The only ex players we should be looking to re sign should be Ramsey, Cazorla and the OX.

I didn't think we should have gotten rid of Giroud the first time. He was producing off the bench.

Ramsey we have missed but he's still injury prone, he's 30 before the end of the year and is on £400k a week at Juve. If he had never been an Arsenal player no fans would want to sign him right now even on a free.
Cazorla I'd love back but he is very nearly retired.
Ox would be starting in the centre of our midfield every game if he could stay fit, we did well to get the £35-40m for him - one of the few successful transfers out. I'm sure he'll point to the medals but so can David May, deep down they both know those trophies weren't won because of anything they contributed.
Id absolutely take Giroud for 6 months

He was also failing a lot when starting, we saw the opportunity to get a truly elite striker for a net £30m and went for it. Giroud was part of the transfer trio to get Aubameyang done. At the time we'd only signed Lacazette for similar money 6 months earlier so it seemed strange to yet again ignore those holes in central defence and central midfield, at the time it felt the money could have been put to better use but Aubameyang has carried us the last 2 seasons in a way Grioud never could have.
Id still have Giroud back on loan for 6 months. Last night we put in 35 crosses, only 3 reached an Arsenal player. Stand a few of those up to Grioud and it is a different story.

What would you drop Aubameyang then it would be an act of desperation that would remain etched in Arsenal folklore for years after Not to be mention that it’s just another striker not getting any service.

Ramsey at 400k is an absolute bargain btw, were paying more for Mustafi and Özil to sit about doing nothing.

Neither was the charity shield for that matter.

To be fair to Arteta, he did try to sign two quality midfielders. He's even been trying Elneny. So he clearly understands that the Ceballos Xhaka combo is the footballing equivalent of fire retardant foam. Yet he keeps having to pick them.

I must admit, although I wasn't expecting much from this season, I am surprised that we are so very crap.

Home to Newcastle in the Cup

Add West Ham to the list of teams who have crafted a decent forward line. Flexible, pacey, good technical ability, dribbling and balanced. Bowen and Benrahma were the best in the championship over the last 2 seasons. Antonio is a proper handful, and Fornals has upped his game to balance them out.

Today’s arseblog podcast was interesting. They’ve revealed our most used passing combination this season was Xhaka to Gabriel. Speaks volumes

Excellent point.

Hey Rich,
I think its fair to say the whole team stunk at that time. Non gooners liked him. He's a fan favorite with Blues fans. He has his own song. He delivered off the bench for us and for them. The attack wasn't made with him in mind when he was here. Also, we don't have anyone who can boss the 6 yard box. Aubameyang comes closest. But Giroud has more power and physical presence around the box.

There will need to be some very tough decisions in the transfer market, I think we need to treat January like the summer market, there is usually a lot less going on in January but we can't afford to treat it like that. We can write off Luiz, Özil, Mustafi, Sokratis as not being here next year. Özil won't move in Jan, Luiz and Mustafi should be kept until the end of the year and we should be actively trying to find a buyer for Sokratis even if he leaves for free. I'd also actively try to move on Kolasinac in January, even for £5m. Tierney, AMN and Saka all play left-back/left wingback. He just isn't required.
Then in the summer we have to extract a fee for Torreira, Lacazette, Chambers and make decisions on Guendouzi, Nketiah, Elneny. The last two will only have a year left on their deals so it must be new contract or sell. Guendouzi could generate a decent fee if Arteta really doesn't like him.

So by losing Luiz, Mustafi, Sokratis, Özil, Torreira, Lacazette, Chambers, Guendouzi, Elneny, Nketiah.....how many players would you need to buy to complete the squad? As a minimum a new CB, new CM and new striker could potentially cover what those 10 players give us right now.
You'd have about £60m freed up in wage savings and could potentially extract £75m in sales. so you could budget for £110m in player purchases and leave the remaining £25m for the wages - which is 5 players at £100k per week - we shouldn't be looking at players whose wages are much north of that as we have to bring the wages under control.

