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Photo from Freepik.
Morning all.
It feels like Arsenal has taken ten steps forward followed by seven steps backwards since Mikel Arteta took the Arsenal coach/managers job back in 2019. So many good things have happened, they’re squad changes, the fans believing again and the club getting back to being truly competitive. