A lot can happen in a couple of weeks.
We were top of the table on Xmas Day. Yet as I write this not even halfway through January some Gooners now think we need to buy a striker this month to save our season.
That’s how fickle our fanbase can be!
I never thought I would defend our owners.
Yet if asked to invest this winter, the Kroenke Family would have every right to ask what happened to the funds they made available in the summer?
Why was so much wasted on Havertz when there was years of evidence of his flaws?
Why have Brentford been promised nearly 25 million for a keeper we don’t need?
Why are Reiss Nelson and Eddie Nketiah being paid 100,000 pound a week?
That’s why I don’t want Arsenal to sign a striker. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind them triggering Osimhen release clause, but would be against us panicking and paying over the odds for a Toney (only way Brentford would sell).
What Arteta has to do in our two-week break is to train, teach, practise, work on his craft.
That’s where I will defend our manager and say he’s been let down by his employers.
A rookie boss was allowed to believe that it was normal to wash hands of talent the moment they didn’t suit him.
Players were paid to sit at home, contracts ripped up, assets loaned out to reduce the wage bill, etc.
Knowing when and how to say the right words, many actually thought this was a positive strength of character from our former captain.
In reality this approach was always going to catch up with him.
Because in any leadership role where you take charge of people, your task is to get the best out of the resources at your disposal.
That criteria should have been made clear at the interview process.
For example, on Sunday, players were guilty of taking too many touches in the final third.
Asking Edu to find someone better at finishing can be done, but it can’t be the solution all the time.
That’s what you did to Ozil, Aubameyang, Pepe, Sokratis, Mustafi, Guendouzi, Kolasinac, Maitland Niles, Bellerin, Lacazette ….so many left for nothing.
Mr Wenger didn’t compile a list like that in two decades, yet alone 4 years.
After a while, it can’t be that everyone else has an attitude problem or can’t kick a ball…. after a while it’s you.
So, if Havertz takes an extra touch ….
Ask him not to, support him in getting better, fix his confidence, think of fun / creative sessions, put an arm round a shoulder.
You know … Coach!
We were told that was Arteta’s strengths at Man City, his ability on a 1-1 to improve people on the training pitch.
Remember, Arteta is not doing us a favour.
He gets paid a lot of money to coach.
So, coach!
Dan
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If we had a young CF in the mold of Giroud, Arteta could coach the youngster
Arteta’s mistake was relying on diminutive CFs. Maybe no club could meet Arsenal’s demand for Nketiah in the summer
Don’t give him new contract the summer before
Maybe Arsenal didn’t want to lose their investment in Nketiah’s years of development
The decisions of several people are required to extend a player’s contract
Yet rips up other players contracts ?
That’s the point , he has some rules for some players and different ones for others
The decisions of several people are required to end a player’s contract
So why would Eddie be exception to the rule when he’s a Championship level player at best
As I said, maybe Arsenal didn’t want to lose their investment in Nketiah’s years of development
Nketiah was a young hot prospect with homegrown status, whereas the banished ones were 27+ years old and some of them weren’t homegrown
Been a mistake though
@gotanidea, I think our worry should be what’s the next step if Arsenal couldn’t buy a striker this January window? How can Arteta improve his squared to win games without a prolific CF. I bet Arteta has a big assignment and work to do if his team must stay in Top4. After 3 loses its so easy for a team to nosedive if something isn’t done.
@gotanide, another way is if Havertz can be coached as 9 provided he can learn and adjust fast. And then we buy Onana for the injury prone Pathey. Onana in size would resemble PViera and with Rice could make Arsenal midfield incredibly difficult to break down.
Havertz in the CF position would be the last resort. Perhaps Arsenal can loan a CF
Maybe we can loan or buy Giroud from AC Milan as stop gap solution.
BTW, Ground ranked 2nd as scorer with 9 goals and ranked 4th with 5 assists. Currently, he is better than any Arsenal’s players.
Giroud is too old to lead our high-press. If he joins us, maybe our LW or left-sided AM should press instead of him
If we can loan a young CF like Sesko, we wouldn’t have to tweak our high-pressing system
If you never try, how you know it won’t work?
You have a lot of theories but theories are theories.
My friend, high press is not working. Giroud is at least better than all the useless strikers. Our young players are hitting hard wall.
