After the past two matches people have got every right to wallow in it, what else are you expecting on here today? Lol
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Desperate?
He built a deliberately small squad and ran it into the ground. He rolled out two bad formations at Spurs and Newcastle and then talked about how he didn’t want to blame his players but it was tough to defend them?
That’s just shitty from him. Maybe he is some genius and once Edu buys him 24 specialists we’ll get to see his genius on full display. But I think the way he managed March to May period has been hugely disappointing.
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Maybe I’m just expecting people to have the same logical perspective as me which is too much to ask I suppose. Should have known in Jan that keeping a small squad was signing the death warrant on top 4.
For what we’ve been working with, 5th is decent. Has nothing to do with not signing fucking Conte over Mikel. There’s a plan in action and top 4 was always going to be over achieving this season.
We lose a couple games and people are justifying BigWeng lmao get a fucking grip man.
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Tbf, I think most have been reasonable.
I think people who are overly critical are just hurt by the way we lost yesterday.
Spurs it was injustice, Newcastle was a disgraceful performance if we’re being honest.
If the boys gave it a good fight and just couldn’t get the W then people would be more positive.
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If my aunt had bollocks yeah yeah
If top 4 was the target we would have bolstered adequately. We lost to Palace, Soton and Brighton. The damage was done then anyway.
We just need a bit more experience in the squad and we’ll be fine. 5th is decent for this squad.
But why shouldn’t top 4 be the target when it’s in sight? We can see other clubs are struggling around us and all we really needed to do was buy some players in January to mitigate any injury issues that we may face.
Not getting top 4 when it was in our hands reeks of bad squad management and taking an unnecessary gamble.
I understand not signing Vlahovic when he rejected us but hedging your bets on Lacazette and Nketiah is just poor management.
Jovic was touted as a potential loan option I can’t see why we didn’t throw a few million loan fee at him and at least give ourselves the option. Morata was another one who we could have secured had we truly pushed hard enough for him.
What it seems to me is that the club want us to accept top 4 wasn’t attainable because of a bunch of restrictions that they themselves decided to place on themselves.
We loaned out three midfielders in total this season and left ourselves with 3 senior midfielders which is bizarre for a manager who likes to play a 3 man midfield.
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Come on man, we came this far, we were 4 points ahead with 3 games remaining.
I’ll give you Spurs was an injustice but yesterday we just blew it.
We’re not exactly gonna be happy about it, are we?
We essentially didn’t show up yesterday. It was a nothing performance against a team that was fighting to survive a few months ago.
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Are people really believing this? Holding was deservedly sent off and even though I think the penalty was soft we didn’t lose because Cedric gave away a penalty we lost because we had 10 men and we were shit
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Reality check: It was never in our hands with our remaining fixture list. People had us winning every remaining game lmao. We are poor away from home and people had us going away and smashing teams at their ground. Yeah right.
We don’t have the experience in our squad to see a season out just yet. Only fault Mikel and the board did was not having a squad post-Jan to see out the season.
Well we lost over bullshit rather than just being shit at football. I’d write that off if the next performance was any good.
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I think giving them the penalty was a massive boost personally and the Son’s elbow should have been reviewed.
But as I said, I can excuse the boys for that.
Newcastle was just a no show for me. We literally went in and surrendered.
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weve lost 6 of our last 11 games it was absolutely in our hands. There’s no excuse for losing 3 on the trot and also being smoked by 14th place Newcastle.
We have lost 13 games this season and we can’t keep blaming youth when the squad is young by design.
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Saying that 5th position is a great result as no one was expecting 4th is like saying us finishing 2nd in 15/16 was a great achievement as no one was expecting us to win the title at the start of the season.
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I believe it was more than just 14th Place Newcastle. It was cup final last home game rabid dogs Newcastle. The same way it was rabid dogs Palace in which Vieira did not want to lose at any cost.
These teams had their best games against us. You can’t just look at the table and go yeah we should smash these lot. No. The English game doesn’t work like that. Every game is fucking tough and if you don’t turn up on the day you get beat - simple as. Liverpool and City do not get enough credit because what they actually do week in week out is elite.
This is actually the Arteta plan.
There has never been a more entitled manager in the PL.
He seems to think that he doesn’t need to use the players already at the club, like every other manager does, but can only use players hand picked by himself.
Imagine managers like Conte, Potter, Franck, Moyes, etc, with the same resources Arteta has had.
Then telling their bosses, “I can’t work with any of the players already here” and then demanding a complete overhaul just to get them challenging for a top four place.
Just look at the facts.
He’s had consecutive eighth place finishes, has spent more money than nearly any other PL manager,
then this season, although he’s had no European football to contend with, he’s had fourteen defeats, finished behind spurs and there is no perceivable difference in our defensive or attacking play.
Arteta is a joke and the longer people defend him, the longer he’ll be here.
He’s not taking us anywhere and is doing no more than any decent manager could have done.
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This was a conscious decision though, so logically its perfectly valid to still criticise Arteta and Edu for missing out on top four if you’re saying the reason is our January window. Spurs demonstrated the benefits of strengthening in January, had we done that and they didn’t we’d likely be celebrating right now.
Very minimising way to phrase it, but I suspect you know that. They were probably the two most significant league games weve played in about half a decade, and we totally failed to turn up. These aren’t any old two games, people are absolutely justified to be angry the following day.
It literally was though. Even after we lost to Spurs it was still in our fucking hands.
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People said the same of Brentford.
Saying a game is a cup final for one team shouldn’t mean the other team has no chance to compete, especially when the other team is supposedly better.
This game was our cup final too and we were lifeless.
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100% agree. They made the decision that top 4 was not priority by doing this. My argument is that this is not just Mikel’s fault to not ‘see us over the line’. If the club wanted top 4 THIS season they should have bolstered adequately.
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We were lifeless because we have too many young players who can’t handle a tough away game. Martinelli is the exception. Saka, Ode and ESR should take a look in the mirror and ask themselves if they really wanted it.
But spurs got a point against Liverpool who are arguably the best side in Europe and beat us.
How do our games against Crystal Palace and Newcastle even compare?
You talk as if we’ve had a relatively successful season.
But in reality it has been yet another failure and It just shows how low Arteta set the bar himself with the two eighth place finishes.
The reality is we’ve lost fourteen games this season, including against a Championship club so by any reckoning, this has been no better than previous seasons under Arteta.
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