One step forward two steps back by Konstantin Mitov
Well lovely Arsenal people, this game summed up our season really. It’s exactly the reason why one good result like Leicester means nothing at this football club.
We could’ve had Burnley easy, but instead it was us serving points on a plate. That goal we conceded was pathetic to say the least. But to expect different from Xhaka? And what is Leno doing exactly?
Trying to play it out from the back is orders from the manager, but you see players under pressure and you still decide not to break your foot making a clearance, but rather give it to the person who’s cost us single-handedly quite a few points. Remember how Xhaka started Leicester’s goal a week ago?
How many more chances? And how many chances can we miss? We were sloppy and careless. In football you don’t get away with it. I just wonder if there is a person sitting at the bench whose job is to address these issues?
You can’t blame Arteta for the missed chances, but keeping Saka who was terrible and taking people out on a yellow card was questionable to say the least. Then subbing Odegaard to play Laca in number 10? Really?
The we bring Pepe on late, so there’s not enough time to win the game. I am sorry, 10th in the league is hardly progress. When Chelsea sacked Lampard I could look around the table and see them close to us. Now I need to scroll to the top 4 to see where they are and we are still mid-table.
The players we have aren’t great, but we are where we are because we keep trusting a system and players that have constantly produced the same mistakes.
The players looked all happy at the start of the second half, why? What for? I want to see players angry, wanting to win, not tolerating the mistakes we make.
The real mistake is the one I am making, though. For watching this, when time and time again we’ve shown we aren’t good enough. We play like a mid-table team because we are one.
We aren’t patient with the manager, we are stupid. We lack the ambition to go further up the table, because it suits us where we are and this is the saddest thing. This is probably the 4th or 5th season in a row where I see us not caring about the league at all. That is a concern, but Arteta won’t be sacked. He’s the godfather of boring error prone football and there is no one better for us than him.
Konstantin
I’m wondering what does Pépé need to do in order to get a similar run of games as Wilian?i mean scoring doesn’t seem to be enough the same thing happened with Laca earlier in the season the guy scored 3 games in a row and was benched on the 4th Pépé has been improving and having more impact in games but doesn’t get to start,must be confusing and demoralising for players when you’re performing and not getting picked!
Unless you’re Granit Xhaka.
We knew this would happen tho. Willian only needed to do one decent thing and Arteta would find a way to put him in every starting XI. He’s incredibly biased towards the wrong players…
The most guilty ones in Burnley were the Saka and Pepe for wasting too many clear-cut chances. Xhaka and Leno should’ve made better decisions, but we could’ve won the game in the first half if we buried the easy chances
Arteta’s substitutions almost worked, but Pepe ruined the plan by missing one glorious chance. Arteta’s football style is entertaining if you understand and appreciate the sheer amount of clear-cut chances we’ve been making from open-play
Arteta’s tactics have given us well-crafted chances, not the predictable “chances” we used to make before he managed Arsenal. Instead of wasting a lot of money to replace Arteta now, we need to give him the chance until December
I agree, let’s waste another season and call it “Rebuild 3.0”
Arteta should be judged on the end results and where we finish at the end of the season
If we finish below 6th place then he should go
He’s had plenty of time
The alternative is to roll the dice again. As gotanidea highlighted the attack does look better and the defence is certainly more stable. We still need to change some personnel. Arteta has had only 2 windows and it’s clear to me he’s made some positive changes, however without too much money, there’s still a lot more to do.
Patience – the now now now mentality will end up prolonging the issues we have still further.
we’ve “rolled the dice ” on Emery (did ANYONE besides the board believe in this guy?) and Arteta (a complete amateur). We’re rolling the dice on bad picks. If Arsenal were serious they’d try to get Nagelsmann, but we all know that won’t happen and it will be another out of nowhere pick, or someone underwhelming like Enrique.
Arteta’s football has been at times dour and rather predictable, played almost at walking pace.
.Out of 27 matches played we have lost as many matches as we’ve won (11), that to me doesn’t indicate bad luck but structural issues in the way we are set up and play. It doesn’t matter if the chances we now miss are more glorious than the chances we used to miss, the result is exactly the same, we still miss them and the manager, seems unable to fix that.
