Yup, in baby steps.
Lose 2-1
Lose 1-0
Draw 0-0
Draw 1-1

I'd try and buy Tammy Abraham and give it a go, not because I especially rate him but he can't be any worse than what we saw tonight.

What is Edu doing, where are all the promising young south american talents he was supposed to have his finger on the pulse of.

Neville spot on about Leno. It’s not good enough.

I wouldn't sign not because of the team. I wouldn't sign because of Arteta. Not a manager I can put my trust in.

He cost 50 mil and he deserves slack. Really I think he needs to be able to do the basics for that type of money.

Lukaku making his second chelsea debut against us next.

I would go for Abraham too. I think he’s a player waiting to explode.

I was kind of being facetious but it never felt this flat. Arteta is out of his depth and I’m sad at that because I really want it to work for him as he seems a really decent guy.

An illustration of why we need a new right back. Such a left side bias for our creativity.
Pépé was poor but every time he had the ball he was faced with 2 or 3 defenders. I think Pépé has shown he has talent and can be dangerous but he’s a player we need to build to his strengths and we’re not doing that.

Many teams with players who are no better than ours are able to out muscle us and play through our team. The manager was able to make the team stronger than the sum of its parts to out match us. This game against Brentford is a clear example.

Agreed I’d take him but I think it will depend on Lacazette leaving a which currently looks a million miles from happening.

Right now it seems the only way we get rid of players we don’t want is to wait for their contracts to run down. Pathetic

Decent guy, and most of the things he says about football is interesting and insightful. Sad thing is, that doesn't matter if you can't translate your insight into performances on the pitch.

Well I assume Edu asked Arteta what were his priorities and he wanted a CB. I said at the end of last season I had no faith in Arteta to select players and I still don’t. He gave extended and better paying contracts to Aubameyang and Xhaka, got in Willian, and where is Cédric and others. Do you think these were good decisions.

The team at the end of last season needed a creative player from midfield as a priority. And Maddison is not that player and nor is The Real Madrid player. First half the forwards had no service. People talk Tierney putting in great crosses. That is a fallacy as Ted Drake left a while ago. His only really decent cross/ pass in the box was when he made that opportunity for Pépé. The modern game works that way not pointless crosses hoping someone gets a touch.

Today was everything that is bad about Arteta. Them playing 2 forwards and he never was able to tactically adjust. But most people on here wanted to keep Arteta so you got what you wished for.

Going to be very interesting with a full stadium of Arsenal fans in our stadium when things are bad. Arteta and Arsenal have been completely shielded from that in the last 18 months.

You’re right with that. Look, it’s way too early to write White off and that’s the last thing I’m doing. But he’s up there alongside the most underwhelming debutants of our most expensive signings. Unlike socrates I wasn’t that impressed with his passing. But socrates did ask whether he won a single header? If he did, I missed it. White needs to improve quickly before the pressure on him builds.

It was flat though trust me everybody had stopped going to games
We were on the floor and in freefall. Honestly dig out the date and read the comments here,

My position is unchanged, he seems a tactically astute manager but I think any manager would struggle with these players too much inexperience and mediocrity. I can’t tell anymore but people suggesting he should be sacked if he loses his next 2 games againest chelsea and city are basically morons.

Big problem in my life right now is that everytime I take the kid to a game at Arsenal we get absolutely savaged for some reason. Next week saveloy and chips and drinks at the duchess of Kent won’t be enough for him to forget the savaging Chelsea will provide us,

Didn’t think White looked great but that 2nd wasn’t on him IMO. Leno and Mari take a bow

Agree. Show improvements, otherwise it is only hollow talk.

Struggle to do what though? Get top 4 - probably. Struggle to register three shots on goal against bottom half teams - plenty of managers that wouldn't.

