The ‘most embarrassing’ Arsenal culprit has been revealed, with Mikel Arteta branded ‘a worm of a man’ and Arne Slot slammed as ‘spineless’.
But first, we laugh at Spurs.
Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.
Earn your Spurs
Well, Spurs have made a believer out of me. I do now believe we are going down.
TGWolf (Does this make us the Waitrose Wigan?) THFC
Watching the sp*rs vs palace 1st half – gone from absolute boredom -> excitement at palace scoring -> sadness at it being offside due to a protruding nose (OMFG!) -> greater sadness at sp*rs scoring a minute later -> unbridled joy with the MVV pull and the bonus of a red card -> started laughing and haven’t stopped.
Stewie – will you contribute to 365 any longer when your team gets relegated?
Gooner in Oz (It’s really going to happen isn’t it – oh joy of joy – this will be decades of value)
I’m watching the Spurs vs. Palace match, and at 1-2, I couldn’t help but notice the faces of Spurs fans. As an Arsenal fan, I genuinely feel for them. The pain and despair are evident; they seem to realize that their team won’t bounce back to win. Now it’s 1-3, and fans are leaving in droves.
Initially, I considered blaming them for not supporting the club and players. But upon reflection, I understand their frustration. It’s tough to back a team that is putting out such lackluster performances in the name of football. How did it come to this? This question could be the topic of an entire thesis—it’s a real mystery to me.
And I’d rather not comment on their coach.
Azeez, Abuja, Nigeria
If Spurs go down, will St Totteringham Day be the first game of the season?
Paul (not a Gooner, just interested)
For Tickers
I’ve been reading F365 semi regularly for 24 years, first alerted to it by an article in the free Metro paper about good football sites. I was there for the glory years and Missing Men.
This in itself makes me a lot older than some readers, but probably the same age as regular contributors.
A couple of years ago one of my oldest friends unexpectedly died. The one that knew all the late 90s, early 2000s British TV references; your Partridges, your Offices. The Day Today. Meaningless knowing references we’d make regularly and most other people wouldn’t notice. But it was a real connection to have with someone.
I don’t read F365 that often now but when I do, and I see the real quiz, it always gives a little smile as I know the longer time goes on, the fewer people notice. But I always will- so keep it up.
One day all the writers on football sites will be 40 years younger than I am and won’t keep these little passing references alive.
I don’t like it, but I’ll have to go along with it.
Andy Mac, Spurs.
What are Arsenal actually good at? Well…
The season started last August. Arsenal have lost a grand total of three (3) games since August. Out of 45 games in all competitions.
Those numbers suggest Arsenal is good at winning football matches. Winning used to be the point of football games until Arsenal started doing it this season. For what it’s worth, despite all of the whinging, Arsenal are also top of the Premier League Fair Play table too.
I’ll speak on behalf of all Arsenal fans: please keep your respect. We don’t care. The lack of respect is mutual. We don’t respect anything your teams achieved in the past either because you aren’t Arsenal and we don’t like you. We’ll never like you, and we don’t want your respect, approval, attention, or anything else from you or your clubs besides 3 points. That goes for ALL of you and your clubs.
Besides Nottingham Forest. Thanks for the kits and the hard work at the Etihad. Hope you’re enjoying Edu.
There. Happy now?
Cheers,
Deen (Arsenal FC).
The Big P, if you simply look at the league table you’ll see all the things that Arsenal are best at (spoiler, it’s everything). There is no R column for respect. Should Arsenal win the league at the end of the season there will be no blank space where “Earned everyone’s respect” should have been engraved. No Arsenal player will throw their winner’s medals into the ocean because Bob from Chelmsford got upset with how long they took for a throw in. Your respect doesn’t mean a thing to us. We were entertaining for years and somehow we never received all the gift baskets from admiring rival fans.
If Arsenal do win the league this year, the manner in which they have done so won’t matter to anyone other than those trying to distract from their own team’s failings. Their own team’s inability to be better than this anti-football Arsenal. And rest assured that in ten years time there’ll be a mail in to F365 where someone uses this Arsenal team to denigrate whoever the villain de jour is, like you just did with Mourinho’s Chelsea of all teams.
Once again, Arsenal do not owe any of you anything. Your respect is meaningless to us.
