That was absolutely awful last night, knew the writing was on the wall when we couldn't muster any momentum at the start of the game and were content to let Villareal pass it about in the first half. We really are a mess at the minute, pinning our hopes on some young players with great potential but there's bugger all else in the team to get excited about.

Moreno should have put us out of our misery earlier on in the game, did everything right until the shoddy finish.
They deserved it. And they were bang average.

That looks like manager-speak for “I’d like to keep my job please”.

Has he won anything of note? Genuine question as I don't know much about him.

Respect to Villarreal. They were the better team in both legs.

That's a club with no special funding from a town the size of King Lynn.

Indeed LTG. Arteta can claim we were unlucky with the two efforts off the post. Fair enough. I thought his description of Smith-Rowe's deft chip was off the mark as an open goal. It was a decent effort I thought. Any other chances? Pépé's shot wide was a good effort but a half chance in my book. Any sensible reading of the tie has us well outplayed for an hour in Spain; and easily kept at arms length in the home tie. Moreno should have had it game over around the 65 minute mark. It was very very disappointing and while I can accept semi-finals are often tight, we really didn't show any attacking verve at all over the 180.

We have the best GK we’ve had for a while and he’s playing consistently well. We have two of the best CDs we’ve had in a long while – Gab and Mari – shame they’re both left footed so don’t get picked together. We also have one of the best performing young CDs in Ligue 1. We have the best LB we’ve had in ages.

We have Partey who in his early days looked like the best MF we’ve had for a long time. Unfortunately, his performances have become increasingly dodgy. We have Saka and S-R who are two of the brightest prospects in English football; they consistently perform well, though not last night.

We have two of the most consistent strikers in European football – they’ve topped the scoring charts wherever they’ve been.

That’s a pretty decent roll call of top quality players who, with the possible exception of the strikers, are all young and safely under contract. Plenty to work with there and plenty to build on. I don’t mention the loans or Pépé Willian Xhaka and Luiz (big-money players who don’t always perform) or Martinelli who has yet to establish himself.

I have no wish for another change of leadership but surely Arteta should be getting more of a tune out of these players.

The only thing consistent about Arsenal this season is the inconsistency.

That's a very good summary. There is a really talented core of players at the club to build on; signings are needed, but I still maintain that this squad is comfortably better than the one Klopp inherited in 2015. Just look at this list of players: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%8 ... First_team

Only players in there who have contributed to the titles they've won are Gomez, Lovren, Milner, Henderson and Firmino. Hardly world class type talents, but everyone has been playing the best football of their careers under Klopp.

Must admit I’ve been a bit disappointed with Partey so far. I’m still putting it down to a slow start at a new club in a different league but I don’t think he’s been as good as I was expecting, so far anyway.

It’s interesting that Atletico Madrid haven’t appeared to miss him. This season they’re top of the table by two points with only four games left. So they have a good chance of winning the league, even though at this point they’re a long way from being certainties. Last season with Partey, Atletico finished third, twelve points behind second place Barcelona and seventeen points behind the winners Real Madrid.

I agree generally buts It’s a football team with no ball players in it though. You can list the decent players we do have but there’s a gaping hole in the middle of our side.

Where’s your cazorla, Özil, Fabregas, Bergkamp players who are slick can manipulate the ball and provide moments of inspiration. There just aren’t any.

Even Leicester and Villa have Maddison and grealish. We have nobody, it’s perfectly understandable to be frustrated with the manager however until that type of player comes in we will get nowhere mark my words and we need more than 1 of them

I fully agree DHD. I think some make out our squad is worse than it really is.

Isn’t it equally relevant to ask why Willian has become an immeasurably worse player at Arsenal than he was at Chelsea? Is it only down to him being a year older? I doubt it. He won’t have lost any technical ability either. I suspect it might have more to do with Arteta not using him as Chelsea used him.

It is no so much about what he has won as a manager, but more his vision of football as a director of football that I'd be buying in to.
He was director of football at Leipzig and Salzburg recently. Took them from obscurity to champions league. I just like the approach to playing high tempo, high press attacking football alongside identifying the best young players and bringing them through as a cohesive team. You only have to look at the record of the players he bought to both Red Bull teams who have since moved on to achieve great things.

Agreed, it isn't a completely one way thing. Players certainly seem to regress when they come to us, and have done under 3 different managers for a number of years now.

Both right. I don’t think the players enjoy playing for Arteta, and whilst they adhere to his instructions on how he wants them to play, there’s no heartfelt desire to do their best to make it work it seems to me. I feel like there’s a massive lack of belief in both manager and his system.

He has, in my opinion, and in basic football parlance, lost the dressing room.

Like Tuchel

Chelsea spent 200 million in summer signings to sign Havertz, Werner, Chilwell, Ziyech, Mendy.

A bit different to not being able to get a tune out of El Nenny.

Yeah and we spent $70m on Pépé, 45m on Partey, 50 million on Aubameyang, 50m on Lacazette. Not all in one off season but they're still there and still expensive.

Allegri would get much more out of the same players.

We still need to do what we needed to do after Wenger left. The first step in that rebuild was being humble enough to accept that there wasn't a quick fix and that things may need to get worse initially but as long as the principles were clear, agreed then it would be better in the long term.
In Wenger's last season and in the next 2 seasons we went with quick fix options, experienced big budget signings, or free transfers on huge wages - hoping those players could lead a recovery back to the champions league. It has been totally flawed.

