The failure in our home games since Arteta has taken over is of real concern. Failure to score at home in numerous games. His tactical sense is totally lacking IMO.

It has but I think it has peaked, a lot of that rise was due to consistent CL football (for the first 6 years), growth in our commercial revenue, which was largely down to new kit deals and perhaps media rights growth, all or most of this is now likely to stagnate or even decline.

- no European football
- commercial kit deals are pretty good given our performance now but unlikely to rise when renewed
- media rights probably at their peak value and 'bigger' clubs want a bigger cut, arguable whether Arsenal are a big club these days!.

Just taking off my Arsenal hat it is a gamble keeping the club now, if an offer came in at around £2BN it would represent a good profit, keeping the club might pay off long-term but with ESL shelved for a long time at least, unless they are going to finance the club themselves Arsenal looks in real danger of becoming a declining asset given how poor we're performing on field, the club can only live off 'history' for so long.

I would sell at this point, I can't see KSE pumping hundreds of millions into the club and if they don't they must be aware that there is a real risk that in another 10 years Arsenal are worth £1-1.5BN instead of £2BN.

Also there is a slim chance government intervention might curtail some of there future plans for the club, I don't even want to think about what they might be!.

Sure, that’s hard to argue, but the Aubameyang’s form falling off a cliff can’t have helped.

I think in the context of this being his first job and all the bs with Özil and everything else that he’s been dealing with, another half season isn’t a lot to give him to see if he can get something decent going.

Also keeping him is the cheap option which he’s got going for him. Sarri isn’t likely to come in a propel us into 4 really anyhow. And he won’t be cheap either.

Sack him now. Change the owners.

Initially I thought you're right except he's had half a season after the Jan clear out and results and performances are getting worse. I wouldn't want Sarri btw. We always seem to be out of synch with getting top level managers at the time when theyre available and now like Top Gun said I don't think any would want to come to Arsenal anymore when there are more lucrative options available with better teams.

We are stuck with the Kroenke family for the next 40 years at a minimum assuming Josh lives to 80 years old.

Yep, but I think that points to him staying if we can’t really secure anyone better.

Yep pretty depressing situation really. I think this article sums it up pretty well from a number of angles.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/p ... 086c7a403f

Pretty good summary.

The problem imo is that there was no running off the ball. Nobody going in to space to get a pass. If there is no movement there is no one to pass to so Leno has to slow down.

It would seem a given if we brought in Pep or Klopp, there would be a visible and sustainable improvement in our play.
However, I actually don't think so. If either had to have the same financial restrictions as Arteta (and Emery and Wenger before him), would they really improve? Tactics-wise? We'd have better tactics. But, isn't Arteta using City's tactics? He knows it inside, out. Why doesn't it work with us? Ah...we don't have the players for it some of you would say? Well, Pep and Klopp would be restricted to them and they'd only have the options of bringing in the same players that Arteta would have had. Well, a case can be made that some players who normally wouldn't want to come and be part of our project would come if its Pep, but even so, it's not going to be the nexst Messi type of players.

The gist of all this is, are our issues far beyond what a great manager can bring?

We must make some big decisions from today.

The failure of experienced players in this team is inexplicable unless Arteta has lost the dressing room. In the first half our captain and 300k per week player, touched the ball 7 times. Not really the play of a captain trying to inspire others and move the team forward. I thought he played poorly but despite that he should have scored with the second half header. In the EPL this season he has played in 16 games in which we have failed to win.

Willian, total failure and if he is to win the CL with us, as promised by Arteta, miracles are required. Personally I think both these players can go and should be put up for sale.

Partey - it will be interesting to see if he wants to stay. I think after initially impressing he has regressed but that may be because of Arteta's requiring him to be the whole midfield.

The 2 loan players have been failures.

Will have to probably sell Leno this window because he sounds like he wants out and it is 2 years out from the end of his contract. He really hasn't had more than a okay season. If he expects an increase in wages he's having a laugh.

I don't think the defence has been rebuilt at all. It is a functional defence at best. Luiz must go. he should have gone last year when he undermined Emery. A snake in the grass.

I don't see how Arteta can survive. But we may be stuck with him. But I don't trust his judgement on players and do not want him having any say on which players we bring in. Not sure who could be trusted as there is no structure at the club.