If Jesus/ Nketiah and Odegaard didn’t do high-press, we would’ve conceded more goals
Remember about our struggle during Emery’s tenure, due to the ineffective high-press of our attackers at that time
Would Giroud score more then Eddie and Havertz though
Think he would you know
Henry didn’t do too badly when he came back as a, presumed, has been.
Arteta is too predictable. We have a huge unused squad. He needs to mix it up and occasionally go 4 4 2.
Use one of Nketiah,Jesus and partner them up front with either martinelli or saka. Keep mixing them about. Have a fast central attack who could lay off to one of four midfielders two of which could run through as wingers. We have an abundance of midfielders.
Let’s get two up front and get some goals.
Agree with your point in the article. it areal concern.
add the mediocre current players Arteta bought for lot of money, Tarvis, sambi lockonga, marquinos, veira, Havertz, the polish central left back, Raya who is not priority, even Rice not the old Viera who make the earth move, lots of wasted money and we are in the eyes of Far Financial play.
Arteta cant improve the defense to defend corners they are running like headless chickens during corners and when they concede from that corner they become agitated and waste simple chances and it become psychological. Arteta cant coach Nkeita to change and vary his run for the crosses he always behind the defender waiting for the miracles to happen while his hold up play when his back to goal is awful. Arteta has not improved Martinelli , Saka and Odegard. Arteta have no bread and butter full backs to help the youngsters Martinelli and Saka
I don’t want to be pessimistic but realistically we are doomed for now unless miracles happens
At City, Pep was the manager, the boss. Arteta was his understudy, the coach who took orders from the boss. Here he is the boss, so he does what he thinks in right which is wrong all the time! There is a long long list of failed ideas, player selection, players being discarded, etc. etc. all of which confirm his wrong decisions.
Guendozi, Manovpras, Willock, would have been good squad players to rotate with rather than having failures like Kiwor, Kai, Viera wasting fees, wahes and space, and running down the first teamers to fatigue and injury.
Guendouzi has hardly sparkled since he left Arsenal and more important to me anyway, was his attitude which was not conducive to what Arteta was trying to build.
He was an overrated troublesome, know it all kid SueP and Mikel was dead right to get rid of him.
A lot of moaning and whining from Arsenal fans especially you @Indian Gunner,
All these past Arsenal players has suddenly become better players because they are no longer with us. I am sure you were here bashing and calling them useless just like you are calling out current players now.
With those players, we ended up in 8 positions for 2 consecutive seasons, but with this current squad we came second last season and still in 4th position so what nonsense are you talking about?
Angelo, the nonsense I’m talking about has been meticulously explained by Dan in the article above. Take time and read it carefully, it is defiantly some food for thought unless you are Arteta in disguise who thinks he knows best and the rest is trash. I do not want to banter about our current 4th spot. We have won 1 game in 5 and have the same stats as ManU in 8th over the last 5 games. At this pace 8th place would not come as a surprise. Let that sink in. Sheff Utd too share the same stats 1 win, 1 draw & 3 losses in last 5 games, so your pal Arteta too has good company if you want to defend him.
700M GBP spent and out of the league cup, FA cup are facts, not “nonsense” talk.
Why is it that we’re just as creative as last season’s attack, which was good enough to win the league in any given season (check out the stats), yet apparently MA is now a terrible coach who’s been found out and there’s barely any criticism of our attackers?
Their individual stats are well down for almost all of them, and we can see with our own eyes how many easy chances they keep missing.
I think only one goal from our last 3 games, despite 61 shots and an XG of around 6!
It’s MA job to find a solution of course, but boy are our forwards all flopping at the same time.
Jen
Neither Jesus or Nketiah are prolific goal scorers, that has been known for years. Add the constant double teams on Martinelli and Saka, and you have a problem.
Inverted fullbacks help with possession, but offer nothing towards scoring. Maybe Havertz was brought in to make runs like we saw from Aaron Ramsey, but Havertz is not clinical nor a good goal scorer.
Unfortunately we have no plan B to fall back on. No overlapping fullbacks, no strong striker with an aerial presence in the box or holdup play.
Some blame is on the players, they simply are not finishing chances.
Some blame for Arteta. He has not yet solved the problems that stall our attack, nor changed tactics to counter the opponents strategy.