People compare us to Man U after Fergie left but it so vastly different because of the money available to man u to spend, they could keep throwing it at players and managers and of course eventually some of it will hit the right note.

If we are serious about getting back some respectability and challenging for top honours again then the inquest and actions need to be ruthless. Next year with no europe only requires us to have a 22 man squad maximum really. That's about 10 fewer than this season. The wage budget needs to be cut drastically, so every high earner needs to be carefully considered whether we want to build with them or we're better off selling them now if we can - that includes Aubameyang.

The only players I'm really keen to keep are Saka, Tierney, Partey, Martinelli, Smith-Rowe. Saliba needs to play next year and Balogun given chances. I wouldn't shed a tear over any of the others leaving.

I like Arteta and would like to give him more time. But then again, I felt the same about Emery...another season. I was wrong.

I'm not saying Arteta doesn't deserve the sack, but I remain to be convinced we'd be a lot better with another manager. We may...may, mind you, improve to say 7th, 6th if we're lucky (I don't think we can finish higher than City and Liverpool obviously, or Chelsea, Man Utd, Tottenham and Leicester). We may be able to pick off one of the aforementioned, likely Tottenham.

I don't think we'd do much better than Europa cup qualifying. I think Arteta is capable of top 6. But I don't see us much better unless 1. we get some spending money, decent spending money and 2. Get rid of a few players.

Right now, there is a certain amount of awe I think that Saka, Tierney and Smith Rowe have for playing for us. That will loon its lustre soon enough if a big club comes calling.

It’s not the same. The transfers your talking about were over several years then ones I referred to was one summer! Endless pot of money, spending 80 million on a single attacking midfielder. Sorry that’s next level.

You may see an uplift from a change in coaching but transfers and horse trading are the only things that get us out of our predicament I’m telling you.

https://www.goal.com/en/news/arsenal-ey ... nk8u38e0k6

We're supposedly trying to sign a player currently serving a doping ban until February 2022. Only Arsenal.
To be fair, if his appeal is upheld and you can get him for £7m then it is a good, low risk deal

Most likely he won't be exiting stage left if, when the ESL ever gets revised.

Especially if we can get nearly 20m for Leno.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/fc-arse ... /verein/11

So, who’s excited and looking forward to next season then?

Most expensive season tickets in the country.

An absolute mess.

Jesus

The fans of the 2 clubs at the top are paying for huge new stadiums with absolute manure put on it every week.

Arsenal’s owner is rich enough to throw money at players but chooses not to. Another difference is Manchester United, for all the criticism OGS has had here, in my view have a manager who has performed better with his players than Arteta has with Arsenal’s.

I’m not calling for Arteta to be sacked yet. But if he was I wouldn’t lose any sleep about it. I think his biggest danger could be something Top Gun mentioned a while back. Stan could use sacking him as a way of deflecting blame from himself, assuming the executive team report criticisms to him. A sort of ‘don’t blame me, I’m sacking incompetent managers’ (without saying he’d use the word ‘incompetent’).

But for all the moans about our lack of energy in many games, and last night was a very obvious example, I find it ironic that Arteta chose to get rid of Guendouzi. Because while not being popular here, energy is the one thing Guendouzi does provide. He’s also a good passer over long and short distances, and competes. His main problem is arguably a lack of positioning awareness. I’d hope that could improve with coaching and his own experience (as he gains it). Also he appears a bit of a head case and seems to lack humility. Yet do I think we’d have more points than we do this season if we’d had him playing for us? My own answer is a very firm yes.

Anybody aware of this from David Dein.


Unconfirmed: I'm hearing Gian Piero Gasperini will be leaving Atalanta in the summer.

He's a reputable and tactically nuanced. He transformed Atalanta from being relegation candidates to regulars in European competitions.

Would you take him?

That is correct. Loaning out almost all of our midfielders really did come back to bite us. Look at our midfield last night. Willock and Maitland-Niles (who can also play left wing back) would have been handy last night too.

Hmmm.

We were very lucky to come out of the first leg only 2-1 down. So I don't buy that we were unlucky over the two legs.

In any case we shouldn't lose matches against average sides when we are little unlucky. It should take a lot of bad luck, or a great performance from the opposition, to undo us. Neither these boxes was ticked last night.

It falls into the 'no excuse' category.

Are there any clubs on the continent with more expensive tickets overall? Curious.

Looking at Leicester’s line up tonight and our comparable players
Schmiechel....Leno
Castange.......Tierney
Evans............Holding
Fofana...........Gabriel
Soyuncu........Mari
Pereira..........Bellerin
Ndidi.............Partey
Tielemans......Xhaka
Maddison.......Saka
Vardy............Aubameyang
Ihenacho.......Pépé

I won’t try and work out the cost of each team or worse the net spend.

Leicester are said to be in pole position for Soumare from Lille, another very highly rated player who looks totally suited to the English league

Joe Willock just scored Newcastle's first. Did we manage to score against Leicester?

Really pleased for Willock. The loan has done him wonders. I still don’t know where he fits in for us but he’s going to come back a better players.

We did beat Leicester 3-1 away, one of our best performances of the season that one

Arteta may have not slept well last night, but who knows...

So tonight might not have been the best night for me to make an Arsenal and Leicester comparison!

Don't care focus should be 100% on Kroenke out.

No offence just don't see the point caring about managers unless they get someone like Conte or Allegri and give them a £400M budget, which is about as likely as WBA winning the title next season.

We are not Sevilla Stan so f*ck off!.