You’re harsh on Arteta, dude was one of the better DM’s we’ve had in the last few years, he even took a pay cut to come here and now he’s rustling A4tt’s jimmies every week, fantastic value tbh, I just wish he had came a little earlier in his career.
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Honestly bro I hated the signing and I hated watching him play. Even on this forum back in 2011 I was against it and I used to shit on him routinely for his lack of athleticism and how easily he was bullied in midfield.
I look at him as being indicative of the start of Wenger’s true squad building decline. We went from mercurial midfield talent to Arteta and it was so disheartening. We needed a proper defensive midfielder in the mould of a destroyer back in 2011 and instead we got a passive attacking midfielder turned DM. I hated it then and I still hate it now whenever I reflect on it.
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Song, Denilson, and later Coquelin were hardly mercurial talents lol, Arteta was better than all 3.
What we should have had was a midfield 3 of Santi, Mikel and Cesc for a period, that would have been nice. Though I’ll always stick up for Arteta and Per I think they were much better than people give them credit for but I can’t deny the quality of teams they played in wasn’t great.
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Arteta best football was at Everton. Grafters working for him to create the time he needed on the ball.
His lack of pace and athleticism hindered him against strong teams massively as a player.
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I’m talking about the Wenger years in general. Not the shitters he’d started signing. Remember Fàbregas was our CM the season before Arteta came along and we also had Nasri too. To go from that level of creative midfield talent to a 30 year old AM in the DM role was just pure shit
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Though Arteta was never meant to be a like for like replacement for someone like Cesc or Nasri, I feel like if that’s what you expected from him you were always going to be dissapointed. Arteta was more of a metronome, a stable heartbeat, I liked the stability he brought to the midfield, it wasn’t really his fault we didn’t replace Cesc’s creativity until Ozil.
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But he wasn’t really a good metronome he was often bullied in midfield and over run.
If you looked across Europe at the top “metronomes” of the time, Arteta didn’t come close to them and he also didn’t have the right players around him to harness his talents.
So we effectively got a slow and ageing Arteta who was never in the elite bracket to begin with and asked him to play in a deeper role to which he did with a reasonable degree of success but not anywhere near enough to be someone I look back fondly on
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I guess we just remember him very differently, he was never Pirlo for us but he was quality more often than not for me. His physicality wasn’t great but he always gave 100 percent and was always willing to get stuck in. I think his biggest crime was he came to Arsenal at a terrible time but he wasn’t the reason why, much like Santi he was a victim of being surrounded by very average players.
from 2.00 to 2.30 in that is what I loved about him the way he could glide out of danger was quintessentially Spanish from a player who was much more akin to the British playstyle.
Even just watching back that compilation, obviously they make every body look good but he offered a lot in his locker, some of those sliding passes were lovely and he’s a million times more of DLP than someone like Xhaka, Coquelin, Denilson, Elneny etc, when I think back Song and Arteta are two of the few deep CM’s that actually had a little class about them.
I appreciate not everyone sees the same in every player I do just think you’re very quick to lump him in with the shitters of that eras and it’s a tad unjust, just as when people do the same with Per. Pace and power lacking but both were very intelligent and classy on the ball at times.
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Gervinho gave 100% for me as well, and he did not get much appreciation.
Effort is a bare minimum especially when you are not really that good or specialize in something. Also I have never heard that a CM/DM was lazy. A lazy CM/DM can’t even survive in this industry or exist.
Arteta really could not do much as a player because he was not really a DM/CM. Wenger assigned that job to him. Even Wenger had him to play a more advanced role as a AM, he still would not lead us to league winner because our overall quality was not there. Arteta was just one of the average (or not too shabby) players on the team.
I’d just like to back up @Castiel
We may not agree on Arteta the manager, we do on Arteta the player.
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Thanks man, he gets a lot of grief as a player for us but I definitely saw something in what he brought to the team, there was a reason players like Rosicky and Santi loved him, he really offered them a platform to do their thing.
Arteta was mainly responsible for that 6 nil loss to Chelsea, was actually more shit than xhaka out there that day. Probably was responsible for like 5 of those goals the shitter.
Nah that was the red card 15 minutes in and Wenger’s shit tactics that day. Was a fitting 1000th game celebration for the specialist in failure. Hate Jose but he nailed Arsene to the wall with that one.
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Can remember hating Mourinho on that shout the day before.
Then on the day you just had to acknowledge the better manager.
Wasted fucking years and more came after.
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Nah it was Arteta being generally shit at anything football related lmaoooo 
he’s great at buying watches and sacking up to the powers that be tho 
Only a club as cursed as Arsenal could waste the greatest manager the PL had ever seen. At any other club with a competent board and ownership AW woulda continued to win titles. Just a shit club to be associated with, didn’t deserve all the plaudits Arsene brought them tbh.
Why am I seeing us linked with this fraud again?
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Where? Do you follow A4tt’s blog or something because I honestly haven’t heard this guy mentioned with Arsenal in the same sentence since he left.
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does bigweng work for Arseblog?
Yeah I seen this somewhere else too. You fucking dare. . .