He is. He always commends Arsenal and when teams were criticising Arsenal in last 2 seasons, he would come out and say how they are best team off the ball.
He had a timing issue in this case. He gave out his thoughts when Arsenal fans are busy pushing back on Arsenal & setpieces narrative.
He appears to have a consistency issue too.
Discussion on limiting goals is beyond me.
So what would it be if we had an elite striker banging them in almost every game. ‘It is not fair that Arsenal have such a prolific striker, it seriously dents the competition in this league. We need to come up with a plan, a striker like this maybe should only be able to play for 45 minutes each match.’
Unpopular opinion - We should definitely limit the impact of setpieces in deciding the games. I always found it annoying that a game of football was decided based on who bundled in a lucky header in a crowd of heads.
OA popular opinion - These fucks are definitely making a bigger deal now that Arsenal are getting the better side of the deal.
That’s an opinion that’s been roundly backed with evidence.
But what’s the difference between that and bundling the ball over the line not from a set piece?
We want excitement and aesthetic in every sport but it’s not like that at the highest level.
Reduce set pieces and teams will find other ways and it won’t necessarily be scoring wonderful goals.
If Arsenal wins a match by scoring a goal out of final third scramble,
I would argue that Arsenal’s defence is so good, you hardly get a goal mouth scramble from open play and Arsenal’s attacking play is so good, they created the chaos they capitalised from. If Arsenal is winning a lot of matches based on non-setpiece bundling the ball over the line, it can generally be a positive indication of the performance.
I can’t say the same about corner kicks or setpieces. Last year, all Martinelli did was run ahead, get close to the goal and get a corner. A lot of teams & players can do that and you will end up with two teams generally good at winning corners and one team getting luckier than the other. Setpieces are also often won by diving, feigning injuries and mostly never really an indication of one team performing better than the others.
I would much rather get rid of penalty shoot outs in cup games/knock out games, and just keep playing for periods of 15 minutes until one team is ahead after one of these periods.
What’s the fundamental difference here? That sounds like one team just “getting luckier than the other”.
As for your second point, why isn’t everybody else doing it then? Do all 19 other teams have a specific moral aversion to it such that they intentionally do not do it?
Teams should be awarded the win based upon open play XG. It’s rediculous (yes, that’s ridiculous spelled with an E) that teams can win on a solitary counter attack with their one chance against the run of play.
On a serious note, limiting set piece goals won’t necessarily mean making the game more open and more attacking, for example - a team with 11 men behind the ball becomes harder to unlock. It’s usually once a team goes behind that a game can become more open.
It seems strange there’s an anti Arsenal agenda with some of the media, yet a cheating, money laundering club like Man City get a free ride from them.
Fundamental difference is you still need to get the ball into the final third which is difficult if the defence from attackers to defenders is well executed.
I do agree that the setpiece goals scored by Arsenal this season is art. There is no impeding goalkeepers - just sheer movement, chaos, impeccable runs and worldclass deliveries.
However, I don’t care if not all teams can do it or can’t do it well. I just don’t like setpiece goals as match deciders especially if two teams are performing equally well.
This discussion is getting silly lol, there’s nothing special going on with set pieces except teams can’t defend them and it’s being exploited.
Back in the day the average traditional English (and other countries really) CB was 6 footer who did nothing but crunch tackles, clear the ball and enjoy defending crosses and dominate the air. Goalkeepers were commanding that was expected to have a strong presence in the box. When we had Almunia and Fabianski between the sticks they were outliers in the league for how flappy and how nervous they made us (and their teammates) watch them.
This discussion is nerdball to it’s core. Set-pieces are normally difficult to score from. Teams are just worse in the air. The idea we need to change the rules because of incompetence makes me laugh.
Nonsense! Arsenal are scoring from set pieces! Something must be done!
We’ve taken 67 corners this season with the next highest side at 56 and the median team at 46. This is what happens when everybody just defends deep against you.
If teams want to stop conceding from set pieces to us they might think about actually trying to play football and knock it around a bit on our side of the pitch.
All of these hack media accounts are just engagement farming knowing full well how active Arsenal fans are on social media.
They always invent some random controversy because they’re too greedy and lazy to do some actual proper journalism.
They’re struggling to praise Arsenal/Arteta and our fans aren’t in a meltdown. In addition, they (the media) can’t even bait most of us out by trying to demonise the amount that we’re scoring from set pieces.
I almost feel sorry for them.
That’s literally the prevailing mood in the English football media.
We went from not winning to not winning fairly to not winning in the specific way that others think we should.
Sad muppets the lot of them.