We also need to look at other assets we have and see if there are interested parties, and really there aren't many players in the squad who should be exempt from being sold. Gabriel, Tierney, Partey, Saka, Martinelli are probably the only players I wouldn't want to lose.

I realise that is all hypothetical but the club really does need to look at it as ruthless as that. Target young, quick, strong, mobile, athletic players who are eager to learn and have the correct mentality. Buy them in the £20-30m range and pay them accordingly.

I was always willing to be patient if I could see there was a clear strategy in place that was being pushed through ruthlessly.

Hi Rich,

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything major in January.

I think you hit the nail on the head, there are only maybe 5 or 6 players you wouldn't want to lose. That means signing 2 players every summer window is just not enough if you want to close the gap relatively quickly. By the time you have signed 6 players some of the others will be either too old or will have left for pastures new disillusioned by the lack of CL football etc.

Decaf, if you look in, do you recall our brief interaction when we touched, in no great length, on the relevance of time in post to any individual manager’s trophy haul? There are other things that can determine how good, bad or indifferent a manager was, but OMOH had focussed on the ten trophies of Wenger. I have now calculated the days in post per trophy for each Arsenal manager or head coach who has won a trophy. I ignored all those who hadn’t won anything during their tenure.

Let me say now I have not included Community or Charity Shield wins as I see them as glorified pre-season friendlies. It’s a one-off game. While it’s routinely between the previous season’s league champions and FA Cup winners, you don’t even have to beat anyone else prior to appearing in it. I don’t even see it as much of a priority for clubs. I still remember Arsenal didn’t bother to partake in the 1971 game after winning the double. I’m sure if Arsenal had wanted to, they would have done. I can’t say for sure but I’d be surprised if Arsenal were the only club who had won either of the previous season’s league title or FA Cup to not appear in it.

The trophies I am counting were the domestic league title (top division), FA Cup, League Cup, and in European football the now defunct Cup Winner’s Cup plus whatever the current Europa League was called at the time. We won it in 1970 when it was called the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. I would have included the European Cup or Champions League but we’ve never won it.

The longest job was calculating the days in charge that each of Arsenal’s eight trophy winners were in post. Simply working out the number of days between their date of appointment and date of departure was easy (in every case I went by the 2016/17 handbook, where the dates coincided exactly with those given in the previous year’s handbook). I didn’t check handbooks further back, although the reason I used that one was on looking through the last handbook produced (2019/20), I couldn’t find this information so I assumed they stopped doing it as I remembered they used to include it. An extra day was added for the leap years they were in post, if they were around on the 29th February in those years.

Obviously Arteta is still in post so I took his tenure up to today. So for every further day he has in charge from now, the data will change. The next chance he has of winning anything is the date of this season’s League Cup final but theoretically he could drop dead, resign or be sacked today. So his figures relate to 20/12/19 (his appointment, which I looked up rather than use a handbook as one hasn’t been issued since) to 1/12/20 (today’s date).

Anyway, here goes. I’m showing the name, tenure dates, trophy wins and days per trophy (the days in post divided by the number of trophies). I’m not attaching relevance to any perceived difference in the status of alternative trophies. For example the League Cup counts as much of a trophy as the old First Division or current Champions League.

CHAPMAN: 11/6/25 to 6/1/34, 3132, 3, 1044.0
ALLISON: 28/3/34 to 31/3/47, 4752, 1188.0
WHITTAKER: 2/6/47 to 24/10/56, 3433, 3, 1144.3
MEE: 20/6/66 to 4/5/76, 3607, 3, 1202.3
NEILL: 9/7/76 to 16/12/83, 2725, 1, 2725.0
GRAHAM: 14/5/86 to 21/2/95, 3206, 3, 534.3
WENGER: 1/10/96 to 14/5/18, 7896, 10, 789.6
ARTETA: 20/12/19 to 1/12//20, 348, 1, 348.0

As well as the Arteta issue I highlighted with him still being in post so his figures changing on a daily basis, there is another huge complication for Allison who was in charge during the Second World War. I looked it up and football was formally stopped between 8/9/39 to 7/5/45 (apparently the ban was lifted on VE Day, 8/5/45) with no clubs playing for any of the formal trophies I listed above. That’s 2069 days.

