There’s a lot of hope for this Arsenal team. The way the 2022–23 season finished left many Gooners feeling cheated; how do they lead the league all through the season and fail to win it?
Many would quickly point out the mistakes Arteta and his boys made and the weaknesses in Arteta’s squad. Even so, Arsenal legend and former Crystal Palace boss Patrick Vieira believes Man City’s winning the league was about them just being unstoppable, other than the mistakes made by his former club.
“They have to be positive to build something out of this season and go even closer,” said Vieira on the Evening Standard about the way forward for Arteta’s project.
“I don’t think Arsenal did a lot wrong — City were just unstoppable.
“Many people believe Man United’s treble would never be matched, but now City are close.”
Man City are on another level, and to topple them, you have to be perfect. Last season, to some PL sides, the Gunners were unstoppable; now, they need to be unstoppable against every PL side.
With a successful summer transfer window with the arrivals of Declan Rice and Moises Caicedo, as well as the essential defensive reinforcements and an attacking addition (if budgets allow), the Gunners might finish what they started in the Premier League last season.
Daniel O
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Sadly Arsenal had glory in their own hands and lost points from winning positions. Ramsay’s **** up against Southampton was very costly and the capitulation Vs West Ham a horror story. Arsenal handed the title to Man City. Hopefully this window we will get players to the standard of Cancelo, Rice and Xavi Simon’s to help us get some staying power. We are on the rise for sure.
Vieira was a world class player in his prime.
Yet that doesn’t make him a world class manager nor an omniscient pundit, whose opinion is undisputed.
Man City deserved it in the end, but you can’t say we didn’t do a lot wrong. We dropped a lot of points at the most crucial point in the season – it’s no coincidence our form dropped at that time. Mental fatigue, lack of belief, whatever it was, we were top and blew it in matches we were more than capable of winning.
Of course there are a lot of positives, but don’t ignore the failures – we must know what we need to maintain and where we need to improve.
No, City did not “deserve it”, they’ve never deserved it and never will while their corrupt practices are not answered to in court.
Their fall will be spectacular.
“Deserved it” is a cliched phrase and fans and pundits often claim that whoever wins a cup, championship etc. has “deserved it”. It’s often used to progress a simplistic narrative.
They played better for more games than anyone else – they deserved it.
What’s the ‘nuanced’ argument then? They spent too much money (in the past, not this season – and it’s not like we’re spending little!) or they got luckier with decisions?
Whatever goes on behind the scenes, I don’t know (and neither do you), but I’d guess there’s plenty of corruption around in most epl clubs, including ours, but based on what went on on the field of play, we were second best. People like you really should to grow up and accept it.
Also, I’m getting sick of hearing people say concepts are cliché as though that means they’re wrong. The theory of gravity is cliché – oh well, it still works in most cases. Using the term cliché to dismiss points is itself cliché, ironically enough!
Teams *can* deserve to win games/competitions, mentality *is* am important aspect for footballers, or athletic competition in general. Sorry these aren’t original concepts – show how they’re wrong instead of dismissing them purely on the basis of them being ‘cliche’.
No amount of choice of words removes the point that we ‘lost’ the PL from as much as 8-point cushion with less than ten games to go. The sad happenstance since 2017 has a vital lesson that in such a superior position of the team we have up the game realising that giving an opponent attacking space for a second could be disastrous. It is a time to rotate players and spring out surprises in the team. This strategy was adopted in the last match which gave us 5-0 victory against Wolves. With attack-minded midfielders, we can strengthen the forwards and reduce the pressure on our defence and goalkeeper.
As per comments above, and with the greatest respect to Veira, Arsenal’s squad depth let them down at a crucial stage. Saliba’s injury was pivotal but the points dropped from winning positions derailed the title charge and allowed City to reel us in. It was in our hands – we lost it and we have to be honest about that.
We lost two times against Man.City and got a football lesson at the Etihad.
Man.City is still better than us but the gap has decreased and we are getting closer. We lost against a club under investigations and they could very well get stripped for glory and titles. Competing against law breakers are very difficult, let’s hope there will be a conclusion soon.
It’s sad that certain nations are using football to whitewashing their reputation.
