well personally think he would but more to the point I think he would have built a more balanced squad with the budget Arteta has had .
We're in complete transition though. When you look at the team we had when Arteta took over Leno Bellerin..Mustafi..Sokratis..Kolasinac Xhaka...Torriera Nelson...Ozil.....Aubameyang Lacazette It's a project and it's far from complete. There's no overnight fix to this.
We've got a first XI that is challenging for top 4 Our weakness is in the quality of depth of our squad.
This is your opinion. It's one I don't share. Even during the good patch of form we had, people I've spoken to weren't willing to get too overexcited about our top-4 hopes because we have a history of bottling promising positions from April onward. You can call it PTSD from previous years, but Arteta's not done enough to stop that perception of us. Granted there may not have been loads of people wanting him out, but there were plenty of 'jury is still out' views. If you honestly believe there is no manager who could do better in the 2.5 years he's been at Arsenal, and with £250m spent in that time, then again, I strongly disagree. I don't understand how you can think this when you see what he's achieved at Liverpool. They were 8th in the league when he joined, he had worse players than us and he had less money at that time. He took them from that disasterclass to 4th in his 1st full season, to a CL final in his 2nd full season to then winning the CL, then the PL and to now potentially being able to complete a quadruple. He's had to rebuild his squad over that time too. It's farfetched to suggest Klopp wouldn't be doing better under the same conditions Arteta's operated under. He had a similar rebuilding job and has had linear progression/success. We're not even close to that.
PISKIE, you have been a fan of football long enough to know that it is not just about your first XI. Success in football is about squad management. There's no point having a top-4 calibre starting 11 when a) several key components are injury prone, b) you don't replace the players that leave midway through the season and c) you decide that you don't trust the back-up players you buy so you deploy players out of position. Arteta's not managed this squad well enough. And now we're throwing the likes of Lokonga and Tavares into the deep end when they've had virtually no game time to bed in. Same with Pepe. He's getting 15-20 minute cameos to make a difference when we're not creating anything and when he's having to watch Lacazette/Nketiah stink up the pitch for 75+ minutes every week. No wonder the confidence of these guys looks shot. We should and could have dealt with these situations better.
If it was called the ‘Jury is still out thread’ then I would have agreed with you. As it’s called the ‘Arteta out’ thread then no, if it had been bumped a few weeks ago then it wouldn’t have been given any attention. again, I’m not saying that any other manager couldn’t have done better over the last 2.5 years. I’m saying that Klopp wouldn’t do any better with the players we have at our disposal right now, not what he would have done over the last few years
Yes and our squad is neither deep enough or has the required quality beyond our first XI to sustain a challenge. That’s the point I’m making Both Lokogna and Tavares did quite well when they were in the team earlier in the season. They are not first choice though, so Partey and Tierney were always ahead of them. Going out of both domestic cup comps early on hasn't helped their game time, but you can't blame Arteta for not starting them in the PL, because people would then be moaning that he's not picking his strongest XI We should have sold Nketiah and not loaned out Balogun. And as for the Pepe and Aubameyang situations, yes we should have handled this a lot better.
Anyway, in summary. Sacking Arteta now isn't going to improve anything, it will send us into blind panic I've seen enough from him to suggest that he can build a squad that is capable of challenging and of course for a new manager (and indeed any manager for that matter) he will also make mistakes. We've got a first XI that can challenge, the issue now is building a squad with the same quality that can sustain that challenge over a whole season. That process is still very much under construction imo. We're still shipping out deadwood and we still need to add to what is a paper thin squad.
End of season would probably dictate as to whether he’s worth sticking by. Top 4 - no brainer and possibly even extend contract. 5th-6th - worth standing by him then assess what he does next season. 7th or less - laters. Agree with what Solid said, Klopp (or a better manager) would’ve likely built a more balanced side than what Arteta has in his time. He’s done ok for his level of experience so far though but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s done ok for Arsenal as a club with regards to their expectations.
From the outside, it was less a massive gamble, more an act of wanton stupidity. Whatever happened with Aubameyang, you had from early December (when he was first suspended iirc) to draw up a plan of action. The saga rumbled on until the end of the window and he eventually signed for Barca on Feb 2nd. In the interim, you went through the whole of January without winning a single game in any competition, scoring a whopping 1 goal in 5 games. The problem was obvious then yet nought was done to alleviate it. I wonder if you'd gone through with the NLD on Jan 16th and got walloped if there would have been greater urgency in what remained of the transfer window. The club's inaction in that window when - by the time it closed - you were not in a position of strength, 6th in the league and out of both cup competitions, may come back to haunt you and lead to a catch-22 in the sense that without CL football to attract quality new players, how does the 'project' progress when it is clear you need another big dip into the transfer market this summer?
