ARTETA TALKING FITNESS AND LOAD MANAGEMENT
Well happy good morning to you on this wonderful FriYAY.
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Mikel Arteta dropped his big press conference and it didn’t really shine much of a light on anything new.
The Fulham game is huge for him because it represents the chance to turn the page on a very depressing reality: Arsenal lose Premier Leagues because we don’t win enough of the games we should win.
Against top-six sides, we’ve been really good. Not quite great. But the low number of defeats in those ties is where you want to be. Mourinho was always game for NOT LOSING against the big dog sides because he knew his flat-track bullies would dish out spankings to the underfunded minnows (including Arsenal).
Fulham FC? Gotta spank them. Show them last season was an aberration. A dream. A moment for their history books. A blight on our past.
We have plenty of options to do the job. Marco Silva made some jokes about how deep our squad is.
‘No Madueke? They have Saka.’
He’s right, and I suspect he’s quite nervous about the type of Arsenal he’s going to have to deal with tomorrow, because we are a very different offering.
The media spent a lot of time trying to get under Arteta’s skin about the thinking behind signing Gyökeres. My take? He was laying down the gauntlet a little bit.
‘I told him before the first meeting, the nine that I want is a nine that when he doesn’t score for six or eight games, he can handle that. If not, you have to go somewhere else because the pressure is gone, the expectation is going to be there. So if you put a number nine shirt for Arsenal, you have to be able to say, OK, six games, don’t score. I’m a different player, I start to act in a different way. I want much more of the same of what he’s doing. Once we have those opportunities, put them in. I’m sure it’s going to happen.’
These are most certainly the moments that define players and their careers. He’s on his longest goal drought since his Coventry days, he’s part of a shame story in Sweden right now, and there are some really annoying voices in the Arsenal world questioning what he’s all about.
Time to deliver. Big players get on that horse and ride it off into the sunset. They score goals. They get over their fears, nerves, doubts… and deliver. He was signed for goals. Not hard running. Not because he left his girlfriend. Not because he has dreamy blue eyes with steely determination. Goals are the job of a nine. Take your focus off that and you’re on a gaslighting mission I can’t indulge. Block 4 of the season is where the worm turns. This is the moment in the season I deeply regret casting doubts. My turn in the kitchen is hopefully coming. The humble pie is about to rise… actually, let’s call it a soufflé, because pies don’t really rise. The humble soufflé is in the oven — will it rise, or will it fail like a MasterChef nightmare?
Who knows… but I’m hungry for some Soufhumblé.
We’ve been wondering what Arteta sees in Hincapié all week — well, we got some answers.
‘What you’re going to see is his aggression, his determination. He’s a player who goes full gas to every single action, especially in defending. And with the ball, whether he plays as a left centre-back or a full-back, he’s very clean on the ball. Again, someone who really wants to penetrate, whether it’s with the ball, his positioning, and it will bring a different character and emotion to the team.’
I’m reading “mean bastard” here — is that what you got? He sounds like he comes with some of that South American fire we all love to see. He’s an athlete, he’s fast, and he’ll give us unpredictability on the left side of defence in the same way Timber gives it to us now. I am VERY excited to see what he can bring to the table.
Arteta gave some updates on injuries: Ødegaard and Kai are tracking well, and Zubimendi was rested based on the load he’s been dealing with over the past few weeks. Again, another sign that Arteta is maturing. He’s listening to players, talking about the data, and being quite open about how he’s leaning into the squad.
‘A lot of things. There have been two very different blocks. In the second block, because of some issues that we had, we had to increase our availability in the squad. That was one of the main things to do. The impact that anybody could have in the game, whether he was playing or finishing, or he wasn’t even in the squad. I think we did that really, really well. And then we had a few things that we wanted — to be more unpredictable, to threaten the opposition more, to be super consistent in all the defensive aspects of the game as well, and we’ve gone to a different level. In the next block, can we sustain a lot of those things and increase others? That’s the objective.’
Hearing him talk this way is music to my ears. His biggest weakness as a coach has been his lack of empathy with regards to workload… but he’s clearly been told the league was lost on availability last year, and that he has an important role to play in keeping things smooth this time.
We’re currently favourites for the league, clearly, because we’re top… but honestly, if Arteta has a squad deep enough, and he keeps it fresh, I totally agree that we’re the favourites.
Ok, enough gassing from me… jump into the Therapy Session from yesterday! x
Podcast## THERAPY SESSION | REVISING MERINO SLANDER (EARLY BIRD)
Pedro
·
Oct 16
THERAPY SESSION | REVISING MERINO SLANDER (EARLY BIRD)
Pete, Matt Kandela, and Jacob Hawley return for a fiery therapy session — unpacking Arsenal’s international break chaos, Viktor Gyökeres’ crisis of confidence, and the looming barometer game away at Fulham.
Read full story