Arsenal need to stop talking and start performing

Just a few weeks ago, everything was looking rosy for Arsenal as we were cosily sat in fourth place in the League with two games in hand on our rivals. Now in the space of a week, we have lost two of our best players and have lost our two game advantage, meaning we have an uphill struggle to get back into the Champions League.

I would say that all we have do is win all our remaining games, including against Chelsea, Tottenham Man United and West Ham and we are home and dry. It is not impossible, but there will be very few optimistic Arsenal fans around right now after registering consecutive losses to Crystal Palace and and a Brighton side that had only gained one point from their last 7 games.

LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 09: Mikel Arteta, Manager of Arsenal gives their team instructions during the Premier League match between Arsenal and Brighton on April 09, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

Mikel Arteta has not given up though and he needs to persuade his players that they still know how to win. As the Boss said yesterday: “We have everything to play for, there’s still big games to come up, eight games, we can still do it and we have to now take ownership and talk very little and start to performance.

“First of all on Monday being in the right mind frame to acknowledge that everything is still there for us and we have worked so hard to be in this position and how much we want it and how willing we are to do everything that we can do to start performing to win football matches again.”

We must go out next week and destroy Southampton, like Chelsea did yesterday, and regain our confidence ahead of the daunting run of games against Chelsea, Man United and West Ham.

If we don’t win a couple of those we could risk missing out on Europe completely again next season…

Tags Arsenal v Brighton Arteta

70 Comments

  1. You don’t turn up.
    You play badly.
    You lament yourself and your team mates for playing badly.
    If you did your best and were simply unlucky then yes you could comment about bad luck or poor decisions.
    But when you don’t bother and then lose you should shut the **** up and try to improve instead of talking about it.
    It just annoys the fans even more….

    1. Exactly right!
      Losing a fight is one thing, but they haven’t shown up or fought the last 2 matches!

      No urgency, back to lame Artetaball, look timid and uncertain with and without the ball.

      Laca and Nketiah are beyond useless, Pepe isn’t favored by Arteta to the detriment of the team

      Laca with 4 goals walks into lineup, and Nketiah with 0 PL goals first choice over Pepe.

      Some will say “Nketiah only a sub, that’s why 0 goals” yet Pepe lower on sub list and has goals.

      Arteta clearly has favorites, form doesn’t matter. Laca, Xhaka, White, Saka, Odegaard will never get dropped no matter how poorly they play. Automatic to start

      1. Arteta has favourites. This is not unique to Arteta.
        Pepe isn’t favored because in certain situations he is unreliable despite his talent.
        Laca will always put in a shift despite his limitations.
        The players you have listed will make mistakes but they have proven more reliable than their alternatives.
        Arsenal do not have a bench full of top class talent to replace the regular first team players.

        1. That explains the drop in performance we have seen the last 2 matches. They know they will start, so the lack of urgency in both first halves.

          As for lack of bench, who’s fault is that?

          Lokogna and Tavares unused for months and lacked sharpness; poor management. Couldn’t find sub minutes at the end of matches?

          Thinned the squad in January, had money they didn’t spend on Dusan, so why not bring in a midfielder?

          Why put off all the business until the Summer? Loaned out players and gave others away for free.

          Arteta and Edu botched the window, simple. They gambled and lost as it has come back to hurt us.

          Senseless risk and amateurish. Should have shored up the squad for top 4 push, instead saved wages and we’re in a precarious position that is entirely self-inflicted.

        2. The same Pepe that scored for fun when he first came, has slowly been forgotten at Arsenal under Arteta because he doesn’t fit his style. The style that blunted Auba, blunted Lacca and blunted Pepe, the style we cant create from with his players at the moment and the same Pepe who has just come back from the Afcon a pick for Afcon team of the tournament.

          1. Mr Ken is nice to have you back. I have been wondering where you have been and why you are not seen here for awhile. Your wise and unbiased view is really missed by me. It feels nice to read from you again. As for Arteta and Arsenal if you pay a peanut , you get a monkey job.

