Taking what the manager and players are saying at face value can seem like they are spouting the obvious, however, when you read between the lines you get a very different insight into what is actually happening.
Granit Xhaka and Unai Emery are two examples of them both saying the same thing, which in this instance is building confidence ahead of the Europa League semi-final clash on Thursday night against Valencia but it also tells us something else, it tells us that confidence in the dressing room is actually on the floor.
This is what Xhaka had to say: “The confidence, you take only if you win, if you fight, if you have a good result,” he said.
“We are all disappointed in the dressing room and not happy, of course not, but we have to look forward and the next game is Thursday.
“We have been fighting to win. It is not that we don’t fight because if we don’t fight, we don’t go to play. But it is difficult to explain. After this game or whenever you lose, it is always difficult to find the right words.”
“If you are in the semi-final, you are two games from the final,” he said. “I know anything can happen but if you are three games from the title, you have to think positively.”
Well, we have lost three in a row and as Xhaka said, you only get confidence if you win, so you can only imagine what the confidence is like in the dressing room when you lose three in a row.
Now let’s take what Emery said after yesterday’s devastating 3-0 loss to Leicester City
“Our confidence can go up, can go down. But the most important is to be clear in our minds and our way. Our way is to think of this semi-final and prepare for the match in the best possible way.”
Confidence can go up, can go down is what he said, in better words, confidence is down, there is simply no other way to look at it.
That means that we have a dressing room utterly despondent and just four days to see a dramatic turnaround but that is the problem with confidence, it cannot be turned on and off with just words or motivational speeches, it does need wins and the bottom line is that we are entering the game against Valencia on the back of three shattering losses.
But at least it has been acknowledged by both the players and manager and that is a starting point, whether it makes a difference time will only tell.
As what Pochettino said to his players (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauricio_Pochettino#Managerial_style), Arsenal players have to brave when playing in the field. The key will be the confidence, playing with high defensive and create high risk passes/ movements, because fortune favours the brave
Having said that, Arsenal players have lame first touches compared to Barcelona, as shown in their passing drills:
youtube.com/watch?v=iRv0JoMvR6g
Now compared their first touches and speed of thought with Barcelona players’ on the video below. No wonder we easily got robbed, because we have no technically gifted midfielder in the team:
youtube.com/watch?v=hxEDhhS8-b8
What the F was that post all about gotanidea ?
Care to translate please?
*high defensive line
I completely understand what Unai is trying to do with the team but fans are questioning his tactics without considering the big picture.
In the Wolves game , Arsenal lost with 70% possession , and in Leicester game arsenal gave the possession to Leicester for 2 reasons , 1. To practice organizational defending and counter attacking. Arsenal could have kept the possession but possession strategy doesn’t win games as much as you think it would and it requires great defensive players to execute it perfectly yet fans blame Unai for the game tactics. 2. Arsenal players should keep their energy for the thursday game. pressing game and attacking tactics while going with a possession strategy requires a lot of energy , so playing a defensive game against Leicester made sense and that is the reason Unai got angry after that stupid red card , that idiot ref ruined everything with his pathetic call. Unai didn’t use the second team because as he said he has found the base team here and he was tying to help them adept to new conditions and i’m sure he is gonna buy many players to complete his team in the summer.
Also you should remember that changing an entire game strategy of a Football club is a long game and Unai is making every decision with future in mind , he cares about big picture and i’m sure he will make Arsenal football club one of the best (if not the best) in the world in the next few years.
Valencia will walk all over us. They’ve only lost less than we did over the same period 😉
Nope, coz the players’ motivation would be different due to the prestige of the game
We had 3rd place in our hands, UCL football would be coming back to us along with st totteringham day..
Talk about motivation, we could be looking at UEL trophy plus the ‘wenger trophy’ (top 4), this is more than just UEL, where the F.. was their motivation then huh?
…..Why won’t you guys confidence go up and down when you guys are not even motivated to do anything. Jesus! Hearing him say anything pisses me off like crazy. Xhaka, who was pissed and told a reporter to ask his coach why he wasn’t picked against crystal palace, only for him to be picked and yet it’s looked like the worst midfield I have ever seen at Arsenal especially against Leicester.
He takes forever to turn with the ball and takes him another millennium to decide what to do with the ball, usually by then the opposition team players would have swarmed him and force him off the ball. Such a clown has the nerve to speak on confidence when he barely displays that.
Been a long time since he scored and assisted, hasn’t it
He excels in intercepting and tackling, but we have a DM for the dirty job. His job is supposed to be playmaking, yet he cannot dictate the tempo
Should be easy to sell around 30+ M due to his high statistics, his physical attributes and his marketable figure, but we might miss his toughness later on
It reminds me of Mertesacker coming out every time we got spanked big by the likes of Liverpool, City, Chelsea etc?.
He would repeat the same old most annoying catchphrase each time and each season we got smashed in 5’s and 6’s.
I am paraphrasing but it always went something like this each season every after a heavy defeat, “We are hurting but we have to have a deeper look at ourselves, need to go back to that training field and put thewrongs righ and bounce back”.
Lol
Yes James everything you say is true about Xhaka, but it could probably be said about most of this lot, Motivation from above is needed to to instill confidence, I believe some of these players think they are better than they are, I like Emery and where he has got us thus far”BUT” I think he looks nervous on the touchline and hops around like a demented frog, I don’t know what he achieved as a player because I had never heard of him so I am guessing not very much,Former players like Vierra, Zidane, Simeone demand instant respect Great players that have done it all, they would instil the confidence needed to motivate and inspire talented players and get the best out of them, alas i think it is too late for most of the current Arsenal team and Emery is fighting an uphill battle because of the owners tight purse strings, We are in for a rough ride people.
Can’t tackle and has no pace, get shot of him.
You see the Barca team training on how to score goals and Arsenal players are busy playing and laughing about. No wonder the likes of Iwobi can’t shoot at goal . Even our strikers can’t create space for themselves to shoot, there is little or no training on scoring which is not good for the team.