A Combination of Bad Luck, Bad Play and Bad Decisions by Management are Derailing Arsenal
The Jurrien Timber injury, combined with questionable transfer decisions and substandard performances by key players could derail Arsenal’s title hopes.
by Eric
It’s safe to say Arsenal fans were expecting more from the club than they have received recently. Unfortunately, a combination of bad luck, bad play and bad management decisions are conspiring to derail Arsenal’s season. The ugly truth is that without a major talent infusion from the transfer market, Arsenal’s hopes of winning silverware this season are likely dashed. It’s time to take a dispassionate look at Arsenal’s problems, and what the club can do to rescue itself.
The Jurrien Timber Injury was a Dreadful Stroke of Bad Luck
Aside from Declan Rice, Jurrien Timber was the summer addition Arsenal fans were most excited about. Throughout the preseason, he showed the athleticism needed to defend his position and the technical quality necessary to play the inverted midfield role Arteta prefers. Then, he went down with a devastating ACL injury in the very first game of the season. This left Arsenal in the unfortunate position of having to rely on Zinchenko.
The Ukrainian’s talent on the ball is not in question. However, after being played in the hybrid LB/Inverted midfielder position for the last 18 months, opposing teams have zeroed in on his defensive weaknesses. Targeting Zinchenko by making him defend the space he leaves open behind him is now step one in everyone’s game plan for cracking the Arsenal defense. That’s bad luck, but every team has to live with injuries.
Manchester City has been missing Kevin De Bruyne all year, and Chelsea went without Christopher Nkunku for the first half of the season. Dealing with injuries is part of the challenge of winning a championship. With that said, there is such a thing as controlling what you can control. Arsenal has no control over injuries, but they have fallen short in several key areas where the club’s management was firmly in control of what transpired.
Arteta’s Hubris in the Transfer Market is a Huge Problem
Let’s start with the 800 lb elephant in the room. Arsenal doesn’t score enough goals. Gabriel Jesus’ finishing has fluctuated between substandard on bad days and slightly above average on good days for his entire career. Even he’s aware of this, as he recently went on record as saying, “Scoring goals isn’t his strong suit.” Well, that begs the obvious question of why is he playing center forward? Isn’t scoring goals a center forward’s primary function?
No one ever touted Thierry Henry’s pressing ability or Luis Suarez’ hold up play because they scored 30 goals a year. Gabriel Jesus would be hard pressed to score 30 goals in two seasons. His understudy, Eddie Nketiah, has a very pedestrian 19 goals in 106 appearances. Yet, he was re-signed to a 100,000GBP/week contract extension. Why? The two of them combined don’t add up to one world class striker.
Wouldn’t Arsenal have been better off cashing in on Eddie Nketiah and combining that money with the near 65 million quid paid for Kai Havertz and making a real run at a proper center forward? The buyout on Victor Osihmen’s new contract is 126,000,000GBP. 65 million for Havertz, plus 25 million each for Nketiah, Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith-Rowe would have raised more than enough money to get that deal done last summer.
Arteta Smelling His Own Fumes on Havertz and the Academy Products
It would be different if Arteta were using Reiss Nelson or Emile Smith Rowe, or they were effective when they played. Sadly, when Eddie Nketiah does play, he personifies the term “bang average”. Yet for some reason, he and Reiss Nelson got fresh contract extensions. Now the club finds itself handcuffed by FFP concerns due in part to their combined salaries plus the transfer fee and wage packet for Kai Havertz.
Yes, Kai Havertz has somewhat settled in, and he’s even notched a game winning goal. Then again, a player making 300,000GBP per week ought to be winning matches regularly, not once every few months. It’s hard not to wonder if Arteta wasn’t “high on his own fumes” after salvaging Xhaka’s career and thought he could do the same with Havertz. Whatever the case, Arsenal isn’t getting value on the Kai Havertz investment.
The massive outlay to re-sign academy players who are not being used (Reiss Nelson) or underperform when they do play (Eddie Nketiah), combined with a puzzling gamble on Kai Havertz, is evidence of a muddled and poorly executed backroom strategy. The club is paying the price for all those questionable decisions and now they must sell the academy players before they can buy a proper striker. None of it makes any sense.
Several Key Players Have Regressed Instead of Progressing
The fallout from injuries and questionable transfers are not the only hurdles that need to be cleared if Arsenal is going to get this season back on track. Zinchenko is a flat-out defensive liability. Several players, namely Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard, and Ben White have regressed drastically this season. Even Bukayo Saka’s effectiveness has been diminished by a combination of cynical fouls, fatigue, and a steady diet of double teams (which also limit Martinelli’s effectiveness).
