How long will Arsenal fans give Arteta to prove he is a success next season?

How much time does Arteta have left?

Arsenal have just finished 5th for 21/22 season, missing out on the Champions League once again, and there are two ways of looking at this – success or failure.

We are all disappointed right now, considering we pretty much had 4th spot in the bag, and at one point, even Chelsea were in our sights. Once the dust settles, and we take emotion out of it, some will consider this season a failure, and some a success (albeit, not a huge success).

So how soon into next season do we look at replacing Arteta if it’s not going well? This article is open for everyone, but more so for those who still support Arteta (like myself). The question is obviously irrelevant for those who already want him out.

Arteta will spend more money during the summer. It will be his 4th season as manager (3rd full season). We have seen small amounts of progress season on season, but I feel we now have to hit the ground running from week one next season.

I like a lot of Arteta’s signings so far, and apart from Odegaard (who looks very promising), he’s signed no other attacking players. I am intrigued to see what we look like, and how we will play next season with his attackers in what should be a full Arteta starting XI.

I am realistic, so I do not expect a title challenge next season given the huge gap between Liverpool, City and the rest, but what I do expect next season is:

  • Champions League qualification

  • Consistent performances

  • Better results

  • Less defeats

  • A very deep run in either of the Europa League, FA Cup or League Cup

  • I am not demanding any trophies, but they are a fair enough trade off if other requirements are not met.

The 22/23 season will start August 6th, and will take a 5 week break around 12/13th November for the 2022 World Cup. The league will resume around the 18th December.

I would give Arteta up to the 13th November, and if we’re not performing at a good enough level, I would change then. That would give us a good 5 weeks to not only sort out a new manager, but to reshape our January transfer plans as well with any new appointment.

So there it is. I’m giving Arteta around 13 weeks into the new season before I register with the “Arteta Out” brigade. How much longer will you give him?

Jonbo

Tags Arteta fans

27 Comments

  1. The goal posts and timelines seem to keep moving which is what I think frustrates a lot of fans.

    -Wait till the end his first full season and you’ll see
    -Wait till he can clear out deadwood (4 windows in a row now)
    -Wait till he gets his own players

    I’ve mentioned before but the contract management from now until the new season is my main focus now. There are a lot of players on 1-2 years left and MA/Edu have failed miserably so far with contracts in my opinion, so that needs to be the focus now. If we don’t nail down our key players and manage to get some revenue in for players we want out then I’d consider the start of the season a failure already.

    After that, regardless of who we play, I would consider a minimum of 6 wins and only 2 losses in our first 10 games a decent start.

    1. PJ-SA, funny how you blame Arteta/Edu for the contract situations, when it isn’t even their job to sort them out. Richard Garlick is in charge of the contracts of all the players.

  2. Urgh, stop moving the goalposts. This season the target was top 6, we’ve comfortably achieved that amd came so close to CL, it was a big overachievement! Congratulations to Arteta and team, wd are progressing well with a plan. Next season we aim for top 4 and need to sign more players, key injuries exposed us so with an extra CM and some FWDs that can actually finish, top 4 is an achievable target next season.

    1. Who said top 6 was a target for this season? When was that ever the goal?

      Do you really accept that winning nothing and being knocked out the FA Cup at the earliest possible stage is achieving anything?

      1. Let us be honest. We finished outside of Europe last season and finished 5th this season with a remote chance at 4th with our own destiny in our hands with 2 games to go. That is progress over last season by a mile.

        1. Measuring yourself against your own pathetic previous season is a guaranteed way to be mediocre. Why only look back 12 months?

          18/19 – 5th place (+ made EL final)
          19/20 – 8th place
          20/21 – 8th place
          21/22 – 5th place

          Please point out the progress?

          1. By definition, if you measure progress by where you finish in the final PL standings you don’t measure yourself against yourself. You measure yourself against the other 31 teams. For me, I care mainly about how we finished year over year under the current manager. I don’t measure today’s progress vs 2019, I measure vs last year.

            Fell free to measure against 2019 when Emery was in charge, in which case, indeed we stood still.

  3. Same thing was said this season until we were told to give him till end of the season. Now that cycle is being repeated again. Mediocrity FC, sorry…I meant to say Arsenal FC is going nowhere reasonable with an arrogant, poor tactician and terrible nam manager like he who must not be named

  4. No jono, 13 weeks? Too long. I like what his done, 2022/23 season should start with at least 3x very experienced players, so that when it’s crunch time, we’ll be there with bags, boots and every conceivable attitude to be on top of things. Our you guns were bullied a bit, but the big guns didn’t show up.