SC, Belfast
As a season ticket holder for many years I find it amusing that when we played great football but finished between 2nd and 4th under Wenger we were most people’s second team. Now we look like possibly winning we are no longer loved. Sure, football has changed, and so have Arsenal, and we not win anything, we certainly haven’t yet. But ask any fan if they want their team to be loved but a bit crap, or hated but genuinely competitive and I suspect the hollow self serving vitriol we endure is shown for what it is.
And I, like Eze, will miss spurs when they go down. The easy points and countless NLD wins, it has history. Perhaps we’ll finally see the club ownership rules soften and we can buy them so our kids have somewhere to develop.
Life’s great, you all keep whining, we’ll (maybe, hopefully) keep winning.
David. North London Forever
Taking the Mik
Arteta may be a purveyor of highly effective but utterly depressing football (helped hugely by being provided with a prohibitively expensive squad chock full of quality, and being able to make them play like Stoke using the carrot of a big trophy after a generation of lolz), but he is a symptom, not the cause (which I covered in a previous mail about big money ruining everything in the end).
He’s going to go on the same kind of managerial curve as Simeone I suspect, couple of instantly forgettable league winning campaigns and a couple of near misses in the CL when faced with proper managers who have similar resources but play progressive football, like Enrique for example.
Gagging for some Pep City v Klopp Liverpool/Fergie v Wenger/similar matches to watch though, not a single top of the table clash has been a decent watch this season.
Was chatting to the WhatsApp group today, and none of us could recall a memorable and high quality clash in the prem this season from the supposed big boys. Anyone?
RHT/TS x
Arsenal and Freud
If it really is true that Arsenal fans don’t care about the criticism of their team’s style of play — “as long as they keep winning” — then why is it that they constantly feel the need to remind us of this?
It would appear to me that the lady doth protest too much …
All of the Gooners’ defensiveness (ahem) just adds credence to a point I’ve been making for a while: winning won’t make you happy. Not in the long run anyway. The dust will settle and you will still be the same person you were before, with all of your frustrated hopes and dreams.
Even if you win the league, Arsenal fans, I promise you will find something new to be upset about it.
And thus goes the human condition.
Matt, Dublin
Tell me where it Hurzeler, Will
Will Ford, that is absolute codswallop. Hurzeler calling out Arteta/Arsenal for cheating their way to 3 points yet again most certainly is not turning the masses in favour of Mikel Arteta. Frankly, it would take a cheque for a million quid for me to even contemplate favoring that worm of a man. That’s how insufferable that club and their manager have become. I have absolutely no issue with Hurzeler him saying he would never coach his players to cheat in the way Arsenal players do every week, no matter where Brighton sit in the league.
Another game, another few examples of what has to now be described as blatant cheating from the Gooners. Sure, we can all say ‘oh all the clubs have a player or two who play acts, or invites contact to get a foul, or exaggerates the pain inflicted from a run-of-the-mill tackle/foul’. But this Arsenal team takes it to a whole new level, and it’s obviously been coached into them.
The most embarrassing culprit is Gabriel. Considered one of the best centre backs in world football by many. He doesn’t need to do this stuff; he’s big enough and good enough to mix it with any striker in the world. But he comes up against Danny Welbeck and has to change his path to get in his way and throw himself to the floor for the foul. Just go win the ball!! The worst thing of all, the commentators complimented him! What a sad state football is in if that’s considered good defending. Would love to stick a prime John Hartson or Duncan Ferguson up against him and show him what football should be about, winning duels through your play, not through cheating.
Another example, Raya collects the ball then chooses to run into his own defender, then throws himself to the ground to waste time. After which he holds on to the ball for over 10 seconds, and the ref does nothing (will save the rant about refs for another time). I’m sure Arsenal fans will not give a sh*t if they end up winning the league through all of this, but I’d be embarrassed watching my team act like this.
My 11 year old son loves playing football, but I’m so glad he’s not bothered about watching it because I don’t want him thinking what these players do to trick the ref(s) is ok. And it does affect them; just this past weekend the opposing 12 year old GK (who is actually a very good shot stopper) threw himself to the floor at every defensive corner after minimal contact as they were 2-0 up. Luckily, local refs aren’t so stupid as to fall for it. There is no way he was brought up to act like that, he’s seen it on TV.