Starting right backs for each team in the league:
Walker, wan bissaka, Trent, James, pereira, Aurier, coufal, Coleman, cash, ayling, semedo, Walker-peters, lamptey, aarons, canos, femina, lowton, Kraft, ward

How many of those are any of our 3 right backs better than? And that’s before we go in to the back up options because I’d say the best 5-6 teams in the league have a back up right back better than any of ours

Arteta, Edu and Kroenke. The 3 stooges. Taking the club we all love under. *%^@ off the lot of you.

I agree with both of you, Hazuki and Darren. For all the criticisms about the squad of players we have, I honestly think there are other managers out there who get more from the players we have than Arteta does. Gerrard for one example.

3 different managers and coaching teams have tried to get different tunes out of some of these players and couldn’t.

The sad truth is there isn’t a magic vaccine for this. There’s no immediate fix



.. and it definitely ain’t Steven *%^@*** Gerrard

The players we have aren’t going to win the league. But the players we have should be coming higher than eighth and lamely getting knocked out of Europe by Olympiacos.

Saka, Smith Rowe, Leno, Aubameyang, Lacazette, Bellerin, Partey, Tierney, Pépé, Gabriel, Xhaka were all here last season. White, Lokongo and Tavares have since been added. The idea that Gerrard, and others, wouldn’t get more out of that mob than Arteta looks far-fetched to me.

Chambers looked out of his depth in 2017. Grow up about all the manager bollocks

That’s basically the point I’ve just made. I’m not denying we need better players in a number of positions to get where we want to be. But we should be doing better, or not doing as badly, with the players we have.

I understand the immediate reaction of many football fans is to blame players. You hear stuff like player A is rubbish, player B isn’t good enough, player C must be sold all the time. I just think that’s sometimes a little too simplistic, if not lazy.

We have, after all, turned Willian from an outstanding player at Chelsea when he was 31 into a major disappointment at Arsenal when he was 32. Is getter a year older in his early thirties the only reason? Because sure as hell he won’t have lost his technical ability simply because he pulls on an Arsenal shirt instead of a Chelsea one.

I suspect there are factors under Arteta’s direct control where other managers may do better.

From Arteta post match:
'The biggest worry was our threat in front of goal. The amount of times we got around the box and got in great situations but it wasn't enough threat or shots on target. If you don't do that in the Premier League then you won't win.'

So what are you doing about it?

Sad we lost but Brentford deserved it and am happy for their fans. An incredible journey. We didn't have our big guns but I felt the starting XI was good enough for a result.

Lots of work to do.

What will have to happen for Arteta to keep his job? What league position? Does he have to win a trophy?

We haven't won a title since 2004. Is this a second 1971-1989, Man Utd 1968-1992, Liverpool 1990-2020 type of drought, 40 years wandering in the wildernness time period for us? Does anyone think we'll turn it around to win a title within the next 10 years? Will we win a title before this decade is over?

Yes, we'll probably win a cup, domestic cup likely, league or FA cup (I've yet to see us win the league cup in my time as a fan. I want it even though its the least of them )

I assume in the '90s, Liverpool fans thought a title was just around the corner. A few players short of a title perhaps.

How long will we go without a title. I wouldn't even mind as much if like Liverpool we won a champions league in the interim.

When you look at all the players in our squad, how many of them immediately jump out as having an ‘intensity’ to their natural game, or even the ability and desire to up the intensity levels where required?
Tierney, martinelli, Emile Smith Rowe, saka….not sure who else.

Brentford played at a higher intensity. You lose some quality when you do, the game can be slightly more chaotic and frantic but if one teams ups the intensity levels and pace of the game and the other is unable to match it or is simply not skilful enough to play at their tempo and pass it around making the intensity look like headless chickens, then the faster pace and aggression will always win.

Next 10 years? Not a chance. Especially not while there are 3 teams in city, Chelsea and Man U who have the money to match their ambitions of being the best. Our owner won’t stick up the money like theirs do and I don’t think the club really has the ambition that they do.
Liverpool had to be pretty much perfect for 3-4 seasons to win the title, and they needed slip ups from those other 3.