    2. Totally agree and the only thing I have to add is that Arteta feels no pressure because everyone is acting like he is the best thing since sliced bread.
      leaving us out of Europe for the first time in 25 years and out of all cup competitions in January any other manager would have have been sacked.

      1. Just thought I’d mention this :
        Arteta has lost 12 of his 45 home league games.
        Wenger lost 12 of his last 116 home games.

        Of course, one manager has spent over 100 million revamping his defence…. the other manager had dross, mentally frail, lazy players who couldn’t defend.

        Not sure which stat reads the most positive (🤔🙄) but the latter’s defence was also involved in more than one game a week (minimum).

        Thanks to a YouTube poster for this enlightening information.

        My personal thoughts on Saturday’s game?
        I have never sat through a more turgid, uninspiring game of “football” in my entire life…but will wait until the end of the season before commentating further, unless of course, gems like the above (positive and negative) are put out for the fanbase to digest.

        1. Mr Ken is nice to have you back. I have been wondering where you have been and why you are not seen here for awhile. Your wise and unbiased view is really missed by me. It feels nice to read from you again. As for Arteta and Arsenal if you pay a peanut , you get a monkey job.

          1. Thanks Adiva – MA has been so hard to predict and I have been both positive and negative.
            I decided to wait until the season ends and hope to be ultra positive, but when one reads comments like that, it’s very hard to not pass them on.

        2. Arteta running on air – may get slaughtered for saying this but Emery knew what he was doing, didn’t get the support from the hierarchy even when senior players were openly taking the piss out of him.
          That said, Arteta falls out with players who were prem quality basically because these players sussed him out on the training ground. He has his favourites that is so obvious, his lack of man management skills are not on his CV.
          I question his footballing knowledge, he has no ability to change in play time or have a plan b to his credentials.
          What he does have for me is chat and plenty of it – give this guy an extended contract and it will be a massive mistake

    1. After losing badly to Chelsea, Soton will put up a fight against us. Dont be surprised if we draw that game as we give struggling teams chance against us….

      1. If we can’t bounce back after losing two games in a row, we fight as well forget about the top six finish

    2. Gai,
      I think to win pretty well against Solton, Xhaka needs to return to midfield in the absence of Pathey; Tavares must train harder and learn to do the basic work of defending than his attacking runs. Lokonga also need to opt his game. Either one of Gabriel or White should be benched for holding to provide fresh leg at the back and also provide competition. Arsenal still has a small chance into the top4 until the last 3 games of the seaon. Tottenham won’t win all their matches too. It’s a matter of who wants it most.

      1. Xhaka or Tavares could do the job in the LB position

        Our main problem is the CF and the CDM aren’t up to the tasks. Lacazette and Lokonga have to train harder or be replaced by other players

        As for our top four aspiration, we’d better forget it. As I said many times before, Spuds have one of the best CFs in the world and Conte has shown that his tactics work very well with that CF type

  2. Just imagine if it all comes down to the NLD.
    Legendary game.
    Winning at the THFS would be the way to do it 🙂

    1. And “IF” we turn up and get a kicking with another poor performance? Will you still spout the usual rhetoric, fairfan? About how we are still on target and how we should “trust the process”?

  3. Chelsea lose 1-4 at home to Brentford
    Resposonse: 0-6 away win with 15 shots on target

    Arsenal lose 3-0, response losing again 1-2 against team who had scored once in 7

    This is the quality gap between the clubs manager. Chelsea had a buffoon manager in Lampard and got rid. We have same buffoon-quality manager in Arteta and we expect different results.

    I can bet its Southampton who will be the one to bounce back next weekend and not Arsenal.

    1. Arsenal have had a couple of poor results and Arteta has made mistakes.
      This does not make him a buffoon and this kind of disparaging of the manager is uncalled for.
      As pointed out by others Chelsea with a much stronger squad have had some poor results lately. Some balance in comments really is needed.
      The biggest problem for Arsenal is the limited squad depth which is being highlighted by the drop off in quality when we have injuries .

