Algo suggested me this.
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I think it’s hard to ignore that we played really well for stretches last season. Whether Arteta is a good coach or a lucky coach, he found something resembling a formation that worked until it didn’t.
Now why it stopped working I think is up for debate. Injuries obviously played a role and he’s not necessarily to blame for all of that but he has to shoulder some of the blame. Why wasn’t Tierney rotated out, why wasn’t Partey rotated out, why couldn’t he find some use for Pepe so Saka wasn’t walking around exhausted, stuff like that.
I support the club and want the club to succeed but I’m not blind. He’s got Josh’s ear (for now). Like you said, he’s not going anywhere unless we’re on no points heading into October or something insane like that.
I worry about his ability to manage a larger squad and trust squad players. I worry about how he changes games with substitutions (or doesn’t). I worry about how he’s stated publicly that he requires specialists at every position.
But we’ll see. I think it’s notable the players haven’t quit on him.
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Hopefully next season will be the first drama free season too.
Every season there seems to be something in the locker room that attracts too much attention, whether it’s Fabregas wanting to leave, Alexis wanting to leave, Ozil and Auba contracts not paying off, etc.
I don’t see any problems currently so if anything new pops up it will be under his watch.
Don’t let BigWeng see this…
Arteta really does follow in the footsteps of his father Pep. How can he have only signed 1 new forward in his entire time at Arsenal so far (Willian).
He’s gone all out on spending on the defence / GK. He got Partey and Ødegaard in to help with midfield control. But astonishingly, the attack has been ignored for the 2.5 years he’s been here.
I can only imagine he sold the project to the Kroenkes on that basis. That he’d need time to acquire all the components he wants for a CL quality squad, and so they know pieces are missing in our forward line.
I find it wild because a good attack can absolutely carry a mediocre team (see Liverpool under Rodgers, or Kane / Son at Spurs now). The ceiling can be raised dramatically by just one quality signing.
I expect 2 significant forward acquisitions, and I expect the team to be very close to the finished product next season.
There’s been a lot of good to shout about, a lot of feel good factor because of the youth coming through. But he’s already had enough time - we need to be scoring 75+ goals and seeing a GD of comfortably 25+ next season.
A manager shouldn’t be given 3.5 seasons and £300m+ spending just to finish 5th again. The expectation is going to be high next season and its the one where he will either rise to the challenge, or be sacked for under-achieving.
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I don’t think we were ever buying a striker until Auba or Laca left.
But I agree that this is the missing piece, along with a midfielder and some better depth in a few places, and there will be no excuses if we do all that this summer and Arteta can’t improve the results.
Im actually quite happy about the situation. If we have a good summer, we’ll wind up with a very talented young squad more or less up and down the roster, with almost no shitters left. At that point, we won’t have enough to compete for the title but we should be able to fully expect our managers to be competing hard with Chelsea, United, and Spurs for 3rd/4th and having a go in cups. And we can just judge the manager, whether Arteta or somebody else, on that basis.
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Focus was on defence & midfield because that was our most glaring deficiency under Emery and when he took over. We used to look like we would concede with every opposition attack and whilst with injuries we have looked less sturdy, with first choice defence we actually looked solid for a long stretch and gave less opportunities to opposition.
We also had an Auba who could still score - now obviously attack is our biggest deficiency and so I expect we will make signing(s) there
If you really deep it, our best performance under Arteta didn’t even come with Arteta on the sidelines.
Off to a good start then.
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Good shout, we nearly reached 70. If it weren’t for countless dodgy decisions again we may have got there.
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@AW49 has also said we’ll be challenging for the title in 3 years, so hopefully he’s right on that also.
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Neville and Carragher predicting we’re in trouble next season. 
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You got Ozil’ed.
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This is wild to me considering the team looks incredibly lethargic a large chunk of the time.
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Lethargic? I haven’t seen an Arsenal team work this hard in the pitch for decades.
That’s something you have to give to Arteta. He got those guys running like dogs unlike Emery and Wenger. Emery tried at the start but he didn’t stick with it. Arteta is on that touchline every game making sure of it too.
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Work rate before talent? Explains the Ozil situation then
Auba too had bursts where he chased/pressed with intent but never seemed too bothered to do it consistently
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Y’all really smoked out af. Whatever u described isn’t Arsenal. Biggest match of the year against Newcastle and nobody shows up to work at all, work rate was non existent. I wanna live in the fantasy land u live in.
Also big question about ur and Asstetas definition of work rate. Dood persisted with Laca until he was forced to drop him thanks to covid.
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Oh, they did work in the Newcastle game. They just executed the plan poorly and Newcastle wiped the floor with us.
Pretty embarrassing performance. No two ways about it.