As long as our board don’t see it like this and recognise the progress Arteta is making, then that’s main thing. Fans, pundits, whatever can think what they want.
Facts are this is first time in years we’ve had a real group of players and a manager who believe they can achieve great things, and have gone a long way to repairing the relationship with the fans.
2.5 years is a long time as a manager in the modern game. We’ve seen plenty who achieve pretty much instant success so the 8th place finish last season was very disappointing.
But I think Arsenal’s starting point was so low when Arteta took charge, the squad mentality so weak and the atmosphere at the club so toxic that it was always going to take longer to get us back on track.
As @Gunnerpr said, no pundits predicted us to finish fourth and only the most optimistic of fans genuinely thought we’d do it this season.
4th place is completely in our hands now so it would be devastating to fuck it up at this stage.
The key is that there is something building here. We can all feel it, that it’s a new era with a completely different ethos. Managers like Conte come in and do great things then leave shortly after. Arteta is a student of Pep - he’s trying to build a dynasty from the bottom up. Our objective hasn’t been just to get top 4, it’s been to get Arsenal back to where it should be on many levels - professionalism, expectation, mentality, fan engagement. The standards of the club fell hugely in the past 5+ years and his job was not only to oversee improvement on the pitch, but to rebuild this whole bastard club.
And this season he is exceeding the top 4 objective and meeting the club rebuild objective.
I said before this season, if he got top four, Arteta would deserve another season but after three seasons and 200m spent on building a team he hand picked himself, that would be the bare minimum.
So if he doesn’t, then Arteta might not be able to attract the top players he’s targeting and also the board might not back him as heavily as they have done.
But worse than that, spurs will have more pulling power, especially with a world class manager.
That’s why I still think the board should have replaced Emery with Conte and given him 200m to invest because he wouldn’t have taken as long to achieve the same.
Saying that, I would agree that Arteta is starting to get the team playing better, although to be fair he had lowered the bar considerably.
So if he does get us a CL place, he deserves another season to prove he can take us to the next level.
The right line of questioning really
I’ve previously stated that if he can’t get top 4 this season I have no confidence he’ll be able to get it next season with another ongoing EL campaign.
Yes Arteta has made progress, and he deserved credit for that, but it’s valid to caveat that against the time and resources he’s had in the role. idgaf what a bunch of bozos in the media thought of our top 4 chances or how young the squad is, top 4 was always on the cards at the start of the season, anybody who denies that is minimizing expectations especially considering the investment and no european football.
It’s really this simple: No CL = No new contract
+1
Achieving 4th spot is not an overachievement.
At the same time, not getting the 4th spot is not a deal breaker for me at this moment.
Okay forget the media just skim this thread lol. Lets not rewrite history here even as biased arsenal fans we probably had our lowest expectations going into a season I’ve ever seen.
It’s not just low IQ pundits we’re talking about though. Very few people (opposition fans or Arsenal fans) thought we would be where we are. Fair play if you thought we would be favourites for 4th in April. The transfer business was also criticised which again impacted what the majority thought this team could achieve this season. I agree though that the investment was commensurate with a team who is trying to get top 4 - it’s just that not many people pegged us as realistic challengers.
It’s a weird one because at this stage of the season, we have it in our hands and although I didn’t expect us to be level on points with the 4th placed team with 2 games in hand - now that we’re here, it would be a mega disappointment to lose out. And there’s nothing at this stage, given how the team has improved, to warrant a collapse or a failure to get top 4. He’s got us here and there’s a clear uward trajectory - fucking up now would be against the curve.
Basically, the team’s improvement has reset the expectations to a much higher level than it was before the season started. That’s my view anyway because I certainly didn’t expect us to be where we are now way back in August.
That’s what Arsenal fans were resigned to, after what everyone thought was a poor application in the transfer window & based on the previous season’s display.
A Top club like Arsenal should be able to achieve Top 4 spots if there is no European football to contend with.
Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers competed for the title when they had no European football.
Most people and fans didn’t peg us as locked on favorites that’s fair.
I think it’s just the nature at the top end people saw 5th or 6th was more likely but then again the margins between 4th and those spots aren’t as big as past seasons.
Personally, I never considered top 4 a closed shop but I thought we had enough to compete for it
That is a key point because this season we haven’t been in Europe and we’ve had very few cup games, so our players have had less fatigue and fewer injuries than usual.
We’ll be playing a lot more matches next season so consequently we’ll have more injuries and will have to rest our best players.
Also, we’ve had the advantage of top four rivals like Man U, spurs, Aston Villa and Wolves having this season disrupted because they’ve changed their manager after a few games.
Next season these new manager’s will have adjusted to their new clubs, and will bring in the players they want in the transfer window.
How we played the January Window (Double Cup exit also) should absolutely be taken into consideration here.
Light schedule with plenty of prep time. We played a gambit we needed a small squad to see out the season.
Conditions can’t get anymore favourable than this. It’ll be disappointing not to get top 4.
Lets not forget that part of the reason for that is because of our very poor finish of 8th last season. If expectations were low it is at least in part due to the shit job Arteta did last season. Makes sense that very few fancied us getting top four when last season formed part of people’s thinking when making predictions.
Football is about taking opportunity. A mixture of good performances and failings of others have created this chance.
You have too take it. It’s there for the taking. Excusing it and falling back on perfect storm 2 or 3 year plans are not realistic.
Teams will change personnel and landscape change in that time.
You have a ton more of unanswered questions and doubts on the set up if we fall away now.
I don’t think we will but I lose the positive vibe if we do going forward.
You have too do this now from this position.
That should be team talk enough for this team now.
I think it is also fair to say many thought ManU would actually be competent, and they are tragic. I think most thought they would be hitting 70+ points easy and they are on track for 64-65.
I still think of it as “trajectory and football need to be good/improving” and 71+ points for me (which I think is more/less what I have said all along). I’m still not convinced at all about Arteta, but if I look at AFC as phases of development, he gets there and you maybe say “ok phase 1 stabilization and platform build (esp with younger players) is good” and “let’s see how he does with phase 2 (raised expectations week to week and need to compete on multiple fronts competently while solidifying us back into top 3/4 and showing we may actually be relevant for title some day”.
I’ll be extremely disappointed if we don’t get top four but barring an utter collapse I’m not thinking at all about firing Arteta.
-We’ve been playing excellent league football since early December, not just by our own pathetic recent standards but by just about any standard.
-There is a palpably different feeling among the players and, from what I can see and have read from my distanced perch, the matchday support and both groups are definitely behind Arteta.
-The starting XI has two areas where very obvious improvements can be made, there seems to be a clear plan in place for doing just that, and the work in the transfer market last summer gives me some confidence in Edu/Arteta’s ability to pick the right targets.
Given all that, there’s no way that finishing one point behind vs one point ahead of a good Spurs team that looks likely to end with a point total in the low 70s is going to change my outlook on what we should do going forward. That doesn’t mean I won’t be living and dying with the result and bitterly disappointed if we don’t make it though.
Far too lazy this afternoon to articulate my thoughts on this subject for the millionth time but this right here is it. Great post.
Yup pretty much sums it up.
Yep - very close to my feelings - the 4th seems lame if we hit 67 and somehow luck into it… on the other hand, it is harsh if we hit 5th with 73-74 points and jettison Arteta.
The biggest thing wanting me to give him more time is simply how well the young core seems to be gelling and spirit seems great - and the fact that we have more discrete, specific surgical work, not a “start the damn thing over” any more.
Well no one was calling for him to be sacked as a result of missing top 4 this season. In the unlikely event don’t make it when can we demand tangible outcomes to validate “progress”? At the end of 22/23!?