causing a lot of issues behind the scenes.
Look at what's happened to them since they've left.

Mustafi and Kolasinac have been leading player revolts at Schalke.
Ozil has been underwhelming thus far at Fenerbahce.
Guendouzi has been dropped by the new Hertha Berlin manager for poor attitude.

Aston Villa's and Everton's recruitment in the Summer was far better than ours, and they both spent more than most of the top sides. West Ham have overachieved massively, but we've seen before that certain teams can have one-off seasons where everything clicks. We need to see if there'll be longevity to their achievements thus far.

We are 4th in the form table since boxing day to now, so there has been an upturn in form.

There's still 11 games to play and, as it stands, still in the Europa League. I know it's hard right now, but there's still a chance we may be able to end the season positively. Then we head into a pivotal Summer transfer window.

 

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Feel like I've been saying this since around 2016. But we are our own worst enemies at times and we too often find ways to **** it up for ourselves.

That said, I think we've been on the end of some atrocious VAR decisions this season. Just take the other day for example, we're not given a pen against Burnley for a blatant handball and the games ends 1-1. In Spurs game against Fulham, Fulham get an equaliser ruled out for handball, when the player's arm is down by his side. Spurs go on to win that game.

There's 4 point difference between us and Spurs right there, based on the back of two **** decisions.

 

They're not **** decisions though, they're just decisions that you don't like.
The ref had absolutely no choice about the Fulham handball, for example. It's the only thing that he can give.

 

**** decision based on a **** rule.

 

You can say that the rule is ****, but the decision is right under that rule.
That's not being hard done by from the officials.

 

The Fulham goal was rightly ruled out, but the issue is with the lawmakers as opposed to the officials. However, what doesn’t make sense is having two completely separate handball rules, which is what happened with the Pepe one. If you’re comparing and contrasting the incidents, it doesn’t make sense for one decision to be given and another to not be given. And even though you think it was the right decision for a penalty to not be awarded, there are loads of ex-players and referees who have come out to say it should have been given.

 

People all cried when the ball hit Llorente's arm and ended up in the net against City.
They felt that it wasn't in the spirit of the game, for some reason.
Trying to make things black and white for consistency will lead to more inconsistency, for me.

 

The rules are being changed constantly anyway, how many times have they changed the definition of what constitutes a handball now and what doesn't?
There needs to be some common sense applied at some point.

 

That's not the only example though this season.

We lost to Leicester at home when our equaliser was ruled out because Xhaka was 'interfering' with the sight of the keeper, when in fact he was nowhere near.

Cooper handballed a shot from Aubameyang against Leeds in the area, VAR doesn't give a pen. That game is 0-1 to us otherwise.

Bruno Fernandes raked his studs down the back of Xhaka against Utd, VAR doesn't even bother to look at it.

Mane elbowed Tierney in the face against Pool, VAR didn't bother to look at it.

Against Villa, Saka was brought down by the last man, the ref only gives a yellow VAR doesn't address it. In the same game Martinez brings Lacazette down in the box and again VAR doesn't bother to check it.

And of course against Burnley, handball in the box, no pen given.

VAR is ****. The refs adjudicating are making just as many mistakes as the on field refs, and they have the benefit of technology.

 

And it's changing again in the summer.

This is part of the problem with VAR. The rules of the game keep being changed to try and fit a flawed system.

 

They ****ed it up by changing it, so they keep finding new faults every time it's adjusted.
Just go back to what it was and get better refs. It was fine before the change.

 

Every team can name things like that and I'd disagree with at least half of your examples.