The first division wasn’t started again until the 1946/47 season but the FA Cup was started again in the 1945/46 season. So I think it’s fair to subtract 2069 from the overall 4752 days Allison was Arsenal manager. Regardless of any exhibition matches that may or may not have taken place, he didn’t have the chance of winning anything for that period. That makes Allison’s record a trophy every 670.8 rather than every 1188.0 days.

So as things currently stand (it’ll change if Arteta doesn’t leave his job today for whatever reason), the days in charge per trophy in order (best to worst) are:

Mikel Arteta 348.0
George Graham 534.3
George Allison 670.8
Arsene Wenger 789.6
Herbert Chapman 1044.0
Tom Whittaker 1144.3
Bertie Mee 1202.3
Terry Neill 2725.0

Sorry for the length of this post but if anyone bothered reading it, I hope you don’t see it as a total waste of your time.

I can remember being hugely disappointed when the 1971 double winners didn’t participate in the Charity Shield.

Really good Arseblog this morning.

This penultimate sentence stood out for me.

...whether it’s Arteta or someone else, there’s a ceiling to what you can achieve with this squad of players, and it’s too low for what we say we want to be.


Couldn't agree more.

Leno, Bellerin, Tierney, Partey, Saka, Aubameyang, Gabriel, AMN, Pépé (debatable) and keep the kids, but the rest are no more than freeloaders, journeymen or not good enough. I'd shed no tears if any of those names not mentioned left the club.

Agree 100%

I’d suggest though the kids needs loans to expand their experience if you compare Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham’s to Nketiah and willock you can understand where we are at the moment.

I wish Arteta would stick up for himself more, he seems to be taking the weight of responsibilities but the hand he was dealt was appalling.

I know what you mean re; loans. There's some talent in the kids but they need more regular minutes to harden them up a bit.

I have doubts about Arteta but there's also a lot I really like about him. I think it's way too soon to look at dumping him. He's got a squad of some talented individuals and some who are no more than average at best. Add to that the covid crisis which has been unprecedented and hit us hard financially and it's hard to draw too many conclusions about him. There's clearly a bright guy there but until we address some obvious flaws in our personnel, it's hard to gauge too much more. However, we can't keep losing this many games without something giving in the end.

Note to self. Start looking for another job if Darren is hired as head of HR at the company.
Hmm...I see your point. I assume Martinelli is part of 'the kids'. I think he will be huge for us.
No Ceballos? He's borderline, surely? But overall, I can't argue with your view.

I think the club sees it a bit your way to a certain extent. They were trying to find homes for most of the players you did not mention while trying to buy at the same time and it was difficult to make it work smoothly.

Darren with another homerun...or should I say hit a 6?

Who are some options? Simeone? We still have a big enough name to get a good manager. Plus London and the world's most popular league to boot. I have to think successful foreign managers would like to see if they can win in England.

Pochettino still isn’t in work, although it’s not impossible he’s simply waiting for the Manchester United job to come up.

One name I haven’t seen mentioned is Gerrard. I watch Rangers whenever I can and he’s really impressing me. Rangers are ultra well-organised and play good football. I understand Rangers routinely play weaker opposition than Arsenal, but he’s got worse players than Arsenal to do it with. Anyone who thinks Arsenal have worse players overall than Rangers is living in a fantasy world. We all have our own ideas of who our worst player is. But whoever your own choice is, I reckon he’d walk into the Rangers team.

Okay, Gerrard has a long affiliation with Liverpool but so have many ex-players with whatever club, who ended up managing their opposition. In our case, O’Leary and Graham to name just two.

Anyway, Gerrard always strikes me as a good professional who, if he joined a club competing with Liverpool, would do everything he can to beat them. The issue is how long Klopp will stay there. But if it’s a few years yet, as I expect, Gerrard can consider what to do if Liverpool offer him their job then.

Having said that, I still want Arteta to get more time. But unless things improve dramatically, the pressure is going to build up on him.