It’s cheating plain and simple, it’s ruining our great game, and retrospective bans/yellows are the only way to get rid of it because the refs are incompetent.
Tiss
Slot machine
I have been severely critical of Slot regarding team selections, subs, formations, and tactics.
His criticism of Arteta about their tactics, albeit justified, is a last resort, to deflect from your own shortcomings.
Your first task is to focus on your own team before you talk about the opposition.
Start listening to what the fans say, Rio has proven that he is ready to start. You have young Ramsey. When are you going to start these youngsters? When they’re 30+?
Become less predictable. Think harder about your subs. If you want someone to make an impact off the bench, give him enough time. NOT ONLY 5 MINUTES.
When you do a press conference, please talk sense, and stop with low block and other terms that apply to all teams.
Gerrie, South Africa
Not a defence of the Blobfish but…
Bit of unsolicited advice to The Forever, but disgruntled, Red! – if you’ve got an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence – they tend to lose any and all significance, you might as well have none at all.
In terms of the sticks Slot is being beaten with – not all of them are fair. The investment, and where that investment was made, and selling valuable squad players and the academy, is not on Slot – it’s on Hughes / Edwards. Liverpool’s grossly and unforgivably unbalanced squad is the result of Hughes’ vanity and arrogance (Isak instead of Guehi) and injuries. Yes everybody has injuries, not season-ending and only in two positions though – RB and CB.
This has the knock-on effect of the fit players having to play in every game, i.e. multiple times a week, leading to increased fatigue and more mistakes, particularly at the end of games – which is exactly what we are seeing happen to Liverpool. Additionally players are playing out of position, making the team on the pitch weaker too.
Also he was not brought in to coach, train and bring through youth, and failed at that – he was the continuity candidate, brought in to not rock the boat and continue Klopp’s good work – winning the league in his first season means he was unequivocally successful in fulfilling his brief.
That said, and this is where I agree with Disgruntled, and many others, is that Slot is not helping mitigate these injury impacts – he’s making them worse. Also the massive drop-off in performance of former stalwarts Salah, Grav, Mac, Ibu, VVD (his durability is superhuman, touch wood, even he is making mistakes though) and even Ali isn’t stopping the one on ones like he used to, is the result of Slot’s coaching and decisions, as well as the injuries.
Everybody but Slot can see that his lack of trust in the squad and youth is hurting the team, and performances – Rio, Chiesa and the young players that Klopp routinely trusted to perform in their own positions have been criminally underused, while Slot destroys the fitness of the same 11 players on the pitch, their performances, and the confidence of the unused players. This seems to be from an innate and immutable conservatism and lack of confidence in changing what worked for him last year.
So Slot is pouring fuel on the injury / overplaying / conceding late goals fire by not trusting the squad and youth more. He is also contributing to the late goals by abandoning all tactical structure after we inevitably concede the first goal, subbing a defender for an attacker, and bundling everybody forward leaving us wide open for the inevitable counter-attack and conceding a late goal (or two). It’s a clear pattern that opposing teams and managers are exploiting.
Thing is, and this is why I think he is losing / has lost the players, fans and ultimately his job, is that he just seems to be accepting it. I called him a human Blobfish and the more I think about it the better a comparison it becomes – every post match interview is the same, he just stands there with the same bland expression, glassy eyes, shiny glistening round dome, recanting how his team has been turned over in the same way yet again, the same problems evident to everyone, that he supposed to be fixing. Like a blobfish he just exists, spineless, at equilibrium with his environment, neither affecting it, nor being affected by it. No fire, no guts, no confidence, no inspiration – just there.
I also said we would see what Slot was all about after Salah kicking off – well it appears it is a genuflecting Slot ushering the Egyptian King straight back in the side Sir, no need to score or assist goals, no need to track back – just be there, like me.
If he could fix it, he would fix it – he can’t, or won’t, and therefore I agree he will go, it’s just a question of when – summer if we don’t get CL, before Jan if we do, and aren’t challenging for the title by then.
Gofezo (!)
Fill me in
Did I just read that Craig David Brent “loved” that his side encroached on Villas half for a team huddle prior to second half kickoff?
Same fella was ready to batter an Arsenal coach a few weeks ago for catching a couple Kepa long balls in Chelsea’s half during warm up.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
Rocastle7