I get that arteta is highly thought of around the club, but that doesn’t give me any details as to why. Just look at history in the league. Who was the last manager to take a club into the top 4 with zero experience at the helm? Poch was the least experienced that I can remember and he had successful spells at espanyol and soton. Lampard may be on pace to “keep” Chelsea in the top 4, but even he has had a successful season at derby behind him and said to have a high iq and a good student. Like I said, I’m not totally against it—what the hell, I say. I just wish I could understand the hype.
thenhule is that he is young, intelligent and trained under the best I’m not sure but rather him than ancelotti
Not sure if you realize it, but there’s a massive rebuild ahead of this club regardless. We (probably stupidly) tried the quick fix of signing experienced 30 year olds and hiring a ‘proven’ manager with Europa League ‘expertise’. Didn’t work (and it made the rebuild even more difficult because it added to the financial pressures). Time for the full-on tear-down. (Which is why we’re better off with an Arteta or even Marić than an Acelotti.) Not that the Raul Sanllehi good ol’ boy network will allow it...
We've been in a bizarre win-now team building mode since we signed Sanchez. It's led to a lot of really bad personnel decisions.
Yeah, that makes sense. I'd rather give the reins of that rebuild to someone like Arteta (ie - Euro pedigree as a player) than someone like Marsch who, because of his nationality, would be the obvious scapegoat for any problems.
I think the issue is more the team has been caught between rebuilding and "win now" so that we have some old guys, a lot of very young guys and very few prime age players. So the average squad age is OK but actually almost none of any starting line are in the key 26-29 age range. The most obvious "win now" signing is Auba - but you do need at least one elite goalscorer if you want to compete. Laca was obviously bought going into his prime years so a better signing in terms of the age curve, though Wenger really dithered for 12-24 months on that one and we signed him too late. Then some old guys came into the defence, but again the Sokratis (31) signing probably made sense in context as we allowed Kos & Per to get old at once and needed experience. In the meantime we signed Saliba (18) who is young, and Holding, Chambers and Mav are 24, 24, 22. Our prime age defender Mozzer is utter crap. So the age curve on the defence is a hot mess leading to us needing to buy a defender at peak age. Luiz (32) seems to be a bust. In the midfield we already did a big tear down. Guen (20) LT (23) Willock (20). You'd imagine this is the future starting midfield. But again the issue is we invested so much time in our prime midfield Xhaka (27) who needs to be binned STAT. Ceballos (23) is IMO more talented than anyone we have, but presumably this loan is now a bust which I predicted would likely happen - we can't afford to invest in him and he probably hates us. Ozil is 31 Doh. Fullbacks has a better profile with Tierney (22) and Hector (24) AMN (22) Kola (26) Rest of the Attack again is already torn down. Pepe (24) , Nelson (20) Saka (18), Martinelli (18) LOL! So yeah - lots of the tear down already happened. The problem is to fix the age curve we still ideally need one prime age CB, one elite central midfielder and one goal heavy winger = shit lots of money
The main thing is the team has some very basic flaws in terms of modern tactics that the likes of Marić pointed out for years. A guy like Kovac can come into Bayern and (according to Honigstein etc) essentially ride off the automatisms/frameworks established by previous regimes (Pep). This is also largely where Carlo has been successful - sorting out political/team issues for teams that are already tactically strong. With both the Carlo and Kovac regimes there were heavy leaks out of the dressing room that the tactical preparation was second rate. But Bayern still have a large institutional knowledge. At Arsenal we simply do not have that after so many years of Wenger and then the failed Emery regime. We need a more progressive management team to import the knowledge that the club lacks, and actually create the basic frameworks Now a guy like Arteta might fail for the same reason Rene Meulensteen failed when he left Utd. Meulensteen was the tactical architect of Utd's final title under Fergus - optimising RvPs positional ability. Fergus was clueless on that stuff and outsourced the first team long before. Turned out Meulensteen was better as the hands on trainer than the Klopp figure. Who knows if Arteta can lead a team. but at least Arteta understands the modern approaches. Utd is the perfect example of what happens when you no longer have this fundamental knowledge at your club. Moyes decapitated the club.
