Where do Arsenal go now? by Konstantin Mitov
Reality finally has crashed down on Arsenal and the lack of heart and desire in performances has been matched by our results. I’ve been warning of this all season, despite of all the hate I’ve gotten and all the “negativity” people seem to think I have against Arsenal.
The miserable truth is that apart from that 5-6 games after Christmas, we’ve been too slow, lacking ideas, mis-managed games where we’ve been on top, made a lot of individual mistakes, played players that don’t deserve to, while dropping others that have performed well ,and the list goes on and on.
I never enjoy when Arsenal don’t win, but dropping our of the Europa league is exactly what we deserve. It reflects the way we’ve been run as a football club on and off the pitch, and finally I think most Arsenal fans are on board that change is imminent. And as the season is effectively over, the questions are what comes next?
The most obvious question is ‘when is Arteta getting sacked?’. I think most people realized that having a talking parrot will manage Arsenal with pretty much similar success, but the Kroenke’s aren’t sacking him as far as I read.
The problem is that the players don’t look like they understand what is required of them, or they aren’t good enough to execute it. There is no way the Kroenkes will spend 250 million to revamp the squad, so I suspect at Christmas we will realize that we wasted another transfer window on a dead project.
The problem here isn’t just Arteta. The problem is everyone at Arsenal is here just for the paycheck. The only way we can attract a good player is by offering him ridiculous wages, to only sink him to our level, like it has happened with Partey and Willian and many before them.
Edu is another person that hides in the Shadows while he’s on the Kroenke’s payroll. So sad to see such a good player for us doing what Lehmann and every other former Arsenal player that has come into the club has done. Sit cluelessly without a voice. Why doesn’t he inform the board to sack Arteta? How does he justify the money we spent on Partey and Gabriel? We are mid-tabled and that doesn’t ring alarm bells?
Did we sign Luiz and Willian because we think they can take us forward or Edu do his countrymen a favour? Where is Vinai here? Why have we promoted a salesman to a CEO of a football club? Why has nobody spotted the rot and pulled the brakes on a project driving extremely fast into oblivion?
The future is dark and not good. There are 3 main outcomes. The most probable is keeping Arteta and going further down. A less likely option is sacking him, which is desperately necessary, but is this board capable of hiring a good replacement?
The Kroenkes would like to cut their losses, so I can’t see us paying top dollar for a good manager to get us out of this mess and why would you come to Arsenal? A squad full of players that have downed tools again, owners that don’t care, using a rookie as a shield, with no interest in investing.
We’re never hiring an Allegri, because he’ll have demands. The guy won multiple titles and got to two champions league finals. He has more ambition than pretending to be Pep G and fighting the mighty Leeds and Aston Villa for 9th place.
Our prospects are hiring another poor manager that is just another shield for KSE and we’re again hoping for miracles. And that is if they bother to change shields, because Artera does pretty well talking crap on press-conferences. How does he even have the audacity to talk about the fans? He’s so lucky they aren’t at the ground to tell him to his face how they feel.
Option 3 is that Daniel Ek buys the club. This one is in the fantasy realms despite the publicity stunt he did. There will be many questions if he or anyone else takes over. Having the likes of Thierry, Vieira and Denis Beegkamp on board, declaring to be a massive fan of the club and wanting to reunite with the fans is a good start. We should just have in mind that politics also talk sweet, until they take power in their own hands.
But honestly, can it be worse than where it is now with KSE? An owner so uninterested in the club, so blatantly obvious that he is here only to milk the cash cow. I wouldn’t mind a change in ownership, it’s the one thing we haven’t tried and I’d be so happy to see a few faces gone forever from Arsenal, but I’m not daydreaming and having false hope.
The future for Arsenal looks like sticking with Arteta and it will not get better. Luckily I am back to the “I don’t care” zone like I was with Wenger and Emery. There’s a limit to where you can care, when you obviously see that there’s nothing in return.
Unless serious changes come to the club at multiple levels I am considering skipping next season entirely. A broken ‘on repeat’ won’t sound good on another replay. We need a reboot, a clear out and a vision. Players, Manager, Board and owner. Everything must change.
Konstantin