I can see the joy in the media and from other fans every time we lose a game or make the same old mistakes. And I can completely understand it, I’d be the same if it wasn’t us, in a way it wouldn’t be fair if a big club went for so long being a shambles, being mismanaged from top to bottom on and off the pitch, weren’t punished for their failings. Some clubs can just buy their way out of this, use the law of averages that eventually they’ll get it right and gain some respectability. We can’t/won’t do it do every other fan will be quite right in being glad that we’re being punished for years of poor decisions and lack of ambition.

I think we've got massive striker problems despite having 5 of them on our books.
Aubameyang has looked disinterested for a while and is barely involved in any build up play
Lacazette is probably the best option for the balance of the team but rarely attacks the box
Nketiah doesn't cut it up top on his own, not physical enough and is a poacher only really
Martinelli is still finding his way after a long injury, and we're not sure if his better position is as a wide forward (he rarely seems to link well with Tierney)
Balogun still looks very raw - nice option to bring off the bench but probably needs a loan

Then I look down through the league - ignore the top teams - and just look at the strikers for the mid table clubs: Ings, Watkins, Bamford, Antonio, Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison, Wilson, Antonio, Jimenez, Wood, Toney, Adams we can include Iheanacho and Daka at Leicester.

All of those strikers will cause us problems this season, they will challenge for the ball in the air, they'll close down our defence, they'll run the channel, they'll hold the ball up, they'll attack the box. There will be some names in there Arsenal fans would turn their nose up at (Wood, Adams) but the reality is that most of them would do a better job for us than our bunch of strikers right now simply because they do the basic things required of a striker to allow a team to a)move the ball up the pitch and b) be an attacking threat

Signing Ødegaard doesn't solve our problems, no one player can, signing Ødegaard just brings us back to the level we were at for the second half of last season because Luiz/White and Ceballos/Lokonga aren't the radical overhaul this squad required.

Slip ups? I mean, Liverpool got 99 points when they won the title. 97 points the year before. Over time, City and Chelsea will win it more than everyone else because of the level of their spending, but Liverpool have provided a sort of blueprint for how to do it the other way.

Rich, why do you even put the word “can’t” in your final sentence? If Kroenke wanted to make us financially doped, he easily has the money to do so. The start of your sentence “We can’t/won’t do it….” should be: “We won’t do it.…”

My nagging concern is that it seems to me that even if we did financially dope we’d still be rubbish. So many other things seem wrong right now.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Rich talks about radical squad overhauls and lists strikers at other clubs who will give us problems. Yes, they probably will for their current clubs. But myself, I’ve got doubts the quality of our existing players and replacing them with new signings is our biggest issue. I suspect it’s a distraction. Indeed, I reckon if any of the players Rich listed joined Arsenal, you’d soon get people here moaning about how we bought deadwood.

In the mid sixties my granddad used to tell me tales about when he had gone to see Arsenal in their great period in the thirties. It all seemed thrilling, far removed from what I was seeing, and impossibly ancient. Dusty history to me.

Well we seem to have gone full circle as we reflect on increasingly ancient glories. Actually it’s worse than then. Throughout the sixties there were signs of progress and hope which culminated in the Fairs Cup win and the Double winning side. No such signs right now.

The continuing complaint that Kroenke will not spend money needs to be examined. So to satisfy Arteta’s wishes he approved about 8 mil to pay off Sokaritis Mustafi and Özil, pays Willian, pays the annual 18mil owed for the Pépé time payments plus buys 3 players, Refuses to sell Xhaka and apparently actually increases his wages. Then they want to buy Odagaard/ Maddison and Ramsdale. Whether they can get any of them is a moot point. But far from not investing the opportunities are there.

The question as to whether the money is well spent is a matter to ask others not the owners. There was a lack of spending for years but put that down to Wenger failing to kick up a big enough stink to embarrass them into spending. Then of course we had all the Wenger buys, the socialist wage policy when we did spend.