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.

So what did we learn from last night.

Amongst over things......

- we continue to have lots of possession but run out of ideas in the final third, other than the same old tactic of Tierney crossing the ball hopefully into a penalty area with perhaps just one Arsenal player in it. Do they not work on variations in attacking plays during training? We seem so one-dimensional.

- Martinelli and Balogun seem out of their depth at CF, which means we are stuck with either Lacazette or Aubameyang, neither of whom are pulling up any trees.

- I was shocked by how poor Ben White was in the air. I watched his compilation videos and was excited by his passing range and ability to come out from the back with the ball and thought he might be a revelation and allow us to be much more progressive. However, I am not sure you can spend £50m on a CB who is no good in the air, unless you intend to play a back 3.

That begs the question as to what our scouting system was actually trying to identify. It's early days but if last night's aerial display is replicated during the rest of the seasons (and lets face it this is a league where aerial duels are part and parcel of the game) then we may have a problem.

- Leno's decision-making and execution of passes with the ball at his feet remains unconvincing but frankly our defenders and midfield struggle to cope with the ball under pressure when it is played out to them anyway.

- Lokonga looks promising.

- People keep excusing Arteta because of the lack of quality in the squad, but the very best managers are able to coax the best out of even average players and find a way of playing that suits the players at their disposal, neither of which seems to be happening.

- it's a mess and barring 3 or 4 top quality signings it is hard to see where we go from here

- Emile Smith Rowe was brilliant at times, the best player on the pitch and head and shoulder above the rest of the team but he couldn't do it all on his own despite his best efforts to do so.

- Pépé was crowded out with two players on him whenever he got possession but that should have allowed us to switch the ball and exploit space elsewhere.

On your final. If 2 players are on him one other Arsenal player is free. Where is the free player?

To an extent Kroenke lets Arsenal spend it’s own money. The club has one of the biggest fan bases in world football, benefits commercially from selling merchandise to that fan base, it gets huge television and sponsorship revenues, and sells out a 60k stadium where the ticket prices are probably as high as anywhere. Arsenal should be one of the wealthiest clubs in the world comparing it to others using their own resources. Not the richest, agreed. But one of them.

But not only that, Stan is one the richest football club owners in the world. That’s why I find it frustrating when people say we can’t compete with financially doped clubs as though it’s unfair. We can. It’s just that we don’t because, unlike Abramovich and others, he refuses to use KSE’s own money to compete with them.

Exactly Gun, we failed to exploit the free man.

Managers drive the intensity. Remember Manure under Ferguson? They need a goal in the final 10 mins and their players would buzzing like wasps, flying g into tackles and busting a gut to get a goal. I can't imaginArteta giving the hair dryer treatment at half time.

Surely there's room for improvement ...

With the next two games being against Chelsea and Manchester City, I wouldn’t bet against us occupying the same position after three matches. Now I’ve said that, maybe we’ll win both to have six points from three games.

Interesting.

https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/transfer-news/richard-garlick-arsenal-transfer-strategy-21277733?fbclid=IwAR3o7rJjHUMo2umWXSQOmgabFT0apBJSF3pM6npYGutrtKAvsRQd5ZbkRw0

Our best hope will be another club losing games by even more goals than we do.

Woke up still thinking about that game. What a mess

Chambers, Mari and Xhaka all totally abysmal.
Balogun out of his depth,
Leno totally at fault for an absurd second goal. No command of his box, no strength or guts and this guy is refusing to sign a new contract.
White unable to win anything in the air (I bet you any money it’s a back 3 v chelsea)
Pépé just couldn’t beat his man and Martinelli running around like a headless chicken.


Our worst opening day performance since Mick Quinn scored a hat trick I reckon.

What a mess. All the senior players aren’t good enough and can’t be trusted leaving us too dependent on young lads.

This could be a very bad season. I’d be sorely tempted to bin off Ødegaard and try again for Maddison.

Dreading chelsea next week

Also slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion I was wrong about Leno also.

Seems to get done at his near post an awful lot. Still the least of our problems but it’s a problem.

Bernard - I've tapped into your webcam.

Here's the 'highlights' - if you can call it that.

Fair enough. I suppose the 'can't' is if we're actually sticking by the rules. What we need is a £300m injection of quality players, that would bust FFP for us. Other teams have got around it - so yes 'won't' is the more appropriate word.

That's probably true as well. Most of those strikers at other clubs have been bought in to a clear vision or at least played to their strengths and surrounded by players who play to their strengths. Most teams from 8th downwards play a very simple style of football. Numbers behind the ball, close down the ball quickly and in an organised way, go direct to the front men if and when required - who are able to hold the ball up and run the channels to help move the ball up the pitch, make the most of set pieces, put crosses in to players arriving in the box or players who will at least challenge for the ball and have players who often just want to shift the ball and shoot.
Ollie Watkins for example I doubt would have had much impact if he'd been our starting striker last night but how Villa set up really suits him.

Home game against Chelsea. Should be good for a point. Home crowd and we seemed to play well against them last year. Arteta will likely play 3 at the back and play them on the break. Not sure our crowd will love it and of course this team has conceded in every game this season including all friendlies.

That requires the ball to be moved quickly and players to have an intensity about their play with and without the ball. We have neither.

Apparently Lokonga and White did the interviews last night - few people criticising more senior players for not stepping up and instead leaving it to two new signings.

I thought Lokonga was actually one of the few bright spots. You could see he always wanted to go forward and had an appreciation of his surroundings when taking the ball of the defence, there were a couple of drops of the shoulder and letting the ball run past him to beat the press quite successfully.

We still seem to have problems in every position of the team bar left-back in my opinion.
GK: Leno won't sign a new deal, looks nervous with the ball at his feet, doesn't command his area or confidence and we're short of a senior No.2
RB: 4 options none of them remotely good enough
CB: White and Gabriel for a full season should be good enough to get us in the top 6 but I'm not necessarily convinced any of our CB can propel us any further
LB: Tierney continues to be very good - make him captain
CM: Excited to see Partey/Lokonga get a run together but Partey keeps breaking down. Then the only back up are the painfully slow and sideways Xhaka and Elneny - both shouldn't be in the squad
wide players: Willian still hanging around, Martinelli struggling to find his place in the team where he can be effective, Pépé is up and down, Saka has a lot on his shoulders and we're asking even more in terms of goals. Huge lack of creativity from wide areas
ACM: Smith Rowe carries the entire burden of creativity on his own currently
Strikers: Aubameyang is regressing and uninvolved in games, Lacazette has 12 months on his deal, Nketiah 12 months left and no one wants to sign him, Balogun needs a loan

If you want a top 4 squad you need 2 quality players in every position.
For my money that means we lack:
2 x GK, 2 x RB, 2 x CB, 2 x CM, 1 x ACM, 1 x winger and 2 x striker

Put simply, he isn't aggressive enough. We need a Lehmann.