      1. He’s not a buffoon.
        But his poor decision making has potentially huge ramifications for Arsenal FC.
        If he finishes below 5th then there has been no improvement – he will have to leave.

      2. He’s not a buffoon.
        But his poor decision making has potentially huge ramifications for Arsenal FC.
        Although he could not obviously solve all of our problems in January he could have done something. As it is he did nothing so rightly this can be thrown at him.
        Also his lack of tactics is another aspect – as I have said the loss of a central midfielder and a left back has thrown his whole way of preparing right out. Arsenal simply had no answer for it.
        You have to give to the end of the season but the knives are already out for him and for Arsenal. That is just life…

  4. Crystal Palace and Brighton are teams that should’ve beaten us already this season but for some hard luck didn’t. The results therefore are not really a shock as we’ve not been able to deal with their style. I wanted us to play Spurs way back before the 1st match got postponed. At the time they looked really average in their 3-4-3/3-5-2 and I was so confident we would beat them even with our injuries. Now there is even more at stake in that match. I can see several players have escaped criticism from the match since they aren’t Tavares, Nketiah or Pepe. Thankfully they all didn’t start.

    1. Add elneny to that list. Those players you mentioned would have been target by the fans and pundits alike.
      In fact I don’t want them to feature at all if possible. Because others errors can be overlooked, but none of these players you mentioned.
      They scream back your manager and your team, but quickly to call out a player for having a bad game.

      1. They should count themselves lucky to not have started this match and the last one expect for Tavares. The two results were mostly down to poor tactics from the start. The two games could’ve easily been managed such that even if we couldn’t score we wouldn’t concede because both teams were counting on individual errors from desperation and counters. As you can see we gave the ball away so many times through bad passes. We could’ve just stuck to the basics and managed the game better. We didn’t have to lose them.

  5. As many would say, we are not allowed to criticize Arteta. Is either we are labelled toxic or fake fan.
    What I don’t get is, if everything was going fine from the beginning, I don’t think anyone would question the manager.
    How many times have we read on how Arteta made the right call by not signing in January, many praises him, apparently he even get credit for saliba making progress by another manager on loan. Someone who haven’t impressed him enough in nearly 3 years to get a debut.
    We have a manager who only win a single game from a losing position in the league in nearly 3 years. Ironically it was won for him by a player he didn’t even rate at all.
    What bothers me more is many are already giving him credit in advance if another manager came in and get us back on track. They are saying he has build a foundation for the next manager to succeed.
    We are on a youth project and rather to see our academic players get featured in the first team, they are no where to be found. We have lost willock. nelson, Niles, and nketia and hector are likely to follow soon. Not saying they are all great or deserves to stay anyway. Most of the academic players we have in the first team, are all granted debut by the 2 previous manager. Meaning in nearly 3 years, none of our academic products has been able to feature in the first team regularly.
    I guess he didn’t remember this as being part of the culture and tradition of the club.

    1. Arteta is still an apprentice. He is only using arsenal to up test his managerial skill.

      If you claim to love arsenal and still want this apprentice to remain the coach, then there is a big question mark in the Love you claim to have for the club.

      Once you criticise Arteta, people on this forum see you as a bad guy.

      1. @Mrcool
        RealTalk. Dude is an “on the job training”coach. And the club as well as it’s players are suffering for it. Not to mention how it’s dividing the supporters. IJS

    2. Arteta is a manager of one of the biggest clubs in the world and for what he has had to deal with many believe he deserves credit.
      No-one has said he should not be criticized. There is, however, a world of difference between criticism and personal insults which many are wont to direct at the manager when the team has a run of poor performance.
      The issues you have raised are subjects for debate and fans will have different opinions.

  6. Arteta just an arrogant manager, since day one.

    Wenger was also, had silverware to back it up, but refused to change and adapt.

    Arteta has that arrogance where he refuses to change or adapt.