The only positives from the season are some of the young players and I expect a few bigger clubs to start tapping them up. The club has made no progress in the last 5 years.

I’m sure there will be plenty of rival fans and media pundits lining up laughing at the arsenal fans for wanting and getting rid of Wenger but that spectacularly misses the point and misses the main target any laughter should be directed at. Arsenal fans could see Arsenal were in decline under wenger after yeas of stagnation under wenger. Arsenal fans were seemingly the only people associated with the club who wanted and had ambition for greater success, we weren’t satisfied with 5th or 6th every season. So we get ridiculed for stagnating and then get ridiculed for wanting to break free from that stagnation.

I just find the whole thing so exasperating that so many Arsenal fans saw the writing on the wall for our club years and years ago. It has got to the point over the last 5 or so years that I think if you’d put an informed fan in charge of the big strategic plan, the big moves and then let people who even vaguely know football in charge of the day to day action of that big plan we’d be miles better off. The club may talk about a long term rebuild but they haven’t ever actually properly started it.

Up and down the league there are examples of players signed for relative pennies who would walk in to our side, and would have chosen us over the team they did sign for.
Vlad Coufal the West Ham right back signed for £1.5m. Not plucked from obscurity, he was playing for Slavia Prague and has plenty of International caps. Absolutely miles better than any of the 3/4 right backs we have on our books! Mainly because he just does the basic things you need a right back to do.
If we’re talking right backs you could almost go through every prem team and a good few in the championship with a better one

I’m not even sure I can make much of a case for the playing squad being better than 9th this season. The squad is clearly a long long way inferior to City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man U. Spurs have a better set of players and clearly so do Leicester.
Then I think if you remove the price tags of players and just judge them competitively you’d struggle to make a case for more than 50% of our players being better than West Ham, villa or Everton. All 3 have players who walk in to our first 11.
I’m not putting this all on the players, it’s just that this post is about the players.

Other than Smith-Rowe, Saka and Tierney I can’t think of another Arsenal player I’d be absolutely gutted if we didn’t see them in an Arsenal shirt again. (On the basis of they are sold we get market value for them)

"I think over two legs and what happened today in the second half we deserved to win the game."

Arteta spewing nonsense

I agree, West Ham aside a weird anomaly all the teams above us have more talent than us. Our fans seem to disagree though and I pointed out earlier this season Leicester had 5 or 6 players who walked into our side and people were outraged. I just don’t see Smith Rowe getting many games for the sides above us if I’m honest and would probably be a sub at most. El Nenny, Xhaka and ceballos ? No way. Even Saka would be used sporadically by some.

However our fans think they would and if we appointed a Benitez or Sarri all of a sudden these players who have failed under successive managers would become world beaters.

Doesn’t add up to me and someone suggested giving Arteta till Christmas which makes sense to me, getting rid now would feel like Sacking George Graham before he could sell the old guard and sign Dixon,winterburn & smudge.

It’s *%^@, the club have been a mess for ages but it shouldn’t be an excuse to damage ourselves some more.

They should have been 3-0 up in the first leg first half. We were still in the tie because we fooled the ref for a pen. What game was he watching. It is not enough to have 2-3 efforts on goal over 2 legs.

What about Tierney - can we afford to keep an injury prone player? I like him as a player and would give him next year to have an injury free season. But we can’t afford a player who meets slabs of the season.

I hate the headlines of Emery outsmarted Arteta. It’s just not true. What tactical genius did Emery have to bring to either leg. If anything Emery’s tactics failed to put the tie to bed in the first leg and in the second leg we offered so little there was nothing Emery had to mastermind at all

He played last night. That’s not the problem

A Good night for the hand gel brigade.

End of the day we had 4 good chances.

The 2 Aubameyang chances are an inch to the right and we would be praising Arteta.

The line between disaster and success is small. In truth we were a little unlucky.

Come on TG, we didn't turn up for the 1st half. Where was the urgency, the energy, the desire to get the job done?.

I think we only had one shot on target in the whole game.

Arteta picked a one man central midfield which put massive pressure on Partey, who looked like his legs had gone by halftime.

Luck should not have come into it last night......even playing really poorly we should have still beaten a pretty average Villareal side

We hit the post twice.

