Not this season. Arteta is smart enough to know that it’s not healthy having players who know they’ll start no matter. Saka, Saliba, Gabriel, Rice and Odegaard will be rotated more this season.
All part of the plan to keep changing the opposition’s expectations.
That’s why it is difficult to find cover for him.
Player with quality doesn’t want to play that 2-5% of games only.
If there’s anything I’ve learnt about Arteta these past few years is that the words ‘rotation’ and ‘rest’ is not in his vocabulary.
Raya, White, Saka, Saliba, Gabriel, Rice, Odegaard are playing almost every minute of game time available if he could help it lol.
Especially Saka lol.
Or maybe he didnt rotate because the rotation options were not good enough in his mind to pick up points.
@SuperArsenal1886 I don’t think its the case that Arteta hasn’t wanted to rotate. Like @Maverick79 said, I think it’s more that he doesn’t feel there is the depth and quality in the squad he needs.
I’ve been working on my FF team, and looking at the City defenders. Interesting to see that their main defenders last season all started between 24-30 games (Walker 30, Akanji 28, Ruben 28, Gvardiol 26, Ake 24). Stones was the exception with 12 because of injury. However, it’s clear that Pep manages the minutes of his squad so they are all still fresh throughout the season to challenge on all fronts. I think Arteta is trying to achieve this with the additions we are making to the squad this summer.
I think you will be proven right very quickly on this.
We’re not going to rotate every 5 minutes, having a stable core of the XI is still crucial and the ability to not see a major drop off when we get injuries is the point of having quality squad options.
It’s not gonna be partey one game, Jorginho the next and merino then for the third.
We’ll have some options at cf, lw and #6 which may step in from time to time but I expect 80% of the games will be filled by havertz, martinelli and merino/partey depending on who mikel chooses.
Which is normal… I think people overestimate how much rotation is a thing. Any manager, if not for injuries or suspension, would play their starting players everytime.
Agreed. But, you wouldn’t want your starters playing 90 minutes every game. That pretty much guarantees injury. We were exceedingly lucky last season.
Having a strong bench enables you to rest your starters especially after the match has been won, without a significant/noticeable drop-off in team performance.
How many teams that compete for major honours regularly rotate most positions in their team though? I think most teams have a core group that are ever present if available.
Arteta was no different, after he even said he wanted more rotation amongst the players, Ramsdale never got off the bench, Saka when it looked like his ankles were gonna fall off stayed on for as long as possible, and Rice was huffing and puffing all through the Euros.
See my post above…Pep does it very effectively with City.
last season apart from Gabbi, Saliba and White, whom would you (or Arteta) trust to rotate with them?
LB position was pretty much open for Zinny and Kiwior and Tomi, depended on fitness. Timber was out.
Partey and Jorgi had fitness issue.
Vieira, out for a few months, and we never knew if he was able to get back to match fit.
ESR, we all know.
Nelson, we know his ability.
Martinelli and Jesus, disappointing last season.
In second half our attacking front was basically carried by Trossard and Kai.
Would you trust or believe Eddie would do a similar job? Don’t kid me.
Our midfield was carried by Ode and Rice.
I really want to know who could be a “regular” rotation for our starting 11, bar Ramsdale. But you know the reason why Arteta did not use him.
Assuming the strongest first team (Raya, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Calafiori, Merino, Rice, Ode, Gabbi, Saka, Kai) .
The players I trust to come on or start as a rotation option and not lower our level are: Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, Timber, Kiwior, Jorginho, Partey (if fit), Trossard, Jesus (if fit).
6 in the defensive half, 2 in the attacking half. It’s clear where our squad comes up short.
As I said above, I agree that Arteta didn’t have the options last season. This is where strengthening the depth this summer with the new signings we are making, will give him the options to manage players minutes next season. We need to aspire to the depth City have within their squad to challenge on all fronts.
So your answer to my questions is… one?
We won’t aspire to the squad depth because we haven’t got 115 charges hanging over our head
I’m not sure…I just went to the best team and the team that we need to aspire to beat.
I don’t actually think we are far off from that now. If we keep making quality signings as we are doing we can match the quality City have in their squad.
Nobody can beat City by doing what they do, because you need infinite funding and to break the rules with it to do that.
Well if we are making quality signings Man City are going to make even better signings.
They are not to stand still and watch everyone else improve their squad. Even with what we’ve signed so far Man City are still ahead of us.
The last two seasons we tripped over ourselves costing us the title(s). Don’t really need to worry about how City does things tbh.
I want depth to do better in the cups. We’re already a strong league performer.