Yep. If offered 5th at the start of the season, knowing we had one of the youngest sides in the league, I'd have taken it. That's huge progress over last 2 seasons. But now the admins need to show they see the work that remains and they move to complete the overhaul. Take heart from the glimpses of what could've been, but be truthful in critically assessing the glaring faults that let the team falter late. They gambled and lost in January. Now be tactical in eyeing the roster moves, and do so starting yesterday.
I feel like the team overachieved this season. I was sure we would get 6th. Luckily, other teams sucked too. I’m not too mad though. Again, overall, they did better than I had expected.
FT NEW 2-0 ARS The way our season ended caused a few different thoughts to get in my head... one of which is "imposter syndrome"? The other dominant thought/image is... It'll take a very very large miracle for us to get Top 4. Beyond lasagna perhaps. So Europa it is. Six mos ago most of us would've seen Europa as a significant success and sign of progression. But current negative trendlines tend to outweigh things ATM.
He was responsible with his January handling of players. Losing to experienced managers. Losing to a team which had nothing to play for speaks a lot. And new contract before season ended lol.
Leicester City, Spurs and United will be stronger next season with better managers. Trust me we will be lucky to get top six next year.
With our luck, Spurs will lose to Norwich and it won’t even matter. LC won’t. Hard to think Spurs gets much better than what they are.
Spurs have a better manager and CL football they can offer should they beat or draw Norwich next week. Why would anyone choose us over them? The project? The one Willian shit over publicly? Trusting the process that has us with Cedric at RB? I'd be surprised if guys like Gabriel were looking at leaving. He looked very frustrated tonight and rightly so.
Yeah. Plus, we hear this same shit every year. Everton, Wolves, West Ham, Villa and Leicester were going to be better than us this year according to this rhetoric.
Leicester might challenge for top 7 but not more unless they drop huge money on a Vardy replacement and a new CB. Tottenham need a new backline, but they have a +31 GD in the league under Conte. Ours is +11 over the same period. I don't see a net 20-goal improvement in this team regardless of who we sign.
I’m disappointed they couldn’t make it happen, but I’m really upset with all the “I told you that Arsenal will bottle it” that we’re going to hear tomorrow.
Wasn't it obvious after our January handling? The team didn't even want it. Outplayed and out coached.
Vardy will be 36 next January, coming off an injury hit season. He’s not likely returning to his prior form and I don’t really rate Soyuncu.
Nketiah won 2 of the 14 duels he was involved in. Let Palace or someone give him those free transfer wages and be burdened by them.
Soyuncu has missed 2 games this season due to injury. He just isn't a very good player, so he lost his starting role on merit.
Arteta's tunnel interview was about as close to throwing his team under a bus as you'll see. Hmm. I'm not sure what the weighting is but I'd say it's a shared responsibility between players and coach.
If Arsenal are going to play long out of the back, they need to add a forward who can win headers and playmake from the front. If they are going to play out of the back, they need upgrades on Xhaka and Elneny, I was impressed when Xhaka did his Partey impression today, turning with his first touch, driving up field and distributing the ball to the wing, but he wasn’t under pressure and that’s the only time I can recall him making a turn like that (maybe it’s my anti Xhaka bias shining through). Arsenal need someone in the midfield, who like Partey) can do that when pressed to create a numerical advantage when going forward.
FFS Arsenal, sign a ball carrying CM. And Odegaard is softer than baby shit. We've seen that for a while but here we are again. And sign a real striker. This squad overachieved like shit, but that overachievement shows that there are some glaring holes in this team that won't be filled through "experience."
Xhaka: “We don’t deserve champions league. We don’t even deserve europa league. I don’t know why we didn’t listen to the coach. It’s not about age. If your 18 or 35. If you’re not ready, if you don’t have the balls, stay at home. Sorry to the fans.” #AFC— Sam (@samuelJayC) May 16, 2022
To be honest, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a single match live since the last international break. Still kind of puzzling over why that is, but I think it’s because, firstly, when Partey got injured, the writing was on the wall to me. The January gamble of thinning the squad down to 14 or 15 players without any incomings was a major, major gamble that was clearly a failure in hindsight. Even if you just got Bruno Guimaraes for the price that Newcastle paid, we likely end up third instead of fifth. And jettisoning Auba and wanting to rely on Laca and Eddie exclusively for half a season was an even clearer risk. At the time I rationalized that they were trusting in their process and not wanting to go immediately back into a win-now transfer stance just because we were close to fourth. But it really feels like the transfer process is too hyper-focused on “their guys” and isn’t willing to be adaptable to the present availabilities and context. That worked in our favor in the summer but was a major shortcoming in January. Secondly—I realized that I’d become overly emotionally invested in this particular squad. For the first time in over a decade, we have a squad where our best players are young, homegrown, likeable, and seem to really enjoy being at Arsenal together. And that resonates—the crowd energy in our stadium and away from home has been the best this year of any year I’ve been a conscious supporter. It’s very hard to quantify, but the Arteta cultural project feels like it has really worked. All of this together has made it hard for me to watch as it has come up short, because it feels like it leads into my third thing: such as this sport is, the window for projects like this is narrow. We have a lot of great, young players right now. But if we choke opportunities like this again, the transfer rumors will start, and quickly. Klopp doesn’t go out of his way to praise Martinelli for no reason, for example. Keeping squads like this together is contingent on winning and doing better. And to be honest, I feel like they were let down by a management who wanted to cut costs instead of make the right reinforcement moves midseason. Reading the tea leaves again makes me fearful for how long we have to enjoy this team going forward.
Also lol to all the people who were saying that Guimaraes was bad because that one BBC twat said he was one-footed