    The club and culture must change to suit him, not find his place in the club.

    Artetaball is just awful; negative, static, indirect, and timid. The embodiment of Arteta the midfielder at Arsenal.

    Simply don’t understand why the club lowered their standard for an inexperienced assistant coach, a supposed tactical genius that can’t tune our attack in nearly 3 years.

    Don’t say we couldn’t find better managers.

    Over £200 million to spend, complete control over roster and transfers, and 8th place twice without getting sacked.

    No top manager interested in that? No, club didn’t want the ambition and expectations it had with Wenger.

    Too many excuse Arteta and his failings. Blame players instead of Arteta’s disastrous lack of man management.

    1. We need a better manager than Arteta. He will stay from how things stay, but next season if we start badly let’s see how many supporters will still be in his corner. I always say let’s see where the team finishes even with the poor style of play and performances. But Artetaball truly don’t have any uptick to it.

  7. we are at a critical stage and what Arteta does right now for the next game is vital. win and we can build, lose and confidence will go further out of the window. He has got the added problem as the team does not totally pick it’s self because of limited squad and injury. Assuming it will be the same as recently putting Xhaka at left back was a failure and as much as I don’t rate him anyway he is more use in the middle alongside a relatively in experienced Lokonga. He has to work with Tavares and get him playing,everybody made him the scapegoat when they ALL played rubbish against Palace and virtually the same way yesterday. Lacazette seems completely lost I would put Martinelli down the middle who I think ploughs a lone furrow down the wing but could be more effective nearer goal and his pace would frighten a defence which we don’t seem to be capable of at the moment.It’s all tricky but we have got to get some spark back, go forward and have a real go to win and regain momentum.

  8. Our players are very soft except for a very very few how could hold their ground, who are now injured. No team in PL will let you hold the ball to show your skills with the feet, you have to anticipate the coming tackles and pressure and pass the ball as quick as possible. That urgency in passing is lacking first of all. And our players just can’t seem to hold the ball at their feet when pressurized and tackled, that will simply not work with PL teams. Every PL team, even if they are endowed with top notch players, can still impose themselves physically to destabilize opposition passing and buildup games, I can’t understand why aren’t our players drilled at that, it’s the very basic requirement in PL.

    1. I do agree and in our current wobble we really do look like a lightweight pushover against robust teams and I don,t think we have many players even with coaching who are capable of it.The top sides have always had that in their armoury as well as the tricky skills. Every time we go for a new player I ask myself
      have they got that element to their game as well as the skills as it is needed.

      1. We always seem to go for flashy tricks when getting players and not qualities like zeal, endurance, and the desire to fight. The day we got Pepe instead of Zaha proved that. We need a good mix of both in PL.

    2. @Daulat, you are very correct,

      This is the main reason Arsenal are having problem, our midfield is so lightweight, imagine Oedegaard-Lokonga,
      Oedegaard thrives with stronger players who can shuffle around him,

      If we must start winning games , Arteta may have to trust Elneny-Xhaka-Miguel, they are our strongest now, else he’ll have to use Lacazette in the middle alongside Xhaka and Smith-Rowe in a 4-3-3,

      I ain’t a coach but one thing I know , the midfield determines who wins the soccer battle,

      We can’t play with Oedegaard and Lokonga against spurs, man United and Chelsea, we would be destroyed not beaten.

      Arteta needs to listen more.

  9. Top four is still Arsenal’s to lose but I doubt that they have the manager or squad to take them there.

  10. Is not about performance
    Those players are fatigued
    Instead of we fans complaining about Arteta
    we should support him
    Tottehnam top us with 3points and we have a game in hand
    Besides Tottehnam can’t win all their matches
    Sure Brighton will win Spurs b4 we demolish Southampton
    We will get back our top 4 the way Liverpool did in their title race with Manchester City

    1. FATIGUED!!!!!! Come on, you are joking right. They aren’t even playing one game a week!!!! Are Liverpool and City fatigued, Chelsea, Spuds, they have all played far more games than us. FATIGUE is the furthest from the truth it can ever be.

