Mikel Arteta allowed Hector Bellerin to leave Arsenal in the summer as a free agent, even though he had one year left on his contract at the Emirates.
The full-back had joined Arsenal as a 16-year-old from Barcelona and returned to the Catalans for free.
However, his move to Catalonia has been poor and he has now been voted Barca’s worst signing of the season.
Bellerin was on loan at Real Betis last season and impressed in the Spanish top flight.
He even won the Spanish Cup with the Seville side, which made him one of the sought-after players in Spain.
He chose his boyhood club and a report on Mirror Football reveals he has been voted their worst signing of the season.
Just Arsenal Opinion
Offloading Bellerin is another decision that shows Mikel Arteta has superb judgement.
He noticed the right-back was no longer good enough for us and quickly replaced him in his team.
He followed that up by offloading him and now we can see that Bellerin is truly not at the level to play for a top club again.
In the summer, we expect some players to leave the Emirates, while we add new men to the group and strengthen it.
You never pass up an opportunity to dump on former players who served the club well. Keep hope alive though…🤨
Love the “ shows Mikel Arteta has superb judgement”
Good one Martin 😂
I’m confused, I read the article and can’t find where the author “dumped on former Player”. The article simply acknowledged the great judgment MA made.
It’s not the author who voted the player as the worst signing. The author said Bellerin is no longer the same. He did well for us and was loyal, but he lost the pace and became surplus to requirements. What is wrong about that?
Very true KTM, these fellas out here have all the time in the world looking for a faint glimmer of hope to write off Mikel and heap praises on the deadwood he dumped purely for footballing reasons. With all the deadwood accumulated by the specialist in failure (to win the UCL/EL ) how high did we reach? Top4? Top 5? Top6? Ignore these trolls, they have no love for our club. Maybe some lily whites masquerading as AFC fans. Leno, Bellerin, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Ozil, Guendozi, Pepe, Laca, PEA, Name any one player who is shining for their respective clubs?
I can hold Mikel responsible for the departure of Huchison, he should have held on to him, good player, somehow Mikel let him go. Regarding the rest, does not make a difference. They were the ones responsible for the mess all these years. Instead of being happy that we have had the best start to the season in donkeys years, they keep trolling our finest manager (I’m going by stats of the first 150 games, not sympathy)
Who is this spécialiste in failure ?A.Wenger?!You are becoming a troll yourself Loose Canon…..Wenger failed in his last few years BUT calling him spécialiste in failure NO….Let me remind you that before Wenger we didn’t even have a training ground !!
Well said, “Specialist in Failure” managed CL football for 20 consecutive years, something Arteta has yet to accomplish once.
Wenger changed English football, increased our world branding, managed the Invincibles, and delivered beautiful football for years; all on a much smaller budget than Arteta.
His last few years left a lot to be desired, but give credit when it is due. So disrespectful to someone who deserves more than just focusing on his down years.
Your first sentence is wrong! MA HAS managed us for almost three consecutive years, so that cannot possibly be “not once”, can it!!
Unless you meant he has not managed us for twenty years even once, which would be a ludicrous statement, as you know he has been our boss for only three years(almost). So what PRECISELY do you mean?
He means qualifying for CL football….Wenger managed to do it twenty years in a row Arteta is yet to do it once….
Brother, if you read carefully, specialist is failure refers to his unprecedented failure to win the UCL or EL in some 20+ years.
Roberto de Mateo won it!.
A young Mou won it with Porto!!
Rafa won it!!!
Brian Clough won it!!!!
Emery won the EL four times.
If winning 0/22 attempts is not deemed failure, then what is? I would like to know from you.
The rest of blah, blah and more blah does not add up as he was well paid to do his job.
3 /22 EPLs
0/22 League cups
7/22 FA.
Bench mark that with 38/26 for Sir Alex.
Wish other managers had the luxury of having ZERO ownership towards the club owners & fans.
Bellerin was never the same after his long lay off for leg injury. Lost pace and mind set never seemed to get back to previous level. Shame
Yes it seemed a good move to get him off the books, even in pre-season he looked slow.
He was better when he was fast, I’m not sure which combination of age/injury slowed him down but without the speed he was never the same.
It was the right time for the player and the club to part ways.
Good call by many fans as well, who have posted that he was lacking defensively and not at the level we need at Arsenal.
Goes to show how important it is to have fullbacks who can actually defend well; look at Tierney, White, Tomi to see the difference it makes in the back line.