Marco Rose, the coach at Borrusia Moenchenglabech, is doing great things there. One to watch.

Arteta did an interview with a Spanish journalist. I found it on twitter, sorry no link but I'll copy out some of the more interesting quotes:
(Asked about Arsenal and which aspect about it has influenced him the most to be the manager) “More than the culture is the knowledge of the club, the values we want to share, know the history, where has that success come from and the fall down afterwards”
"Then from there try to get the project to what you believe, what you feel or you think it’s going to have success but that takes time”
“For me the most important when you are building a new project is that you need to have very clear what you want to do and the people around you have to know what you want to do, believe in that and be willing to defend that for a sustainable and reasonable period of time”.
“Change to what we want has risks and the way we want to play requires a lot of precision, a lot of game lecture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We have very clear where we are going and in this path there’s going to be times when the project is going to suffer”.
“At Man City in our first year, which was complicated, I saw the reaction of people around Pep, the people in the hierarchy... they didn’t have a doubt, they knew the path to follow, -this year something has happened- but we are going there, the following years it was different”.

(asked about no crowds)
“Without attendance we are lucky the players hear us more but if you ask any player I’m sure they would like to hear us a lot less.

(Asked about the style) “For me the way we occupy space and who is going to move in there is more important than the formation. And from there we have some very similar players that are not used to play in those positions so we have to keep changing the formation a little bit”.
“We want to move to a 4-3-3 but for that you need a lot of specificity in every position but now in 5/6 positions we don’t have it. The aggressiveness, the effectiveness, the amount of steals we make in opposition half I think we have been very steady against some big clubs”
“I think that what we miss is in the opponents area and the last part of the pitch. We have to find the key in the attack, that last decision, that last pass, that last cross to create a goal situation, a goal, a shot, a corner, etc.”

Underlined in bold is the interesting part. To play 4-3-3 Arteta feels we have 5 or 6 players short....and one assumes that is based on the entire squad! You'd think he's talking about a CB, 2 x centre-mids and a couple of forward players - maybe a full back position as well?. The question is can any of the current squad evolve in to the players Arteta wants? Perhaps Saliba can at CB but I don't think Holding or Chambers can. In Central midfield I don't think anyone other than Partey fits the bill. Up top Lacazette, Nelson and Nketiah probably don't fit the bill. Martinelli and Pépé have the potential to meet Arteta's expectations just based on raw talent.

He knows.

The fact people are talking about new managers on here is depressing. Wiltshire gooner called this yonks ago. Managerial merry go round time for Arsenal as we refuse to accept observational reality.

George Graham should have got more out of David Hillier and Ian selley

It’s funny how any manager with a team packed full of shite players “loses the dressing room”

It comes down to how much you trust the man in charge and his longer term vision vs what any other available manager could do with the current players (instant success) and his own longer term vision.
Nearly everything I've heard from Arteta sounds like a man who is clear on what he needs to do and clear on what he wants to achieve, he talks about the culture and history of the club and he isn't afraid of confrontation. So the question is can he turn all that good thinking and philosophy in to actually winning football matches consistently enough to take us back where his plan says we need to be?

Also, if we are talking other managers most of them usually come with a caveat on how much budget they will have to spend, rumour has it that is why Allegri turned us down when Wenger left - he knew the team needed massive surgery and probably thought why potentially damage my reputation trying to rebuild it on a shoestring. There is a reason Pep and Jose tend to go to clubs where the budget will allow them to completely restructure the team - even Spurs have loosened the purse strings for Jose far more than they did for Poch - Jose spent £100m in the summer plus half of Bales wages (£18m commitment for 1 year)

It may be depressing as he is widely backed within football to have a successful future ahead of him in coaching/management. Yet we all have to acknowledge that if the team stops developing, or even worse if it starts to regress, then surely his future has to be up for discussion.

The question really is at what point does the club have to try a different manager? Give him at least two more transfer windows? A mid-table finish? Hovering above relegation? Poor football? Dwindling attendances?

