NBC just reported David Ornstein saying that Auba's breach was coming back late from a personal trip abroad which ran afoul of the club's Covid protocols. I certainly don't know the reason/urgency for his trip, but it's a bit surprising that he'd be taking such a trip during the busiest part of the season. I'm sure we'll be hearing more in the coming hours and days.
Yes, it is a sign of bad man management if he has to strip his captain of 2 years. He is the manager, so yes, he is ultimately responsible. Auba has a reason to be upset and Arteta should not make game decisions based on who makes the most money or who is the team captain. But IMO, a good manager has a chat with the player and sorts this out before it becomes something where the player skips training and the manager has to take the armband.
Arteta is always super vague about this kind of thing before games. Then we get to wildly speculate for a couple of hours, and we get a confirmed report usually before the game ends. Honestly credit to Arteta for that, makes the whole being a fan on the internet thing more fun.
Anyway, spent the whole match on Auba who didn't play, so good win, Saka is awesome, Odegaard scoring goals is a huge plus after a worryingly slow start, and Tomiyasu, Gabriel and Ramsdale continue to impress defensively.
A major part of the urgency today was Martinelli. He needs to play, at least as part of a rotation during a congested schedule.
In a game like today, where we looked to break - yes. In a game where we have lots of possession and need to break down a low block, not so much. But he was fun today - ran his butt off.
So of Arsenals eight wins, 6 (including today’s) are against the current bottom 6 of the table. If I understand Arsenal fans arguments about how to evaluate their team in light of the competition they’ve faced correctly, that means we need to discount their stats. Right?— Mike L. Goodman (@TheM_L_G) December 11, 2021
Against a low block, having a player that can beat the the first defender 1 v 1, drawing another defender to him and creating a hole in the block, can be very useful. It’s not something our two experienced striker options are very good at and likely one of the reasons Arsenal struggle against a low block.
I'm glad we got our best back 4 back. Nuno is an excellent backup LB but for me Tierney is our first choice guy. When fit of course. Our "back 5" of Ramsdale-Tierney-Gabriel-White-Tomiaysu is arguably the best thing about our current XI. We can only pray it stays that way while management tries to figure out our MF & FW lines. If it becomes whack-a-mole problem solving we're doomed.
He's not wrong, but here are a couple other important stats about the results so far this season: 1. Home Form: only 1 of our 6 losses have been at home: 2-0 to Chelsea early in the season before Ramsdale & Tomiyasu were in the team. Emirates does seem to provide us some advantages. Our only draw at home this season was w/ CP. So we've taken 19 of 24 possible points so at Emirates far this season. 2. Away Losses: Of the remaining 5 (away) losses, all but Everton are against sides currently in the top half: City, Liverpool, Yanited, are currently top 5, and Brentford - which is an outlier due to Covid issues at the time and not having Ramsdale and Tomiyasu yet. I don't think any of us expected to take any points away at City or Pool, so the Brentford, Yanited, and Everton losses are the real outliers that warrant attention to our overall performance.
I'm not really interested in litigating this issue or the last few pages of it because there's a lot we don't know at this point, but it's definitely not true that Auba hasn't had issues before Arteta. He literally went on strike at Dortmund to force a move to us, and had bust-ups with Zorc. He was also dropped from their squad for being late to training multiple times. I don't want to litigate this because I don't come down on this as necessarily being justified--especially coming out and talking about it publicly. Why does Arteta feel the need to continually air dirty laundry publicly? What is the benefit? That it makes him look like the tough guy? It's bullshit and his man management is clearly sus.
I'm cool with that. But Gabriel should also get consideration since I prefer having a field player wear the armband, imo.
Auba should not even be here for any of these discussions to take place he’s dropped off a cliff statistically and he should’ve been sold as he is over 30. With that said 3 pts is always good should be smooth sailing till the City game.
I really was speaking about his previous coaches at Arsenal - Wenger and Emery, but your point is taken.
@Publius buys Odegaard jersey at the Armoury ahead of the Newcastle match and now he goes on a run. Incredible stuff.
this is the part i hate. leave it at "he's not part of the squad today and i'd rather discuss the people in the squad" and be done with. airing dirty laundry is irritating.
i mean, like you said, we have the right personnel for it. gabriel & saliba in the back and have white be the sweeper.