It remains to be seen whether Mikel Arteta can fix all of this, because it’s a laundry list of problems. With that said, apart from the Jurrien Timber injury, Arteta can look right in the mirror for the root cause of many of the most pressing issues currently facing the club. The low percentage gambles and decisions Arteta had a hand in making are all coming up snake-eyes at the same time.
Then there is the issue of how painfully one-dimensional this team is. The future remains unclear, but one thing is for certain: If this season ends trophyless, Arteta and Edu will rightly be regarded as the architects of their own demise. In the meantime, Arteta, Edu, Ben White, Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli, Oleksandr Zinchenko, and Gabriel Jesus need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and step their collective games up. Majorly.
E McC
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I’d be surprised if this is printed on your editor selected filtered website because most opinions are not, but here goes.
Arsenal’s Achilles Hill have been two fold. First is the lacking in runs by their makeshift fullbacks in both overlapping attack and recovering in defense. Second is the clinical finishing by all of their forward players, with the poor amount of goals to expected goals ratio. How do we rectify this. Arteta has injury carrying players to partially blame, but he needs to rectify this problem on the training pitch and take a risk with his fring players and quality academy players. So he has to look at his poor decisions first. As far as transfers are concerned there are two major gaps, providing we keep the players we have until the summer, and those gaps are: An aggressive 20 goal TargetMan, and a versitile quality energetic true Fullback, not a makeshift full back.
It’s not quite over, but the last few matches shows just how tight the margins are when you’re competing for a title two of the five best teams in the world.
Arsenal under the gaffer are a better than they have ever been in a mighty long time, We have a great chance of winning the champions league and could easily win the FA cup.
They have been some hit and miss in the transfer market, but Arsenal needs a lady like Marina Granoskaia as Managing director to stream line its operations.
Jesus’ productivity at Arsenal in all competitions was actually better than Firmino’s at Liverpool, according to Transfermarkt
However, Firmino was much better physically, whereas Jesus’ physicality was inconsistent
Jesus could hold off the old CBs or the ones from mid-table teams, but he always struggled to do hold-up play against big CBs of top EPL teams
Gai, I want to ask you and I want a reply based on your knowledge of football. What is the primary work or duty of a CF also known as No9 in a football Match? I will appreciate a shirt and simple answer.
#A short and simple answer.
In modern football, there is no “short and simple” answer.
I would request some flesh on the bones of that true but far too brief post DAVID!
Why not give us YOUR FULLER THOUGHTS, assuming you have the time of course?
In my opinion, a CF should be the main front-line pivot of his team in modern football
So Predictable!
@daveg
You are so weird, you puzzle me!
Everyone one of your posts (and everyone elses) are clearly visible to me and all the other readers. Have you been to an opticians? Or a counsellor! If not maybe you should consider it….
I am in full agreement with the writer.I am a die hard gooner and when Arsenal lose games that they should be winning like we did with Newcasle,Aston Villa,Westham and Fulham, I become so stressed to the point of death.
1.Why us all the time.?
2.Why do we fail to cross the finish line as winners when we should be doing that, especially lasy season.?
I love Mikel Arteta as our manager and I support him 100%, his blood is Arsenal and clearly he wants us to suceed.However, here is my advise to him:
1.Buy Kylian Mbappe so that we can be taken seriously.
2.Sell Jesus,Nketiah.
3.Let Elneny,Cedric go for free if that is the case so we create slots for good replacement players.
4.Address the mental issue that is affecting our players now, especially after the westham-fulham losses.There is clearly a mental issue affecting those guys, “is it the unfair VAR decisions that we have ammased this season that is taking amental toll on them, “thinking that referees /pgmol conspire to stop us from winning the title.
A very good article which covers the bases in terms of the weaknesses of the squad and our Manager.The absence of Timber has almost certainly impacted on our defensive performances as he ticks most of the boxes required to nullify dangerous forwards.That said, as a right sided central defender ,like White and Tomi, he will not provide much creativity going forward from an inverted left back role..However, he does have the credentials to do a very good job as a DM which would take a lot of pressure off Rice in the future.In essence he should prove to be a good acquisition unlike Vieira and Havertz who will never be a left sided central midfielder.Given our dearth of goals I would play him at CF where he could perhaps be more effective, but like the writer of the article ,he would not have been on my shopping list.I note the article is silent on the absence of Partey who could have made such a difference in tandem with Rice.I shall not touch on the Tierney loan deal other than to cite it as another error of judgement which may cost us dearly unless we can unearth a suitable left back during the current window.