Arteta is really getting tested this year in terms of coaching. Rotation, selections and transfer decisions, tactics and in game management.
I think he will slowly change tactically the 2nd half of the season, but he is clearly under the microscope now, and fair questions are being asked.
I get what you are saying, but if just half our forwards were in form, which we know they can do, we’d easily be top of the league again.
👍Durand, an excellent summary of the issues this season.
Jen A strange commenrt to claim that “theres barely ANY criticism of our attackers”.
Is THAT what you HONESTLY believe appears on JA ?
Because , IF it is, then you and I LIVE ON DIFFERENT PLANETS.
I am a regular on JA as you also seem to be, so how you can claim THAT to be the case, is laughably incorrect.
There is constant and correct criticism hourly of our strikers woeful inability to score and to take the chances made.
We do NOT, this season either , make anywhere nearly as many chances as we did last season.
All these ridiculous decisions Arteta keeps making, are a result of inexperience. As a coach, if you’re going to pay Nketiah, Nelson, Havertz £100,000/week each, what are you going to pay top notch strikers like Osihmen? Arteta doesn’t even have a grasp of what consistency is. He is literally destroying Saka, Martinelli, Rice, Kiwior, Saliba and the rest of the young talent because of poor management. The board needs to re look his appointment. Perhaps he’s done his best, which is frankly horrendous.
Havertz is more like 300k according to reports…
With his lack of success in the PL to date, that was way too high of a salary to offer even if on a short term deal.
280K PER WEEK IS THE WIDELY ACCEPTED ACCURATE FIGURE.
What a monstrous and ridiculous waste of important funds on such a way overrated player. Overrated ONLY by MA , it must be said!
No Jon, the widely reported and accepted figure is £300,000 from every source available.
Where is your source coming from may I ask?
Spotrac lists his salary at £280,000. I assume the difference may be some possible incentives.
Well said. He has to improve the players he currently has, which he has shown to be poor at
Many in JA asking the club to buy a tall CF but Gabriele Marcotti, Senior Writer of ESPN FC argued that MA got inspiration from Pep Guardiola’s pre-Haaland City side (2 years ago) which has no proven center-forward.
“The point is that we can’t have it both ways. We can’t praise Arteta for instilling a certain type of system with a very young team, and then criticise him not having a traditional center-forward. If you want him to rip up his game plan and have a central attacking terminus, fine. If you like what he has done over the past 18 months, then please appreciate that simply adding a “proven goal scorer” is likely to have a knock-on effect.”
I paste some of his arguments below:
Title: Enough knee-jerk insta-punditry: Arsenal don’t necessarily need a ‘proven striker’ after cup defeat to Liverpool
Like clockwork, if Arsenal disappoint, you’ll be sure to hear the same reaction: “Arteta needs to sign a proven goal scorer.” It’s the same again after the 2-0 home defeat to Liverpool in the FA Cup: Arsenal create a lot of chances, miss a lot of chances, ergo if they had some sort of deadeye “proven goal scorer” up front, they’d be better. (Maybe that’s where the Ivan Toney rumours come from?)
What this knee-jerk thinking — which, by the way, you didn’t hear a month ago when they were top of the league and had scored just two goals fewer than Liverpool and three fewer than Manchester City, whose “proven goal scorers” are Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland — ignores is that in Mikel Arteta’s system, the center-forward is asked to do a lot more than score goals. He’s expected to create space, press, link up play and do a ton of work off the ball.
Are there guys who do all that and are also proven goal scorers? Sure, although not many, and they tend to be very expensive, which is why Arteta spent his budget elsewhere and lines up with Gabriel Jesus and Eddie Nketiah as his habitual central strikers.
I’m not a huge Gabriel Jesus guy, but he does a ton of the things Arteta asks of him. And guess what? It worked fine last season, when Arsenal scored 88 goals — 13 more than Liverpool and just six fewer than Manchester City.
…
Incidentally, Manchester City won the Premier League title (and went deep in the Champions League and FA Cup) two years ago with Gabriel Jesus — yeah, the same guy who now plays for Arsenal — at center-forward scoring just eight goals, and Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling, Riyad Mahrez and Phil Foden (none of whom is a “proven center-forward”) as his leading scorers. It shouldn’t take a genius to see that Arteta draws his inspiration, in part, from that pre-Haaland City side.