  11. What has been more disappointing for me is that players like Lacca and Xhaka continue to disappoint even though they are our most experienced players. Our defense is looking more frail now than it has done for months. The way we defended yesterday was criminal. ESR looks keen but is failing to get into the game. Saka looked a yard short yesterday. Nketiah gets the opportunities to impress but doesn’t. His finishing can be so poor. When you consider we are playing less than a game a week, how can this team look like they’re playing pre-season friendly’s? I’ve been questioning our training methods for years. Because a team that fails in the most fundamental footballing skills (passing and tackling) must surely not train at all?

    1. Truth be told,I suspect our training method right from the Wenger day’s, we play so light, we hardly move on the ball,

      We ain’t ruthless, our front 3 aren’t firing because our midfield is weak hence no one to feed the front line,

  12. Fatigued from what?
    Liverpool players are competing on four fronts and you don’t hear their fans whining about players looking fatigued when things don’t go as planned.
    We are playing once, sometimes twice a week. We never qualified for Europe and was bundled out of the FA cup in the 3rd round.
    And you are claiming fatigue.
    And if they are fatigued – which they should not be, then it would be a result of having a very small squad which the manager is responsible for..

  13. There is no excuse. Shameful display. How can a team be so timid? How can a top manager play Xhaka right back? Where was he for the first Brighton goal. Managerially and tactically childlike. Timidity in football is a no-no. Xhaka has cost us against Brighton many times. Sloppy Xhaka, sloppy Arteta.

  14. What we are suffering today started in January when Arteta let’s most of the players to leave either on loan or permanently. I cried when he allowed Niles to join Rome even when Partey and Elneni were at AFCON. So Arteta never envisage injury catching up with our players. Saka is fatigued because he’s a target for other opposing clubs. Sending Zhaka to the left back to me is wrong. Play him in midfield with Elneni and Odegaard ahead of them. Lokonga should be a substitute. Look at the Crystal palace that beat us 3:0, Leicester is manhandling them. For me I lost the hope of top four when we released our players without replacement. I will still support the boys to the end. I love Arsenal but to be frank, we deserve a better coach than an apprentice. Good luck to the gunners.

  15. Correction -Arteta needs to stop talking and start performing because in over 2 seasons I’ve seen little to no improvement with all things Arsenal .
    A never needing cycle of mediocre football .

  16. What is endearing about Mikel Arteta is that he will always stick to his philosophy…

    If plan A doesn’t work he will change to plan A and if that doesn’t work he will revert back to plan A and if that doesn’t work he will blame everyone except for himself.🤣

    You just can’t write this stuff!!

  17. Watching Man City Vs Liverpool…
    Absolute joy to watch football from both teams
    End to end stuff

      1. Yes Kev and it hurts
        But more hurtful is the fact that we used to play like this but that has become a history now and I feel this history won’t be repeated again

        1. In my opinion we stopped playing that kind of football at the end of the Fabregas era. Since then it has been mechanical stuff. No apparent style. Just individual brilliance and robotic / mechanical patchy football. Anecdotal patchy good football here and there since that 8-2 spanking against United all those seasons back. I have not been confident enough since then with any team we built a long the way. Patchy patchy and patched up teams by all our managers. They give you a nice purple patch each season here and there and that was about that. Nothing to get you out of your seat for the most part. We keep waiting for that sustained push up the table but always end up as an anti-climax.
          We have plateaued as a club. Always hoping and willing for the team but keep getting the same old anticlimactic feeling each season.
          How do we go from doing fairly okay to suddenly losing 2 games in a row against poor teams like Palace and Brighton?
          It is baffling.

  18. Tell you what Ivan Toney should be top of our list. Strength, pace, power, bring players into the game, good in the air and next season he will be banging in goals consistently. I think the lad has the capability to be twice the play Kane is

    1. @James,

      Half of Toney’s goals are penalties.. Nothing wrong at scoring penalties but if you count his open play goals, he’s at the same level as Che Adams, Watkins etc.

