Man City knew what they were doing, selling Zinchenko and Jesus to us.
They’re good squad players but considering their wages, nowhere near good enough for a title challenging team.
But Zinchenko is often injured and prone to mistakes so we should be looking to upgrade him and especially Jesus with genuine top quality.
Arteta is so rigid to new ideas - We do have Zinchenko who has some creativity in his passing. Play the guy there against Preston and see if it clicks.
Arteta found some measure of consistency and success from being rigid but doing something different is what saved his job and won him his only trophy.
During these last 2-3 months where there was some adversity and something had to improve in a creativity sense - his refusal to play Nwaneri or make a left field decision like Zinchenko in midfield showcased his limitations as a manager tbh. He’s clearly shown he can only operate when everything lines up for him. This is why he’s never trusted any squad player the entire time he’s been here.
The 442 clearly stopped working a long time ago and amazingly he persisted with it. Incredibly disappointing management with the wealth of resources at his disposal.
Some of these defeats and draws have been down to his decisions.
He’s done a big job at Arsenal these last 3 years but he’s the key reason Arsenal are out of it this year having completely failed to adapt to a few red cards and injuries.
Vs Brighton (6th in table btw) he left it as is and we quickly fell on the back foot conceding. He made a change which stemmed the flow form Brighton and we actually had the better chances to win it.
Vs City, away against the best team in the world leading 2-1. He brings White for Saka at half time and we defend incredibly well, drawing via a lucky bounce to Stones in the last minute.
Vs Bournemouth, he brings Kiwior to fill the giant Saliba sized hole and presumably play for a draw/sneaky counter 1-0. We didn’t play well at all so maybe this one you can suggest a better solution but logically seems like a normal move, but should’ve been trossard off instead of Sterling.
I don’t get the speed at which people seem to flip on Arteta. A few slightly annoying lineups aside (mostly persisting with trossard over nwaneri) he’s not got much wrong this season.
Edit - pretty sure martinelli missed a sitter for 1-0 against Bournemouth just before they ended up scoring as well…so it would’ve worked.
That’s the biggest one, isn’t it?
At the beginning of last season (let alone this one), we knew we would be fucked if something happened to Odegaard.
We already have poor depth in the midfield department, and when it comes to creativity, we have no backup for Odegaard after we let Vieira and ESR go.
What was the contingency plan if Odegaard got injured?
We have a player in Zinchenko who was trained as an AM and plays as one for his NT. Surely, it makes sense to start grooming Zinchenko back into the midfield role now that we have enough depth for the left-back role (Timber, Calafiori, and Kiwior).
I feel Arteta & his staff desperately lack this level of proactivity.
I think trossard was the backup plan, we all thought it’s Nwaneri when we let Vieira and ESR go, but that early injury to Martin showed us exactly how Mikel planned to line up without him.
Again it worked at first, big games against city, villa and spurs all really won in my mind.
Just the fact that martinelli has also been injured or off form, followed by a big drop off in recent weeks from trossard has shown the flaws in that plan. Now that’s where Nwaneri should’ve been used more (at least see if he does shit) given he’s the only other option.
As for zinchenko he’s barely just got fit himself so I won’t blame mikel on that front. Maybe he’s had 1 or 2 games where we could’ve tried it and that includes Chelsea where Martin was back.
That, for me, represents a good solution if we had enough depth in wings.
Also, it puts pressure on Trossard to adjust tactically for two positions and you can see he struggled.