We need to have a run of results, and I mean more than 3, which seems beyond Arteta’s capabilities
This season is a write off, we won’t get past 10th, if we are lucky, we aren’t in the FA cup having prioritised the league and I don’t think we’ll win the EL. Arteta should not be our manager come next season
that’s a ridiculous comment…we would waste far more money giving him another window to spend, plus whatever other decision he would make regarding our more youthful prospects, that could seriously affect the future of the club, than the nominal cost of simply replacing him in the summer…keeping in mind, that I’m not pushing him out the door, I’m just questioning the validity of your comment
as for our tactics, if you want to play it out from the back, you need to threaten opposing squads with some quick counter-attacks, just to keep them honest…if you simply break the press then employ sideways, slow build up possession-based offensive tactics, you instill no fear into the opposition regarding how many players they’re willing to dedicate to the press, as they will have ample time to regroup if it fails to materialize…Arteta doesn’t seem to be able to provide a truly comprehensive plan, it’s all too rudimentary for my liking…which could be understandable if he wasn’t playing so many veteran players on a regular basis…ironically, it’s the veterans who can’t seem to handle a more complicated and/or expansive game-plan
Looking back at the goal we conceded yesterday and what ever agenda certain fans have against either Leno and Xhaka you also have to look at the part Tierney and Mari had in that goal ,both playing keep ball between them and then passing back to Leno when Burnley had already set up for the press ,they both had plenty of opportunities to also clear up field so for me all 4 had a part to blame ,but the biggest blame should be with the manager who is asking them to play this way when the players we have cannot see the instructions through .
I’m not excusing the mistake but we should have been 3 -0 up before that mistake anyway and it’s confusing how we come away form beating Leicester and then once again struggle against a shitty team like Burnley .
Arteta really does need a big win in EL if he’s to stay beyond this season else he could be following Frank spencer through the door and plying his trade in Spain aswell.
I noticed the same thing Dan. Tierney is the one who intially does the pass back, Mari recycles it a second later with no thought. The excessive backpassing is annoying and awful. Arteta seems to be a big fan of it because it’s been like that the whole season. Very underwhelming performance. We need to stop defaulting to Leno, work on creating space to pass out the back better instead of the dumb pass backs.
Shot ourselves in the foot once again!! Surprised we have any feet left 😄
No point dwelling on this game, even though it pains me and felt like a loss!
Huge game on Thursday and we really can’t afford any brain farts or squandered chances… yesterday has brought my anxiety back with a vengeance 😄
Today being March 7, marks a whole year since I was last at the Emirates. Wow, a whole year.. and what a year it’s been. Even with results/performances like yesterday, I really do miss going and hope I’ll be back there at the start of next season!
Leno has no fault for Burnley goal. It was all Xhaka. I have watched several times and watched once again before this comment. When Mari passed to Leno Xhaka was no where in the box but the moment Leno received the pass, Xhaka who was outside our box and behind a Burnley play made a run into the box and asked for the ball which Leno gave when he was in the 22 box ( few inches away from the line ). His first touch took the ball into our 18, there he has options of passing it back to Leno, or Mari but he choose to pass through the Burnley striker. If Xhaka had not ran in and asked for the ball Leno might choose different option because of this I exonerated him.
I thought it was a terrible performance all round. Yesterday’s game was only a portion of the game we played against Leicester in terms of effort and resolve. Plus, we’ve had week off !
Xhaka was particularly poor and the goal he gave away just summed up his overall performance. Several times he received the ball, wasn’t closed down and had his foot on the ball for several seconds with forward space to move into or at least three clear cut forward passing options. But as per usual, he passes backwards. I’m not surprised for different reasons we gave that goal away as it’s not the first time that’s happened to us. We keep trying to play from the back and it’s all very well against a team that aren’t going to press hard and fast in numbers. But Burnley done just that. They made sure that every available passing option from the back was martialled with the hope of forcing an error. To which they got their reward. One of the comments above said they exonerated Leno but he was just as culpable. He often has the chance to clear his lines in games but chooses to give the ball to a player in close proximity putting that player and the team in danger. He often seems to actually wait a few seconds until our player is practically closed down and then passes, then from that point the ball becomes a hot potato and every involved panics !
But to give it to Xhaka in that position is criminal. Xhaka can’t even make a decent five to seven yard pass when he’s fifty yards from our goal. What chance has he got when he’s in our box and under pressure ! Ok, sometimes he can have a solid game and does everything right but it’s too few and far between. He’s a Flamini, a Song, a Denhilson, a Coquelan, a water carrier. We need someone a bit more dynamic that just that in our midfield and that’s not Xhaka.
Mind you, I didn’t thing Partey had a good game either. Excluding his very good vision to make the forward pass to Willian which then led to our goal. Partey often then made the wrong choices, tried too much and got caught with the ball a lot…………just like Diaby used to !
Our team have developed some real bad habits which we just can’t seem to rid ourselves of. In fact it’s like we’re trying to cultivate them. Before we even think about trying to play nice football, we should learn how to be resilient as individuals and as a team !
Dan I really agreed with you on the Partey issue. He is taking too long to pass the ball and taking too many touches, thus giving the opposition more time to organize there defense. by the time he passes the ball, most times the opposition defense is well organized to defend his ball whether over the top or on the ground. Arsenal definately need to sell Xhaka seasons end and get s solid holding midfielder to work with Partey.