Yes but Bellerin it seems was an effective player last season, and just because a player is good at one club it does not mean it’ll be the same at another. Bellerin was never of the elite criteria, Arsenal fans knew this, but he was a good stalworth over the years, it was our tactics that failed us more so than certain players not up to a task. Some top clubs were looking at Bellerin at earlier stages, they must have sought something in him. Preferences and points of view are different, a lot of it is about that I would imagine, we all see things a little our own way
Bellerin at one time, many years ago, at least had speed. Nothing much else of use to a defender but at least SPEED. Once his ONLY asset had left him he was effectively useless to us. He OUGHT to have been sold long before MA took over.
BUT BETTER SHIFTED WHEN HE WAS, THAN KEEPING YET ANOTHER WAY SUB PAR PLAYER ON OUR BOOKS , USELESSLY!
I wonder why you gunners fan enjoy slating our ex players, most of those guys bled Arsenal all through, they served us well, what do you gain from all that? They had no beef with us why can’t you all move on and focus on our present players.
@Angelo
RealTalk…
Love the “he lost his speed “ comments
What I read last week is that he’s .02 km slower over his first 10 metres now compared to 8 years ago .
Anyone who is not good with numbers ,it means he’s pretty much as speedy as he was when he broke into the Arsenal team
Last week? So you should have no trouble linking to the article so we can all see it.
I tried running a few searches, didn’t see anything like that being said.
Usual bunch of Bellerin lovers posting illogical nonsense, as ever.
No-one is “dumping” on ex-players.
1. The article is a report of what Barcelona fans think of him.
2. Analysis of Bellerin’s abilities is perfectly reasonable, along with if/when he should be sold. That’s kinda what we’re here for.
Some of you guys really need to grow a 2nd brain cell.
That last post was meant to be a reply to the main article, not to Dank specifically.
Yes, the same guys turn out to be Ozil lovers, PEA lovers, Laca lovers, Bellerin lovers, Mustafi lovers, Kolasinac lovers, Lenno lovers, ……. What that infers? They love the players who drove us to the pits? What does that infer? They just wanted Arsenal relegated or maybe a relegation battling club running low on finances, due to their monstrous wages and head into administration. What does that infer? These are trolls or AFC haters. Plain and simple.
I dunno – I think I’m one of the few “Laca lovers”, but the others, no.
In the previous two seasons we were playing dreadfully with auba up front until Laca was drafted in, which coincided with a complete reversal in our fortunes. He did exactly what jesus has been doing recently (albeit far less competently) – playing well and/or contributing a lot to the side without being able to score himself. Just respected his determination.
.. And I didn’t see laca’s determination in any of the others you mentioned, aside from maybe mustafi (and there are even fewer “mustafi lovers”).
LC Exactly WHY certain fans develop almost “romantic” attachments towards a type of player who realists can easily see are harming our team harmony, via laziness, self absorbtion and being trouble makers, is one of life’s impossible to solve mysteries!
What is it with players who are not doing the business for our team that continues to attract such types, who seem to worship these players above the club and team itself, which those odd fans claim to support?
How any rational fan can fail to have seen Ozils long lasting laziness and flat refusal to give 100% in games astonishes me.
I have to presume that such fan types ARE INDEED, despite what you say, actually Gooners.
But they are very odd Gooners who develop attachments to those harming our club. They refuse to admit, even to themselves that such as OZIL, AUBA and GUENDOUZI were causing disruption . Perhaps they are truly “romantically in love” with such players!!!
To my logical mind there seems NO other possible rational explanation for their obsession with wrong ‘uns!
Angelo, You need to understnd that we fans are fans of THE CLUB and players who do not become legendary players are not generally overpraised, UNLESS they have or will massively help our club and team. We are not fans of Ozil, Auba, even Saka, in front of being fans of ARSENAL FC.
THAT IS WHAT FANHOOD ACTUALLY IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE!
Its a team game , not an individual one and countless people have said, truthfully, that NO player is ever greater than the club.
That is simple football truth, despite whatever you personally may wish to think to the contrary!!
@Jon, I am also an Arsenal fan, let me ask you, what good does it do to our team to always bash players who have already moved on? Does criticising them add any benefit to our current team? You guys should just love on.
First – what harm does it do? We’re here to discuss things, that’s a discussion point. You seem to want to control what we can talk about.
Secondly, as has been pointed out to you by many people now, no-one “bashed” any player, often it’s an analysis of their performance over time, but in this case it’s simply reporting the thinking of the fans in the player’s new home…
What good does it do? Well, it doesn’t have to do any good at all, it can be for the sake of interest, but in this case it does do some good to analyse whether the Arsenal management got it right in letting him go. Then there’s a discusson to be held around whether the timing was right – or if it was too late, or too soon etc.