GOYG
Really no no no Arsenal players plus the Coach were their own enemies arsenal lost not because man city are the best they lost because of the pressure they gave to themselves arsenal always were relaying on a few players to win games Saliba and Martineli carried this team all along and you saw one got injured and the whole team collapsed reason arsenal were relaying on individual priliance
We lost and we lost no excuses please now it’s back to the drawing board again so Arteta this time round get it right.
These sad excuses are getting old now, let’s move on.
We lost a of point at the crucial point and u say city where just better. Did we play city in all those games we drew and lost. Even with the lost against city, if we had won against westham, Southampton, Brighton and the rest we could maybe have won the leage
Man City only won by 5 pts. That’s less than 2 games. Arsenal were denied at least 3 wins by VAR decisions, that’s 9 pts. Then there’s the draws against bottom of the league sides, that’s another 6 pts at least dropped. So in total that adds up to 15 pts dropped which we should have easily gained. So Arsenal should have won by 10 pts.
daveg
I understand your point of view but do you know if City were adversely affected by VAR?
We should have been able to make a better fist of the final run in. Losing 2 points at WH and the Southampton misery were self inflicted.
Sorry Daveg, but the VAR decisions only “may” have cost us points, as matches do not finish when a bad referee VAR call is made, but continue to the full 90 minutes plus added time, when any number of other match-altering issues may have occurred.
City would likely have won their last game if they’d needed too, so it’s 8 points really.
Drawing a game against City world have been a 3 point gain plus those draws that we should have won if we’d been at the races would have seen us through.
The var thing is way too controversial – as SueP said, we don’t know if city lost points to it (I think utd drew or beat them on the back of an offside goal this season?) and we haven’t considered games where we might have been fortunate.
Get the impression you’re making the point it’s silly to delve this deeply into it by your 10 points comment, but still
City were stopped and held off for 93% of the season by us. We choked and fumbled when the pressure turned up.
Tired of the excuses when we held off City for majority of the year. We only had PL games to play at the end and couldn’t finish. To me we lost the league more than City won.
Arsenal ran out of energy (mental & physical) due to lack of squad quality in depth. Man City weren’t “gifted” anything, they were simply better resourced in terms of quality & experience.
Dear Pat- I’m a life long Arsenal fan. 76 years a fan (since age 4). I enjoy ‘Just Arsenal’ a lot.
Sadly can’t agree with your post here. Man City are undoubtedly a better team than our current one. They beat as fairly handily in most of our games of late BUT we did not lose top spot and the EPL Championship because of this. We blew it!
Losing to Everton 1-0 started the rot. Then followed nightmare losses of games and points against Liverpool (2-0 up – 1 point only). West Ham 1 point only after being 2-0 up. Southampton 1 point only. Brentford 1 point only. Brighton – murdered 3-0 at HOME./ By my reckoning that’s 14 points lost. Those lost points cost us the Premiership when we should have won it. 8 or so more points would have meant the title. Man City had little to do with our poor form against lesser teams.
Same as last year. 3 points head and and a game in hand against Spurs for 4th place and the Champions league. We blew it.
Sad but hoping next season will be even great for us all.
Best wishes Peter Olsen
Dear Pat- I’m a life long Arsenal fan. 76 years a fan (since age 4). I enjoy ‘Just Arsenal’ a lot.
Sadly can’t agree with your post here. Man City are undoubtedly a better team than our current one. They beat as fairly handily in most of our games of late BUT we did not lose top spot and the EPL Championship because of this. We blew it!
Losing to Everton 1-0 started the rot. Then followed nightmare losses of games and points against Liverpool (2-0 up – 1 point only). West Ham 1 point only after being 2-0 up. Southampton 1 point only. Brentford 1 point only. Brighton – murdered 3-0 at HOME./ By my reckoning that’s 14 points lost. Those lost points cost us the Premiership when we should have won it. 8 or so more points would have meant the title. Man City had little to do with our poor form against lesser teams.
Same as last year. 3 points head and and a game in hand against Spurs for 4th place and the Champions league. We blew it.
Sad but hoping next season will be even great for us all.
Best wishes
I think the point being made by Vieira is that we lost more to City’s perfection than our own imperfections. If it were any other team chasing us and not City, we probably would be champions. Not every team wins twelve league games on the trot. When a team does,they can catch anyone else