Super Mik Godteta

No Jake don’t revert to your old Arteta hating heathenous ways.

Though seriously it’s actually royally fucked me off a little, I can totally envision this rattling our confidence and I don’t buy the whole 1 game a week argument. I feel like you’re as likely to become ring rusty as you are to be well rested. It’s not a good trade off.

Saying that this tournament is a cruel mistress, you’re nearly expected to win every game and that breeds complacency and an over reliance on fringe players who ultimately aren’t good enough.

The CL next season will offer a different challenge to Mikel, in many ways a much better one. More risk, more reward. Less fucking shit games against Dundalk

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This’ll soon be a distant memory when we win our next league game and continue our march towards the title.

Bit fucked off tonight though.

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Me too man. Fucking going out early in Europe is something that’s never not going to annoy me. Was a very disheartening result all in all. I was really hoping we’d at the very least get one fucking high profile fixture out of this shit before we said good buy to it forever

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Yeah I was hoping for United or Juventus in the next round.

As much as I’ll enjoy only having league fixtures to focus on I did want a run in the cup here. Especially as our domestic cup outings ended very quickly this season.

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I was really hoping for Juve but yeh man pretty fucking disheartened if I’m being honest. I’m genuinely a little worried we’ll be ring rusty from game week to game week although I feel blessed I won’t have to hear another arsenal fan mention rotation one more fucking time this season.

I really don’t care if we run Saka, White, Ode, Partey and Jesus into the ground in these next few weeks if it means winning the league.

Although once we’re back in the CL we’ll be relying on these players twice a week more often than not anyway.

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I don’t get this, is this about our starters or backups in case of an injury?

A week is pretty much the ideal gap between matches, especially when all the matches left are domestically. Plenty of time to rest and prepare and less time travelling around too.

What don’t you get man? You quoted my entire post. The ring rusty part?

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Yeah. :sweat_smile:

Dropped a bollock tonight. Should have made changes earljer. Going through extra time, pens, losing Saliba and losing the game is a horror show.

Ok yeh it’s just a concern of mine personally. I feel like professional athletes need to be competitive more than once a week otherwise they become complacent.

Even last season people kept using the company line that we were only playing once a week and we entirely capitulated. We were playing for a hell of a lot last season too. Not quite the larger stakes of this season but my god how we ended the season, it wasn’t really a case of being rested or not. We just folded like a house of cards.

Now I do think our squad is stronger this season but that’s guys like Trossard and Jorginho. Games like tonight illustrate that most of our fringe players just don’t have that aggression in them.

And of course we have Zinchenko and Jesus - having carte blanche to play them Saka and Partey week in week out could be the difference

Me personally though, I’d rather find those extra reserves to chase down an extra trophy

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Our season arguably derailed because of injuries last season. If anything I think Arteta could have rested more guys earlier last season and maybe we don’t end up with Holding away at Spurs.

But that’s in the past.

I think you’re right that being able to play Saka, Partey, Zinchenko and Jesus together is a huge boost. Last year we were limping towards the finish with Elneny, Holding and Cedric playing minutes. That shouldn’t happen this season.

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Yeah, some of our players were fucking drained in the end.Especially the forwards. Saka, Martinelli and Odegaard were gassed. ESR was fucked.

At least this time you have Trossard and Jesus.

Though see this kind of my point. You either have a squad that can cope or you don’t. Players can get injured any time any where. Rest and recovery aren’t a perfect science. I’m sure as a runner you know yourself that quite often you feel better when you’re more active than not. And that transcends everything, not just fitness but concentration, alertness, focus.

There’s a psychological effect behind playing and winning all the time, it’s what the big clubs and players want to do. You’ll never hear the titans of Europe saying well hell now we have a week in between games.

I didn’t think we looked gassed towards the end of last season. It was psychological more than it was fitness. I remember Xhaka lambasting the mentality after the Toon away game and I actually thought he was being a cunt. But in hindsight he was spot on

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Nah that was the small squad.

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We’ve played shit in every single Europa league game. We were never winning it. Saved ourselves a lot of hassle in April and given ourselves the best chance to take something from that tricky run we have.

Tears shed zero. Hours sleep lost worrying about going away to juventus two days before Anfield, zero.

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Oh I think we definitely did. White limping around on one leg comes to mind.

I know recovery isn’t an exact science but for professional athletes being monitored with more data than you or I would know what to do with, they can get pretty close. Can someone pull a hamstring chasing a ball regardless at any time? Sure, shit happens. But I think the medical team and the coaches will be able to structure recovery around only having one game a week to prevent that type of rustiness you referenced. It may allow for more intense training sessions since they aren’t worried about a Thursday-Sunday-Thursday going forward.

Yeh I get what you’re putting down, and I’m not trying to sound like some luddite who doesn’t believe in sports science and data tracking. I just feel like it’s easy to neglect the mental side when we talk like this. Brain chemistry is an important aspect of fitness, and I just feel like getting to play a spicy two legged affair against say Juve would do more for these lads mental state than an extra day sitting on their ass at home or an extra, rigorous training session.

Yeah, that’s on the coaches to manage. Arteta will have to break out his best Gene Hackman from Hoosiers or maybe even some Gordon Bombay from Mighty Ducks to keep the team together.

But I’m not as convinced this iteration of the team in this position will neglect the mental side of things. If anything, the amount of emotion poured into the league season so far makes me think they are hyper fixated on the title. It may go some way to explaining why our EL performances have been so flat beyond just rotation.

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Mikel played a semi-strong side in this one, before making changes so am not sure how seriously he was taking this game. Maybe he felt players like Nelson, Vieira and Jesus could do with some game time and I get that but if you are serious about this tournament, surely you play your strongest side, try and win the game in the first half, then bring on the subs.

From the looks of it, he wanted to stay in the EL, but not at the cost of the PL. And I think maybe some of that mentality seeped into the players as well. Anyway, am not too fussed about this exit as long as it doesn’t affect our league form, and I don’t think it will.

Having said that, there is a big chance of us ending up with nothing this season, which TBH won’t be a disaster given the huge strides we have taken in the right direction this season. And we’ll have CL next season.

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Last year we collapsed because we were playing Elneny midfield, Cedric and Tavares full back in too many games and holding coming into CB and had zero rotation options for our front three.

To make the final of Europa league we’d be increasing the number of games to play by 50% after the international break. That’s 50% more opportunity to pick up key injuries multipled by whatever additional risk there is from reduced recovery time. Yeah no thanks.