100% this. I could have told you games ago he was going to get sacked. Every good team of players goes through tough spells without results. When you have a world class, experienced manager, as a player you can look up at him and think "right we'll be OK; Lets just keep going and results will come". You can trust the experience and believe you will get out of it. Arteta is not an experienced manager, and has never been in this situation in his career. Psychologically the players do not believe his tactics will work. Its over, its inevitable hell get the sack now. Its no longer 'if' - its 'when' and 'who replaces him'.
Add Runarsson, Lacazette, Sokratis, Luiz and Nketiah to that list... In any case, some of those have only just recently signed or have a few years left on their current deals, so it won't be happening.
Sokratis is out of the door in the summer. Runarsson looks too lightweight, I'd rather play Matt Macey as back up. Luiz, whilst he can be a liability is still decent enough. Nketiah hasn't done anything yet, I'm not sure why he gets so much game time. Lacazette still deserves a place in this team though imo. He scored last night and I think he'll find his form again.
Mari will come good but yeah agree. Kolasinac, Cedrick ,Mustafi, Chambers, Elneny, Xhaka, Willian can all be shipped off. Not sure about Ainsley Maitalns Niles either - they guy lost posession 22 time yesterday.
I was against sacking Pochettino. His record in the league from Feb to November was: W6 D7 L10 His CL record was W6 D1 L4 The 2-7 loss to Bayern Munich was our worst ever home defeat. His FA Cup record was: L1 His League Cup record was: W1 lost 2 This included the loss to Colchester in League Cup. Total P38 W13 D8 L17 That's over 9 months. Arteta won the FA Cup (beating Chelsea and City) , Beat Liverpool in the community shield and in the league cup, won 3 of their opening 4 league games and won at United for thd first time in a decade. Every pundit and Arsenal fan said he was taking the club in the right direction so sacking Arteta for 2 months of poor results seems hasty.
RCL, there's a flip side to this argument though, which has already been laid out by other posters. Our worst start since 1974. Players in disarray. Frozen out promising youth players, whilst signing AND playing past-it players or players who aren't of the required calibre (e.g. Willian, Runarsson). Ranked near the bottom for every footballing metric you want to consider in terms of shots, chances created, final third passes, aerial duels, goals, crosses, take-ons, dribbles etc... He's totally mishandled individual situations with players (e.g. Saliba), and his naivety in man-management has really been shown up. There are already divisions in the dressing room. Presumably because a lot of them know Arteta wants them sold ASAP so have downed tools. But, in any case, you still need to manage these situations carefully because football is a results business and losing the dressing room impacts your chances to get wins. Constantly reminding the media we need new/better players can't have been good for morale when popular figures like Sokratis or Ozil have been banished. This is a very slippery slope. We've lost 7 (5 at home), drawn 2 and won 1 of our last 10 league games. Our last win was 1st November... It will take an absolute miracle to turn this around. And whilst the FA Cup win was a lovely achievement, in the grand scheme of things, it has meant nothing. I see no situation where this ends positively for Arteta.
You have to remember he's only been there for one really eventful and disrupted year. I don't see any point sacking him tbh, because any manager coming in is going to face the same circumstances. The club need to give him another 2/3 transfer windows and back him with some proper investment as well as clearing out the dross.
PISKIE, I understand that it's been a bizarre year and no doubt we couldn't get rid of as many players as we wanted due to the financial impact of the pandemic. I also understand that a lot these issues preceded him and he's inherited a lot of cultural problems. But none of that can excuse us being in the predicament we're in; 4 points above the drop and no wins in almost 2 months. None of that excuses his poor man-management or double-standards on these 'non-negotiables'. None of that excuses his peculiar team selections and reluctance to turn to youth when the same bunch of senior players let us down every single week. None of that excuses his poor recruitment that, by all accounts, he was happy to go along with. We do need better players. We do need to shift the deadwood. We also need to get results because you can't keep losing games and expect to keep your job. Top four is obviously out of the question, but I refuse to believe that another manager wouldn't be able to get more of a tune out of these players.
I don't deny any of what you're saying, but which manager right now would be able to come in and guarantee to transform it ?
Nothing in life is ever a 'guarantee', but based on other managers with proven track records, there are a host of names I would consider that I already listed in post #1524. See: https://www.not606.com/threads/offical-match-day-thread.376280/page-77 One name I actually missed off was Erik Ten Hag.
I really do think we’re past the conversations of should we or should we not sack him. I can’t think of a single manager who has turned around this type of situation - certainly not any ones that have managed to go on and achieve anything at same club. It’s inevitable we will sack him, regardless of how we feel about him. I predict Brighton away will be the final nail in the coffin.
Next game against Chelsea doesn't look good. Would you be happy with a draw? I could understand some may feel so, but is 1 point enough? Then it's Brighton. Last 5 results against them... lost, lost, draw, draw, lost
He's not been consistent with the way he's treated players. Guendouzi's behaviour with Maupay was lamentable, but he's a young kid and he exiled him for reasons that still aren't quite clear. Yet Xhaka, who is a regular underperformer and does petulant stuff all the time, is selected, despite being a significantly more experienced player. Then there's Willian. Not only did Willian go to Dubai during the international break, to eat at Saltbae's restaurant, he was clearly breaching lockdown rules at the time. There were apparently internal conversations about this, but he was selected for the subsequent games. Purportedly, this rubbed some of our other players up the wrong way because Willian is another highly experienced figure, was utterly careless during a global pandemic, yet wasn't punished at all. Not only that, but he has been absolute turd since his debut vs. Fulham and Arteta persists with him. Yet players like Smith-Rowe or Nelson barely get any minutes, when they've impressed in the Europa. The William Saliba situation, a 19-year old CB we spent £27m on, has also been handled with such a lack of care, it's no wonder the boy is frustrated. I refer you this: https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/truth-behind-william-salibas-exile-19513579 On top of that, he preaches about having the highest-standards and not tolerating players being idle. Yet Holding, Xhaka, Bellerin, Lacazette and Willian are selected EVERY week for not performing, and our youth, who have impressed in their cameos/minutes in the cup competitions, are lucky to have a spot on the bench for the league games. He's even selecting the likes of Kolasinac and Mustafi ahead of them, when they won't be here in the Summer! He's also mistreated popular figures in the dressing room like Ozil and Sokratis, whom many feel have been hard done by. Now, they may not have a future at the club in the long run. However, you can't upset the morale of the dressing room by outright excluding them and limiting their influence instantly. He says Ozil is being left out the squad for 'footballing reasons', when we're 20th in the league for chance creation. It makes him look absolutely foolish. There's already lots of reports about divisions in the camp and, if that's the case, it's only a matter of time before the inevitable.
thought Guendouzi & Arteta had a big bust at training just after the Maupay incident . Personally for me the biggest indictment of Arteta is that it is almost impossible to see any consistent discernible strategy and from here he appears not to know his best team .
He's an interesting case. Did'nt win anything at Dortmund but brought in a ton of great young players and had a win percenatge of around 63%. At PSG he had arguably the Clubs best ever Season just missing out on the treble. He learnt from Klopp his teams play a similar fun attacking style.. he could be a great bet. But.. he is still fairly in-experinced and we are quite a mess at the moment.
