Opinion: Arsenal’s problem might be trying to change an old culture too quickly

This isn’t the best of times to be an Arsenal fan. Personally, I am no longer so eager to watch our games.

I am not even worried about losing games anymore, what worries me is the lack of cutting edge in front of goal that we have developed.

Truthfully, when we were winning games like the match against Liverpool during Project Restart, we lauded our team for defending well against the league’s champions, we should have thought about a time like this.

In that game, we didn’t care that our team took only a few shots and scored only when Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk were complacent.

Now we are worried that our team doesn’t score, we probably should celebrate like we did the other time because after all, we don’t concede too many goals as well.

That being said, I think the problem that we have now isn’t new.

The reason why we signed Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette is because we needed more goals in our team, so goal scoring has been a problem for some time.

The problem now is that Mikel Arteta came in and won trophies by “changing our culture”, now we have bigger expectations, and the players cannot deliver because they overachieved when they won those trophies.

I agree with the change of culture that Arteta wants to bring, I see it as changing a losing culture to a winning one. 

But that will take time and now that reality has hit us that we are not as good as we thought we were because we won two trophies, let us all calm down and let Arteta rebuild the team.

An article from Ime

Tags Arsenal Mikel Arteta

12 Comments

  1. Let me remind everyone that in Arsene Wenger’s last 4 seasons he won the FA Cup and Community Shield 3 times making 6 trophies out of 8 in the last 4 years . Please can we start having all this talk about Arteta winning two trophies and changing culture and be honest about where our problems as a club are really.

  2. If he was still with us would we be any better? I’m not being anti AW but we just don’t know if he could reverse the trend away from the top 4

  3. SueP, I don’t think Simon was advocating a return.

    I feel this suggestion that AW, UE, GG or any other person might do a better job, while amusing, is quite pointless as it would never happen.

    It’s MA’s time and we should judge him on his results alone.
    For goodness sake, the whole club has transformed, from poor old Gunnersarous to shirt sponsors and everything in between.

    Of course, remember our history, that’s important, but let’s live in the present.

  4. Nine games into the season and Arsenal fans have become this negative already. I agree we experienced another setback, but in the grand scheme of things, we’re moving in the right direction under the leadership of Arteta.

    When we talk about culture, let’s not forget his achievements beside the throphies he won. He brought ruthlessness to this team, no more pampering like Wenger used to do. Overall, his player management has been good. Players not up to his standard were banished (Guendozi, Ozil, Sokratis, etc). He prevented a mass exodus of important players (Aubameyang, Xhaka, etc), signed good players (Gabriel, Willian, Partey, etc), and streamlined the backroom staffs. Not to mention we continue to nurture exciting talents in this squad (Saka, Martinelli, etc).

    Since his appointment, he’s tried to make this team harder to break. It hasn’t been successful and our attack has been compromised as the result but there is noticeable progress. I think when Partey is available, we could finally use a 4-3-3 formation with him, Ceballos and Willock as the midfielders.

  5. The problem is not goal scoring.

    The problem is chance creation.

    If Aubameyang or Lacazzete went to a chelsea or an Atalanta or a Barcelona, they’d fire goals for breakfast.

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