In fact, Arteta has a bunch of positives to take away from this performance, fluffed chances aside. They dominated top-of-the-table Liverpool for much of the first half. The Jorginho-Declan Rice partnership worked well and is worth revisiting, at least in certain games: it frees Rice to make forward runs; it gives you a press-resistant playmaker; and the 4-2-3-1 gives Ødegaard more freedom to operate.
As for Havertz, frustrating as his finishing (and some of his decision-making) was, so much of his work off the ball was notch. Rather than messing around with Nketiah in Jesus’ absence, it makes sense to give him another shot up front. Yes, they lost, but it was to an own goal and a garbage-time strike from Luis Díaz.
There were some (myself included) who naturally thought that Arteta would build and improve the squad and play of last year. He did so with Rice in my opinion, but not bringing in a plan B striker was a big mistake.
We struggled against the low block last year, and this slow, deliberate, and possession oriented Artetaball still struggles with the low block.
Instead, Arteta choose to reinvent the way we play, rather than tweaking and improving on the play from last year.
Was it the right decision? Time will tell. Our standing at the end of the season will say a lot about performances over this season.
I disagree.
Arteta has made some changes to the way we play but it is not a reinvention. The fundamental set-up is similar but with more focus on controlling the flow of the game and ensuring field tilt is in our favour.
Kenny here has made some very valid points many of which are overlooked by many fans.
Our main problem is in midfield. We need to find a replacement for Partey and get serious competition for Odegaard. Then coach Saka, Martinelli and Jesus to be more effective in front of goal.
Kenny, the free flowing football of last season has been missing this season. Some of us could see the issues, with concerns about many of Arteta’s decisions – Partey at left back, loaning Tierney, not selecting Gabriel at CB, buying Havertz, loan with option to buy a goalkeeper, when Ramsdale had a good season.
Surely a highly paid manager is responsible for the team performance now he has a squad of players, he has either brought in or given contract extensions to.
It’s really strange that people seems not to understand that Mikel Arteta is nowhere near a good coach. As a manager, he diminishes the value of players. For example, how much had arsenal generated from players sales over the past 4 years. He has a player like Emile Smith Rowe who everybody knows is a good players. He has being reduced to a perpetual bench warmer. While he keep admiring players other clubs has groomed. Imagine how much someone like willock is worth now, even Liverpool’s Jones. Harvey Elliot look at Gravenberch.
He only managed 35 million pounds for Balogun just because he never gave him a chance.
The man keep making naf calls.
For Dan
More than fair article. I have been saying that the owners should demand accountability for the actions taken (transfers, training, results etc).
Only thing we do not have knowledge of is the targets set by Josh Kroenke for Mikel Arteta and Edu this season. There are only 4 trophies to be won when the season starts. But in the PL is it top 2, top 3 or top 4 and below?
Arsenal need to get Wenger on the train to Paris. Before Mbappe signed for PSG Wenger spent a few hours with him and his parents giving honest advice for his career. Mbappe now has plenty in the bank, he is a free transfer
Wenger should negotiate with him for £75m per year for 4 years.
Money well spent and we would not waste it on Toney or others.
Whatever said and done, we need a striker. Also we need a good central midfielder to supplement Rice and a left back. The funds on Havertz and Raya were wasted in the summer but that is what it is.
Dan, an excellent article.
After 4 years and £750 million spent on transfers in and departures, one would hope for continuous improvement given Arteta now has a squad of his players.
I can’t help but compare Mikel Arteta’s playing and managerial career at Arsenal with another midfielder, who played for and managed the Arsenal in George Graham. So far no comparison.
DAN seems to actually believe a sows ear can be turned into a silk purse simply by coaching!!.
IF that were only the case then whybother spending a great deal of dosh on the duds and their grotesquely disgraceful wages,which we and most other clubs have within their squad
We could equally well pick a team from Arsenal fans alone and COACH them into brilliance!
AND pay them all ONLY ONE THOUSAND POUNDS PER WEEK, which would delight almost all of them.
In the fantasy land that DAN INHABITS, THAT IS.
In reality land, you can improve players ONLY provided that the inate talent is there already. BUT NOT OTHERWISE!!