May not have been the greatest performance but we no longer have Ramsey, cazorla and Mesut Özil in the same side. We won’t be dazzling many opposition teams anytime soon.

Come on, this was an average Villareal side, not peak Barcelona. We played as badly as I recall many teams playing in a semi-final. We created next to nothing. Aubameyang's chances were both difficult ones and he probably did as well as be could do in those situations. Apart from that it was a dismal showing.

A case for showing that the players are clearly not good enough and haven't been good enough over the past 5 years is to look at what all our departed players in that time have achieved. If it was Arsenal dragging them below their natural level and they truly were better players than we were seeing then there should be some evidence of this once they moved away from Arsenal?
How many players who have left recently, can you make a case for them being a success at their new club or bettering themselves?
Gnabry, Martinez, Mkhitaryan has done well at Roma, Szczesny is a better gk, Giroud has had some important moments at Chelsea and you'd have to say Monreal showed he had some left in the tank with the cup win in Spain this year.

But the rest.......Sokratis, Mustafi, Özil, Kolasinac, Guendouzi, Torreira, Iwobi, Ospina, Jenkinson, Ramsey, Welbeck, Perez, Campbell, Sanchez, Ox, Walcott, Gibbs, Gabriel, Sanogo, Coquelin (i get the irony on the last one). All have been worse since leaving us. Of course there are some good players in that list and if we'd taken the opportunity to surround them with better players instead of having the likes of Sanchez have to carry the team on his back then we might have had more success - but generally many of these just were never good enough.

I expect Man U to beat them by 2 or 3 goals quite comfortably in the final.
They've had a relatively trouble free route to the final, a bit like when they beat Ajax to win Europa a few years ago, no real team of pedigree to challenge them. The two times we've been close we've come up against Atletico Madrid and Chelsea - both of whom are infinitely better than every team in this season's Europa league (with Man U at their level).

If we pick our most talented players, lets say that is Tierney, Saka, Partey, Aubameyang.
Do any of those get in City's first 11? No. Chelsea? no. Liverpool? no. Man U? Partey at his best gets in their central midfield and maybe Saka could play right wing for them. Spurs? Tierney, partey, Saka play but Kane beats Aubameyang

So who thinks Arteta should start next season as Arsenal manager?

I was behind his appointment but unfortunately this season has been the worst for 30 years!
If we can get an experienced manager and back him then I think we have to. However, we all know the deeper problem is KSE are investors who dont prioritise sporting success.

...and KSE have proved themselves to be pretty bad at running a football club. Just look at all the millions we've lost on players through mismanagement (Sanchez/Özil/Ramsey/Welbeck/Mikihytarian/Mustafi/Gnabry/etc etc)

I've said this before but if Arsenal really wanted to get our house in order and install a proper philosophy through the club, particularly on the actual recruitment, players and football side of things then we need to go and get Ralf Rangnick and just give him whatever role or job title he wants.

I only think you can answer that question if you know what the alternative is?

That's not a bad call.

His monotonous drone is emblematic of what we are really.

With the amounts of Ins/Outs we need to do you're looking at best at another transitional season if we manage to do a lot of business, or if we cant do the business we need we're looking at another stagnating season because we're stuck with the same squad.

We are an average arsenal side. Very average. There’s few standout players in our squad. Your comment here seems to suggest we are underachieving world beaters. We are not anymore, we have players in our first 11 on loan at Huddersfield and real sociedad recently.


Like I said we were a little unlucky but not hugely but we won’t dazzle againest anyone these days

If we are only giving coaches 16 month tenures before their dismissal and no money there isn’t enough time to install a philosophy.

How very reasonable and sensible. You dont fancy running an ailing premier league football club do you? Perhaps a better question would be: should the club be actively looking to replace Arteta now?

Getting Rangnick doesn't have to mean firing Arteta. Rangnick is a big picture guy and vastly experienced. He has managed clubs but I think his best work has been in a kind of director of football role. The 'process' he installed in the red bull teams is a model that we should be following, that's not to say we should pin ourselves as a second tier club who simply prepares young players to move on to bigger clubs but that as a starting place for the next 5 or so years would give us some stability to then take the next step.
The problem at the moment with us for the past 5 years is there has not been a cohesive strategy for how to run this football club from the very top to the very bottom.