Surely all this is obvious? Unless you’re a fan of the player and can’t bear to hear anything said against him.
It’s not we slating or ex player. Do u still remember his priority n focus before he left Arsenal? Let me remind you. He was working on some charity, photography n freetalk. Do u think Arsenal paying his salary for that? Arsenal did Right thing. I’m pretty sure SAF will done the same thing if u asked him.
Bellerin was once a loyal servant, there was a time when clubs wanted to pay big money for him including Barcelona but he stuck with us.
But as football fans we can move from warm to cold quickly towards a player and his Arsenal ending wasn’t the most beautiful one.
But as a gooner want to wish him well in his future endeavors, thank him again for some of those beautiful team goals he contributed in that one against the Spuds is special.
Yes, his ending was certainly “not beautiful”, as you say.
We wish him well and others too, its not Mikel’s fault that the specialist in failure chose to fail the club and hold on to a player whose interests were off the football pitch when we could have earned a dime or two. Economics failure exposed.
@Gunsmoke
But why do you think some fans have a bit of bitterness towards certian characters (players)?
Why is it that some fans get a bit harsh when it comes to the likes of Ozil, Auba, Bellerin, Guendouzi etc but not the likes of Laca, Willian, Giroud, Mav, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Leno, Torreira etc?
Ozil, Guendouzi, Auba and Bellerin’s attitude towards at the end of their Arsenal tenure did not endear them to a section of our fanbase. They caused a bit of a scene. The way they behaved.
I think that’s why some fans lost a bit of warmth towards such players..
Goonerstar I appreciate the way you accurately separate the sets of players above.
Unlike Ozil and maybe Auba, Bellerin has done nothing wrong in his Arsenal career except the handling of his exit in which he had made a huge mistake maybe out of desperation.
Remember in his hay days he could have force through a move to one of Europe giants, like Nazri, Abayahor, Alex Song, Cesc Fabaregas, Helb, Gael Clichy and countless others, but he remains loyal to the cause.
Sometimes we do makes mistakes in life, it’s for us see just a little beyond it.
@Goonster, Football fans especially Arsenal fans are just insatiable Most of our players have been slated here on this site and elsewhere, Giroud was once called a lamp post and all sorts of name on this site, Lacazette was called names even Willian and all the players you mentioned above, none of them was spared except those we didn’t see much on the field like Mavropanos. Does it mean all of them are bad or our fans are just pathetic?
These guys are human just like you and sometimes they just wouldn’t turn up, if playing football was that easy I believe people like must have been a super star by now. Give them a break
@Gunsmoke, thank you so much.
One area in which our management team comes in for criticism ..is not bringing in enough money for our outgoing players. I don’t see it that way. The way I see it is that we had a lot of players on the books needing to be moved on, and if we had haggled over fees for them then we would have been stuck with many of those unwanted faces now, and our process would have suffered for it. So in fact, these guys should have been praised for taking a bullet on incoming transfer fees ..just so we can work on the things that are now reaping dividends
I couldn’t care less if we got any money for the a lot of these players that we had when Arteta joined.
I was just ready for something new and different after Wenger and Emery tenures. I had lost that connection towards the team. Too many egotistical underperforming players on massive wages holding us back / embarrassing us..
What a mess it was before Arteta came in..
I just wanted most of them gone and a new squad to be built from the bottom – up.
@escapepod303
Yes, to an extent that’s true – or would be true if the owners were playing with their own money. Sadly, these are loans from the holding company to Arsenal, so they’re making decisions with the club’s future revenues.
That said, if it proves to be a case of taking a hit now as an investment in a succesul future then it will be seen to be right. I’ll judge it when I can see how it pans out in long-term financial terms (for teh club, not for the Kroenkes) as well as footballing success – to me, pawning the family silver for short-term success is not a good thing.
But you’re right that the players you listed were all a problem that needed to be solved by strong management before the club was going anywhere.
Never hated bellerin the person, but he’s an example of a player who always played just well enough to avoid the chop without really offering enough over the course of a season to warrant the first team status he enjoyed for so long. He was another Walcott who got too much too early and became too comfortable – that’s not entirely his fault as I don’t think he was pushed out challenged enough by AW in those years.
I understand I could be at least partially wrong – I had similar beliefs about xhaka until recently – but I only wanted him to leave because of his largely middling performances, not for anything else really.
The same Arteta who gave William a contract ?