I think the related issue is that we had no real front office function working on strategic recruitment. It was always "what 2-3 players can we buy right now" Klopp was actually recruited by Liverpool as an undervalued talent, because he fitted their strategic direction. They were looking years ahead.
It's kind of insane that Gazidis, as mediocre as he was, is looking positively glowing next to the incompetent idiots that are running the team right now. It's unbelievable.
Gazidis could rely on Wenger - even though he was in decline. I think what we now see in the premium league is even lower table sides can afford to have decent knowledge, very physical competitive teams, talent with good technique, and decent tactical structures. So those teams will take points off big teams which are mismanaged. Utd has been having that problem as well.
I think this is true of professional sport in general knowledge and some money is more useful than having even exponentially more money. Back in the day United could just rip a Saha off Fulham, not only are teams generally more equipped with good, usable players, but they also have enough money that a move to United and all the associated risks isn't worth it.
I really hope we do t sign ancelotti. We need someone who has a particular philosophy that will have is playing the right way, not necessarily worrying about challenging for a season or two (unless there is a huge jump) we basically need to copy Liverpool. Look for quick counter attacking players with pace and athletic cms (barely any deep playing cms about or who clubs bar psg and Barca can afford) the idea of arteta is appealing because Pepe plays 433 mainly, they have a style of play and a press we desperately need an identity as a club so either wait for maric or hire arteta
I'm not that interested in Ancelotti largely for the reasons you've stated. I will note, however, I listen to the Guardian football podcast, and this week, Nicky Bandini who covers Italian football was on the panel, said that Ancelotti has countered that take on him by saying that "well, I've never been asked to take on a rebuild, but I certainly would change my approach if I was." Just thought that was sort of interesting.
Ancellotti wouldn't be the worst appointment I guess, but far from the best IMHO. And I think we should be shooting more for the latter than the former. p.s. How has it gone for Baldini? Who is one of the very very few widely known public figures who has reversed their preferred gender. I haven't seen/heard from her/them since that all went down.
I have no idea --- I mean, I know he/she's trans, but beyond that, I don't know. She's on the Guardian's podcast pretty regularly for whatever that's worth.
If it wasn't abundantly obvious from his 5 matches in charge that Ljungberg is not going to be in the running for the permanent job, and maybe not even too much longer as caretaker, here's what he said in his post-match presser: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/50803688 And it's disappointing & frustrating to all that the board doesn't seem to have a full-time replacement at hand. Contrast that to how Spurs handled the Poch to Maureen transition... sigh. Edit: I just watched the end again, and I had a slightly different reaction to the smile on Freddie's s face when he embraced Pep. Maybe it's the smile of a guy who knows he's about to be relieved of his hot-seat duty and (hopefully) returned to the assistant role. IOW that the club is poised to appoint a new head coach this week, maybe even tomorrow? Wishful thinking??
This level of incompetence can only come from Kroenke(s). One of them is responsible for not making a decision and it's their fault. Making no decision is often a lot worse than making a bad decision.
There were those of us who said appointing Jose as a fireman was the smart move. Levy acted decisively to stop the bleeding and protect revenue. Arse dithered over the international break, wasting the winnable part of the fixture list. Now we are 5 games into a worsening disaster under Frauddie and are about to bleed points all over the place in 5 games of tough schedule - entirely predictable. We will be bottom 10 by the time this part of the fixture list is done.
Freddie's been put in a terrible position--no coaching staff is the main problem. You simply can't run a first team with one other first team coach who is also running the academy. It's just too much work. So whatever his ideas are, it doesn't seem like he's been able to implement that many, because he can't actually transmit them to his players. So I don't really think it's worth judging Freddie's abilities on this stretch because the club is giving him no support whatsoever. This isn't, however, an endorsement of him as the long-term solution. But the club is fcuking that up too