    1. I’ve been in the camp that saw a bright future with Arteta. It then went wobbly and has since picked up to the point that I agree with Jonbo.

      It was always going to be a big ask to get a completely new to management manager firing on all cylinders straightaway and so it proved. Nor am I so awestruck by Arteta to think that is all hunky dory but I think he has done ok on his learning curve.

      The acid test is about what happens next season. We can’t go on indefinitely being the nearly but not quite team or a club that lets Arteta not make inroads into the top4. I could see no point in sacking him too soon and hope that all the nuggets of football wisdom that he has picked up over the last couple of years work out. Those few weeks into the new season will be, I’m sure, time enough to make a prediction of his long term suitability or not as the case may be.

      1. Fair assessment and good points you make. I think Jonbo makes an excellent point for next year and the time frame.

        Enough time, money, and investment in Arteta where he should be improving.

        PL results and Europa results should impact him continuing to be manager or not.

        Changing managers introduces so many variables, but we simply can’t continue with the performances, collapses, and underperforming when we need to show up.

        I hope ownership takes this as seriously as fans do at this point.

      2. My own view is that despite the disappointing end to the season, overall, Arteta has done very well. Most top managers in world football would not have taken on such a project. Overhauling the squad with the introduction of young players is very high risk. This is the more so when starting with a relatively limited spine of the team and without the type of funds available to the likes of Man City/Man Utd etc.
        I am not sold on the idea that mistakes have been made simply because Arteta is new to management. Most of those pointing elsewhere have referred to managers in a different country’s league or those with stronger squads. Whether any of them would have done better with Arsenal is debatable.
        We had a coach who had managed one of the biggest clubs in European and he could not make it work with the players we had. By the time he left we were on a downward trend and then we were almost in free fall by the time Arteta took over.
        A massive number of players have since been shipped out. Many have gone to mid level or lower level teams. Most of them have had no more than decent performances. Yet, several people on this site have criticised these moves suggesting that Arteta should have kept them and got them playing better despite what appears to be limited potential. The only one to go to to a truly elite team is Aubameyang and he was not performing for us at the time he left.
        The players and the manager should be given considerable credit for the improvements made this season.
        With a stronger squad next season we should be in a stronger position. However, there are no guarantees and much also depends on what other teams do to strengthen their squads.

        1. I like your reply David and think you make sense throughout
          I have been supportive of Arteta when the knives were well and truly out and to a point there is still plenty of disquiet about the final league position now – although nothing as hateful as before.

          I don’t think it is unreasonable for progress to be made a quarter of the way through the season. I had forgotten the impact of the World Cup but in a normal season heading for Xmas is a reasonable time to take stock.

          I do think there comes a point when the pieces need to fit and I don’t think Late November is a bad time to evaluate the situation.

  5. Top 5 has be be recognozed as progress this season. And only the naive would think had Thieney, Partey and Tomiyasun not been absent for such long periods we would still not have taken 4th. I don’t like injuries as an excuse but imagine Spurs without Kane or Son for a long period of time and see if you think they would have dropped some points.

    Next year will be harder than this year given we now play on Thursday night. Obviously we have a very thin squad and an injury prone squad.

    If the club invests wisely and aggresivly (Tielemans or Neves in midfield, one or two strikers, better back up at left back and right back) next season’s goal IMO should be to better this season.

    Top 5 and a trophy or top 4 without a trophy could be argued to be an improvement.

    Clearly, a lot will also depend on how Ten Hag does at Man U, how Chelsea fair (Tuchel has gone of the boil roughly around this time with his last two clubs IMO) and if Spurs manage to keep Conte and the size of the seemingly inevitable jump Newcastle will make.

    We have to be reralistic.

  6. Europa League qualification was a good result. Performances have not been consistent enough enough for Champions League. We wanted a complete change of culture, style and attitude and for the most part we have done that integrating new players along the way, and getting shot of some oldies.
    I’m not disappointed, and CL qualification was not lost at Spuds, but at Palace, Everton, and home to Brighton.
    We are still 5 years behind City and Liverpool, perhaps 3 behind Chelsea and a year behind Spuds, but that ground can be made up more quickly with such a young squad with some really useful addtions. Saliba is ours next year too.

  7. Since he just got handed a shiny new contract, I’ll give him until they sack him. IJS…

  8. 13 werks is too short in my opinion and it will rely very much on what we do over the next couple of weeks in terms of transfer..

    We don’t necessarily has to develop a reputation like Chelsea to be successful,

    Once we get our recruitment right and mistakes are not repeated, it will be difficult to find a clear path to rid us of the gaffer before we complete a next season.