And whose fault is this? We chose not to deepen our squad further. It was a conscious decision. Aside from not getting another midfielder, the biggest screw up we made was not replacing Aubameyang. When you know Lacazette has 2 open play goals, and Nketiah has 0 PL goals, it was criminal negligence to get rid of our best striker and rely on the kids to bail us out of every week. Saka and ESR look knackered. It's no wonder why. Both Lacazette and Nketiah have contracts that expire in Summer. They're probably playing like they're not committed because where's the motivation going to be when they know they're leaving? I'm not saying he should have started them, but they should have been given more minutes in cameo appearances so that they didn't look totally rusty/off the pace when needed. Particularly as we know how injury prone Tierney and Partey have been for us since they've joined.
We put all of our eggs in one basket which was Vlahovic and it didn’t come off Jan window was a massive mistake
With all due respect, if that was the case your board and manager were naive in the extreme to think one of the hottest prospects in world football would choose you over the queue of clubs vying for his signature. The only surprise about Vlahovic was the fact that he moved in January at all after promising he wouldn't. The fact he didn't move to Arsenal surprised no one but the Arsenal hierarchy, apparently.
What it also shows is that we clearly had funds ready for a striker. So if we couldn’t get Vlahovic, we could have got someone else that would be a clear of improvement on our current options.
I agree, from what I read he was never interested in joining us and always wanted to go to Juve. Naive doesn't even begin to explain the actions or lack there of with regards to this transfer. Fair play for having the ambition and the money to try and sign him. But with no plan B in place, letting Aubameyang go on a free and then loaning out Balogun. The whole thing is woeful management.
A clear improvement, yes - but still some distance from getting you back to top 4 regulars again, let alone challenging for major honours. The issue remains: unless you are one of the current top 3 and/or have a bottomless pot of gold (United and Newcastle), it is far more likely than not that you'll struggle to improve significantly in the market without the allure of CL football. Incrementally, yes. But not significantly. The remaining gap on those you chase needs to be filled with promising youngsters and superb coaching. You have the former but not the latter. It's a classic catch 22 faced by us as well: We need a better squad to get regular CL football, but we need CL football to attract and afford a better squad. The only solution is to be ready to pounce if and when one of the "regulars" has a meltdown and pinch their spot. This is exactly what us, you and West Ham are trying to do with the spot that the world and his dog assumed had United's name on it in pre season. Your January gamble seemed to rest on the imagined win-win scenario: We will either finish in the top 4, or we will throw enough money at the problem to attract top 4 caliber players. To make those assumptions as early as January, especially in the middle of mounting evidence to the contrary (you failed to win a single game that month and were spurned by a top 4 caliber player) smacks of sheer naviety on the part of your decision makers. I'd say we followed exactly the opposite approach: our main targets (Traore, Diaz and Kessie) also turned us down for bigger clubs, but we pushed a Plan B, brought in Kulu and Bent and have improved as a result. Not exponentially so, but certainly enough to maneuver ourselves into a position whereby we can actually capitalise on the unexpected meltdown at United. Both our clubs have shown in recent years that having money is only so useful if you are essentially forced to spend it all in Poundland, which is where you end up shopping with just the Conference League to offer and teams like United and Newcastle always able to outbid you.
I'd have to disagree slightly - I do think a striker would have made a fairly significant difference to our top-4 hopes for this season. And whilst we do have other underlying issues in terms of squad depth and chance creation, we did have a very competitive side (for a CL spot) when we had everyone fit, as you saw, and that's in spite of Lacazette/Nketiah being the worst attackers in the league. The only way to be top-4 regulars is to begin finishing in there. Finishing in the top-4 this season (which I don't believe we will now) would have meant additional income to acquire better players and improve our squad depth that would have enabled us to potentially be a CL calibre side. So the fact we didn't strengthen our squad in January, when we were in pole position for 4th, is extremely negligent because it has a domino effect. I'm not saying we would have been CL regulars again if we did finish 4th this season - after all, it could have been once-off - but it would have improved our chances to become one.
Wouldn’t be surprised if 4th spot rotates a fair bit for a while. The top two seems nailed on for the foreseeable future and I’d say Chelsea more or less have third sewn up at least for a while too. But fourth seems a more open fight for a number of sides, unless any of us, you, Utd and even maybe West Ham/ Leicester make some stellar recruitment all in one go, it could see a four or five way battle for fourth for a few years to come, not forgetting Toon who’ll in time will likely buy their way up the league and be European spot contenders. Exciting for neutrals, likely stressful for us lot.