We need to reinforce our squad this month. Is it possible? Definitely. 1-3 players at maximum, but I think we can forget spending the kind of money we did last summer.
Striker, the most obvious one. Although I think this position is paramount to cover, I feel like this will only happen if we have a major sale first (like Nketiah), simply because the new striker will definitely cost, starting over, +40 million pounds.
LB – the one I’ve watched this is season is Ferdi Kadioglu whom we’ve actually been linked with over the past couple of days. Turkish international, has played mainly LB but can perform RB as well. Cost roughly 20-22m pounds, I think it’s a no-brainer. I really like his play. Maybe Elneny could go the other way too as he already had a loan there..?
I don’t think we’ll get a midfielder, but a new LB could move Zinchenko to play there when needed as he plays CM for Ukraine.
The LCB we’ve been linked, Jorrel Hato of Ajax, could be signed. Not because he’s needed, but because he’s insanely promising at 17-years of age and hasn’t signed a professional contract yet (or hasn’t at least extended). This would probs mean selling/loaning Kiwior who hasn’t particularly impressed in the starts he’s had.
Interesting few weeks ahead.
agree 100% but I still insist we need Kylian Mbappe, he wants to join us but the question is are we a serious big club that is ready to pay top dollars for a high quality player.We lack a star player in Arsenal, Bukayo,Ordegaard,Martinelli, Rice are great players but not star players who can single handedly carry the team on his shoulders when the other lads are not at their best.
The signings of Havertz and Raya were both downward spiralling mistaken judgements by Arteta. We had an enthusiastic goalkeeper who is in general one of the best….then Arteta disturbed him by bringing in a disturbing goalkeeper and then immediately replaced Ramsdale. Totally illogical. The signing of Havertz is the most stupid signing by Arteta. £65 mill, £300,000 grand a week for a failure. What a mistake!!!
Teams play a low block against us, doubling up against Saka and Martinelli. Because we spread the scoring, both Saka and Martinelli have been generally nullified. Therefore we are struggling to score through Martinelli in particular. Of course there is a solution. A scary striker like Ivan Toney or Dusan Vlahovic would be perfect. Problem is Arteta. Arteta is a ‘nearly’ man. He gets to the front and then runs out of ideas, tactics, and does odd things, pulling the rug from under his own feet….and the team’s. We are an eternal Plan A, round in circles team, who will never reach the finishing line because of Arteta’s eccentric obsession with circular possession football, and other clubs have ‘found us out’, which means we can only come close to winning the main event.
Totally agree with you. With Arteta, we will always be “also-ran”. Arteta is the main problem. He created the big goal keeping problem by putting Leno as number 1 and forcing Martinez to leave for Aston Villa. We have the best goal keeper in the world and Arteta then stupid gave him away to Aston Villa. The loaning of Raya to replace Ramsdale still baffles me. We will never win any silverware with Arteta as the manage.
o.k. enough with the Timber excuse. He did extremely well in the very very very brief window in which he has been able to play for us and I was also impressed. But to make his absence since the first game of the season a major reason why we have not had better results is not correct imo. I would like to think that MA had not changed the plan to such an extent from the prior year that the absence of practically any new transfer would have a major effect on results this season. He came from Ajax but he wasn’t Cruyff and he was/is still unproven in the PL. If the club is running that close to the edge then there are much bigger problems.
An interesting and welcome detailed take on the writers view of our season so far
Broadly I agree with much of what he writes, not all, though ENOUGH for me not to wish to quibble with minor shades of difference in his and my own opinions. Essentially, I thought he hit the nail on the head.
Though I feel it is true that almost ALL teams which fail to produce the expectations of their fans are down to those same three factors, BAD LUCK(with injuries), BAD PLAY, AND MANAGERS MISTAKES.
In THAT sense, nothing in this article fits ARSENAL any more than it fits almost EVERY OTHER TEAM TOO, save City and just perhaps also Liverpool.
I remain content, though not stupidly so, with MA as our manager but the time my personal content will last IS finite and MUCH will depend on how the rest of THIS – and MA s fourth into his fifth season – plays out.
I must say I also agree with most of the points raised by the writer.
If for reasons mentioned above we end up without a trophy (or a runner up in any of EPL or UCL), then I think serious questions need to be asked.
Arteta should exchange Nketia for Oliseh, do some selling. In fact if a good price comes for Jesus, let him go or give him + some cash for a proper striker then cash in on Smith and Nelson while they can to get a proper LFB, then move Zinch to the midfield. But honestly Arteta and whoever is masterminding the transfer made some grace mistake with the KH signing, Nketia and Nelson renewal, retention of Partey despite his injury issues. But he(Arteta) will learn on the job.