  9. I still can’t figure out if this was year 1 of 3 or 2 of 3 or 3 of 3, so is next year 2 of 3 or 3 of 4??????

  10. 3 games in we were faves for relegation and although I’m extremely disappointed now we haven’t made top 4 , I’m also not too pissed off where we are. Although missing out to spurs is worse. There, I’ve come out and admitted it 😊

  11. The problem with only giving Arteta say half a season to improve the team, IS. what do you do if he fails!!!

    Most of the really good managers have been snapped up already! Do we take a chance on another young untried manager? Isn’t that starting from scratch again?

    Remember, before anybody puts forward his name, Vieira has only had one season in the EPL, with little or no pressure or expectation piled on him. He is still an unknown quantity.

    I would keep Arteta for the entire year and review the situation at the end of next season (assuming we do not get into relegation trouble!!).

    For those who talk about giving Arteta a set number of games before evaluating him, our success can depend very much upon how the early fixtures pan out.

    One last comment for the Arsenal Hierarchy, before they think of ditching Arteta.

    The “wonderful”players we buy in this Summer’s transfer window might just become a new managers “Deadwood”

  12. Jonbo, As a man who has til now had much time for your articles, the unexpected comment that you would give MA only til mid November, “unless performing at a good enough level”massively disappoints me.

    Firstly, It is irrelevant what you , I, or anyone else on JA thinks, facing the fact that MA has a new three year contract just offered and accepted. Secondly, it is important that the wiser fans on here – of which I had, til now, included you- stand firmly behind this fine and determined manager.
    LASTLY, as you seemingly, think it MIGHT be appropriate to change manager, just as the WC begins, when we would be without a manager at all,while the worlds best players show their wares , a complete lack of foresight and real thought has gone into that dismally wrong remark.
    Deep Sigh!

    1. I disagree jon fox.

      I like Arteta, and I completely understood that a lot of patience was needed, because he went for a complete reboot. And I am glad he went down that path as we needed to rebuild from the ground up.

      But now Arteta will be entering into his 4th season, 3rd full season, so I think it’s fair to expect a lot more consistency and success (however one defines that).

      The beauty of using mid Nov as a review point, is that it gives Arteta a good 3 months for us to see some of that consistency. Equally, the 5 week break gives the club a long period of time to sort out a new manager and new Jan plans.

      If things are going badly, and we keep Arteta going into the Jan transfer window, it would be tough to pull the trigger on any potential deals, given he might not last much longer. On top of that, changing a manager when you have games within a week is difficult as well. Again, the 5 week break would be perfect.

      Surely CL qualification is a must next season, and if we’re miles away, would it not be wise to get a new manager in to try and rectify that?

  13. Going into his third full season I think it is fair for us to expect either a top 4 finish ‘minimum’ and possibly a domestic cup or Win the Europa League. In terms of the managerial side of things.
    – better use of squad(rotation)
    – improvement on man management skills
    – Pro active substitutions
    – better in game management
    – a more consistent style of play of the course of the season
    – take more points off the other big 6 sides
    – work on our inability to come from behind to win games(record over his tenure is disgraceful to be quite Frank)

  14. The first ten games will tell us everything. If we are not challenging and playing the same dire football, then we all will know what to expect. There has to be immediate impact because we are closing in on Arteta being here 3 years. Thats long enough for any project to be working.

  15. One thing is obvious – we all set our own targets at the start of the season, so it’s pretty pointless to argue whether or not we achieved them.
    Secondly those targets changed for many of us at least once during the season, so the “did MA reach the required level” discussion becomes even more muddled and irrelevant.
    Thirdly, football, it’s standards and development are ever evolving – for example forward pressing, the incredible levels that Man City and Liverpool are at astride the EPL, the huge money at a few top clubs and the increasing willingness and ability of players to leverage limited ability for cash. Comparisons with past seasons are uneven, unfair and largely irrelevant. I would also argue that they are counter-productive. The past is the past, but constantly comparisons with anything other than the last few games prevents us from standing back and gauging whether we are satisfied with where we are NOW. I would feel the same whether we were (stats wise) moving up or down. Somebody quotes stats and my response is usually to doze off.
    I’m happy with having the firth best team in the strongest league in the world. I’m unhappy that our football is often boring and negative, and I’m fairly happy with the age and potential of 50% of our team. I’m livid with not having a decent striker, and I’m not sure Arteta will ever be the real deal, but I know he’s here for the foreseeable so I will have plenty of time to find out, and no amount of bit**ing by me or anyone here will change that. And I certainly see no mileage in saying “I will decide in 13 weeks”. We could win the first 13 then lose the next 25!

    Just my opinion…

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