No Retreat, No Surrender - El Espartano Alvaro Arbeloa Manager Thread

Teams go through stretches

we’ve had great stretches and terrible stretches throughout this season both with and without Mbappe

With both Alonso and Arbeloa.

it is not genuine to think the last good stretch was the real state of the team and we failed because guys came back.

we were just inconsistent all season

 

Eh

he never stood a chance

I wasn’t a fan of his puppet and ass kissing style

but I feel he did a decent job and I can’t pin point to him being the issue

 

He did the best he could given the lack of discipline he could instill.

If Carlo and Xabi couldn’t get results, how could we expect Arbeloa?

 

I'm just going to leave this here:

Sacking Ancelotti was a mistake.

 

The guy that replaced him wasnt doing too bad considering members of the team hated his guts and had no healthy backline.

 

"He lost the team", the "team" = Junior, Fede and possibly Bellingham; 3 out of 23.

"He couldn't manage the group" = He rotated, asked everyone to press and defend, showed them videos but didn't bring them bagels for breakfast.

A bunch of dislikable kunts tbh..

 

But wait a minute; I thought Arbeloa brought back Friendship FC and that's all that matters...

 

And also with our best performance and results for two season. We finally looked like a team with clear ideas and structure.

 

No we've never had a bad stretch without Mbappe. Not that he is a bad player. Individually he is incredible but when the team got a run of games without him we got back looking like a team where everyone contributed offensively and defensively.

 

This 100%

 

Benfica, City, Atleti, Bayern.....these would be sure losses under Xabi. He was in well over his head

 

Funny given, Xabi did beat Atleti in the supercup before he was fired and Arbeloa lost to Benfica in the CL.

I stand by we should have delayed the sacking until the end of the season and re-evaluated the fractured locker room then.

 

If I would to follow your logic, the team would be winning La Liga.

I'de take that in a heartbeat.

 

He was also in charge when we played like scared kittens in big games. Who can forget his Cama on the right wing experiment. He was a disaster. With how intense Benfica was he'd never gotten us the win and forget winning against City or Bayern. Would have been humiliated like we were in most big games.

 

Maybe would have if certain things had gone AAs way like certain players being unavailable and sacking Xabi sooner as opposed to when the teams morale was rock bottom.

 

Bullshit, spare me the what if’s.

Xabi did better than Arbeloa, period. It’s shown in football, in points gathered, that’s what we can see. Talking about games he never managed that we would lose is stupid.

 

Let's not resort into this "If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike" arguments.

Morale has been high with most of Arbeloa's tenure. We didn't lose to Bayern because we had low morale.

 

Xabi was the master at winning the games we should be winning while losing the games that would actually show we are one of the best teams in Europe. If he'd been in charge we'd gone out in humiliating fashion. It is not a what if, we were terrible under him. Played like shit on a stick and Mbappe in otherworldly goalscoring form saved him and sadly prolonged our suffering. AA had a much better stint than him. We were actually competing, sadly the players are the ones that let him down. That wasn't the case with Xabi, double left backs, Cama on the right, Franco as a starter.....his terrible management was glaring. He should be kissing Mbappes boots and Vini's outburst for somehow maintaining his reputation when it was evident he was out of his depth.

 

No we lost because a player came in and got red carded within 10-15 mins all through his own stupidity after we played a great game and were heading into ET with plenty of subs to make. That was NEVER the case under Xabi. He set us up terribly and we were never competing.

 

You mean playing at the Allianz Arena, subbing on Camavinga and getting sent off after two yellows with a tied aggregate score never happened to Xabi?

*Shocked*

An awful lot of variables for a pretty specific scenario for Xabi. I'm pretty sure no other manager in the world had this ultra specific scenario happen to them.

 

We would never be in a position for it to hapoen because we would already be out of the game by that point.

Thank God we didnt have Xabi. Imagine him against Bayern after their results against the likes of Atalanta. He would set us up as cattenacio, Bayern would smell the fear from 10 miles out, camp in our half we would be hoofing the ball, Xabi would then counter their dominance by subbing off an attacker for a defender and we'd lose the only outlet that would actually keep teams away from our goal

 

Which no one actually knows.

But you have an agenda to push, so you just have to roll with it.

And even if was true, as I said earlier, I'de take the LaLiga trophy over a trophyless season reaching the UCL quarters.

 

Plenty of sample size and on form Bayern was rhe best of the lot. We never competed in big games minus that infamous clasico and the Atleti game. We were humiliated CONSTANTLY. I dont need to see one more game to confirm it.

 

Arbeola was a considerable improvement over Xabi Alonso. The team actually looked like the Real Madrid from 2 years ago for a while under Arbeola.