Gerrard is definitely impressing north of the border. I expect it hasn't gone unnoticed by a number of clubs. I think he'd enjoy coming back to the premier league, Rangers will always have a glass ceiling. I don't think he'll get the Liverpool job any time soon, unless Bayern can tempt Klopp back to Germany (doubtful at the moment) but he could easily get a smaller prem club job. It is surprising how few managers in the league are being mooted as close to the sack - perhaps it is due to the lack of fans in stadiums so there are no audible boos so the media hasnt had the opportunity to pick up on fan unrest and pile more pressure on managers. I'd bet that in most seasons at least 1 manager has lost his job before Christmas

Why ? How much of this is the guys fault. Surely after 4 different managers over a few years you have to admit our problems are endemic

I don’t remember people slagging off George Graham for not getting more out of Eddie Mcgoldrick in 93. Then micro analysing the performances of Ian Wright and Tony Adams our 2 best players for possible minor mistakes whilst ignoring the Hillier, morrow, selley midfield axis.

Hi Soc,

I think the last window with covid was a massive loss for us, the timing couldn't have been worse. I mean imagine if this had happened in all those transfer windows when we were constantly batting off advances from other clubs for our best players it would have been much easier. Wenger would have loved a covid affected transfer window - 'stability is the key' etc

So in spite of covid we managed to sign 2 (so far) top quality additions plus the free transfer of Willian who hasn't yet worked out and a back up GK. I dare say if we'd have found buyers (in a normal market) for the likes of Kolasinac, Mustafi, Sokratis, Elneny - all at nominal fees and even for Torreira, Lacazette and Guendouzi - at market rate fees they would have all gone and we could have added more to the squad.

We have to be pushing on the transfer side as much as possible. I agree that we can't just afford to add 2 players per season, besides anything it would be banking on every player we add being a roaring success to allow us to progress at anything other than glacial pace.

Ornstein has said we're targeting a creative midfielder and a right sided centre back in the January window. If you made those two signings at the quality of Gabriel and Partey......and then backed that up with 4-5 signings in the summer - plus exits (2 more midfielders and a pair of forwards) then it could start to work. Obviously it is great having that plan but you have to have the money, find a willing seller at the right price, player wants to join us and not see us a sinking ship and he needs to be a really good player! Not much to ask.....solving the covid crisis might be easier

I agree that the problems aren't primarily of Arteta's making and I personally would back him unless he cant pull the club out of its tailspin. But at what point do you say, actually for all Arteta's potential and the admittedly poorly constructed squad he's inherited, I believe we can find another manager who can get more of a tune out of this current team and hopefully build for the future?

If nobody comments it may have been a waste of your time, so I will comment, especially as my lauding of Le Boss has led to your time-consuming work!

1. You really must get out more B.
2. Good research, but I must say I can't recall anybody ever measuring managerial success by days in job. Heaven forbid anybody should check the records but on that basis it may turn out that Mourinho was a better maanager of United than Ferguson! And we all know that wasn't true.
3. Any analysis that has Arteta ahead of George, Herbert and Arsene is surely an exercise in fantasy?

I'm glad you read it and interpreted the results as I ran out of steam half way through. If your conclusions are correct then I would also have to question the merit of measuring a manager's success solely by the days/trophy ratio. Where would Roberto Di Mateo place in such a table? Didn't he win the Champions League with Chelsea having been in the job a few months?

I agree with much of that and it would be sad to see an Arsenal man offloaded so soon into his time with us. However, right now we are too close to the relegation places for comfort. When we were in that situation under Emery it seemed as if we didn't have the type of player to fight a relegation battle. To his credit Arteta came in and galvanised them in the league and won the FA Cup and with it European football. Hopefully he can do it again.

A very good point. In this respect Arteta is a lucky man - he is poison free at the moment. The fans would surely wonder why we are scoring so few league goals - only the bottom three have less. The football played lacks the thrill of Arsene's teams, and we saw how bad the atmosphere got in his last year.

And the FA Cup. Two trophies in less than 8 months in the job - and that included the summer break! On B's analysis we should get him in now - he may be unemployed and available.