From Wenger to Arteta from a lifelong Arsenal fan

Good day Gooners, my name is Zipho, I am an Arsenal supporter from South Africa since the early 90’s. I have seen Ian Wright scoring some wonderful goals, there was even a music video showing Wrighty showing his prowess in front of goal wearing a JVC sponsored jersey. Newcastle United was a team to be reckoned with, plus a suprise package that came in the form of Blackburn Rovers winning the league. Manchester was only Red those days, the Blue was only a silver lining. Nobody even spoke about Man City during those times.

Now coming back to Arsenal, I just felt that Mr Wenger took too long to resign himself as manager, especially when the consistency that we have come to know from Arsenal FC had long gone. There were talks of who would come in should Wenger leave the club, by that time Pep was leaving the Bavarians, Jürgen was finishing his time at the Signa Eduna Park. Here I was thinking Pep is probably a manager we need but might be too expensive for the club. Jurgen was a reachable candidate for the position of Wenger, only to find that Pep was not even approached for the position and a lot more names were thrown in the mix.

And we ended up with Emery, whom I didn’t feel was the right man for the job. Simply because his Sevilla team couldn’t even win the La Liga, but managed to win the Europa multiple times. I thought we are in trouble, he couldn’t even win the Champions League with PSG. I thought this was disappointing from our board, but I was willing to see if he succeeds. Unfortunately he didn’t. We didn’t even know what to make of the team any more.

Enter the former Arsenal Captain in the form of Arteta. Inexperienced in this role, few even gave him a chance of being here even today. But here he is still grinding these young lads. When the season started we had only losses to show for it. I thought this is going to be a problem if they had to show Arteta the door, because we would be the Man Utd of London who keep chopping and changing managers. Who still have not found stability since Sir Alex left the club with an exception of Ole, before they had to re-sign Cristiano.

Now most of us Arsenal supporters are happy with the team, because of the consistency they have shown. I do feel like at times our team needs to be playing under pressure because then they make fewer mistakes. I remember the Watford game we were under pressure from the first minute fortunately the goal was ruled for offside.

We played well to score our first, well the Watford equaliser was just special.

After that we played so well that we even scored two more goals, when I looked at the clock it was 60’+ minutes and I thought now is a time to introduce our substitutes, maybe he could have given Pepe more minutes and rested players like Saka and Laca. To give Eddie a run, by doing that we could have maintained pressure on the hosts.

But no, we got sloppier I saw our players starting to relax and make mistakes, like Ramsdale, that almost gifted Watford a chance. We had just a two goal cushion of which I feel could have been increased, but the boys wanted to do things the hard way. In the end it felt like a grinded result than a comfortable one. I hope the manager learns from this match because as much as we have the upper hand when it comes to finishing fourth. We need to score plenty of goals so that when you look at the goal difference, it looks pleasing because should we be level on points with whoever is chasing the fourth place. Our goal difference should be far superior.

Thank you for reading. Always a Gooner.

Zipho