      And I don’t know if you’ve seen it but Toney has terrible attitute towards his current club. Several times he’s been caught disrespecting Brentford..

  19. Lets be honest Auba had downed tools long before Arteta banned him from the team. Funny enough as soon as he signed a 300k a week deal alla Ozil. Maitland-Niles, Mari, Kolasinac and Chambers were *hit why keep them, they all had errors in them that would cost us goals. We had a backup center back, left back and right back. Maitland-Niles was not good enough to play in midfield and didn’t want to play at right back. In the managers defense what is he supposed to do.

    I don’t like the fact that Arteta seems to have his favourites and seems to stick with a formation that doesn’t work with the players at his disposal. But again what else can he choose from, we could have signed players in Jan but we need top player. Not 2nd rate ones like Wenger resorted to when he couldn’t get his top targets, that’s how we ended up with Laca, he wanted Benzema.

    Pepe is another constant arguement, what did he do when he come on sat. Same as all the other times he’s come on absolutely nothing. In pro football when you get a chance you have to take it, wether that’s 10, 20, 30 or 45 mins. Pepe fails to do anything apart from run down blind alleys and slows down play eventually turning back and passing inside and backwards or tossing an aimless balls into the box to a striker who is either not in the box or incapable of challenging for it. But Pepe should be reading that not throwing balls in anyway.

    We need good strikers with different qualities in the summer. We look to be losing at least 5 players from our 19 man squad and Arteta, rightly, 22 outfield players. So that means 7 new faces around the first team. I think that will be 5 new signings and 2 or 3 youth promotions.

  20. There is absolutely no excuse for these last 2 loses to Palace and Brighton, what a joke from Arteta and his players.
    Take 1 step forwards and 2 steps back. This was the moment for Arteta to show his progress but he is failing again.
    It’s so frustrating that all of a sudden we are back to poor performances we were having for the majority of this season. The vast majority of the players have been good to Arteta since he got appointed and have kept him in his job. But i fear they might start losing confidence and down tools on him.
    Arteta Can’t blame anyone for such poor performances against Palace and Brighton, we only scored 1 goal against Aston Villa, we have been struggling to score enough goals, and to be honest under Artetas tenure we have struggled to score enough goals per game. When was the last time we scored 4 goals? In how many games have we scored 3 goals? Is it the set up or lack of natural goal scorers in our team?
    Can’t believe that we are still talking this kind of talk this late in the season.
    Two loses against mid table / lower table small team. So underwhelming and disappointing from Arteta and his players.
    You always try to be positive but always being let down when it matters..

  21. The only bright spot of the week is the return of Ken1945. I have been missing him greatly.
    Back to the issue of the team. I think there has been a blip mainly due to the injuries to two of our best players namely Tierney and Partey. Tavares and Lokonga had almost been forgotten which has affected their performance. However with a little more training they will come back to their best performance. The same thing has happened to Pepe. However the same excuse cannot apply to Nketiah who has failed to make use of his chances. I wonder why Arteta prefers him to Pepe. I am confident that by next week Tavares will have greatly improved. Xhaka should return to his regular midfield position and partner with Lokonga. If Tavares is deemed unequal to the task then Saka can play there and Pepe comes in Saka’s position. I feel Nketiah should remain on the bench if our team is to recover.

  22. With the fixtures remaining we can’t possibly finish in top 4 we don’t have the quality to fill in for the injured tierney and partley and that along with having no bottle when pressure is on will be why we will fail unfortunately and hate to say it is spuds will finish 4th and that will have a big knock on effect for summer transfer window knowing we will not attract the quality players that are needed to get us back on track a few more years of doom and gloom!!

  23. Well Danny it is never over until it is over. None can predict with precision how we will be respond in the am coming days and weeks. We can defy the odds and beat Spurs and Man U and then draw with Chelsea as we beat the other teams. Anything is possible.

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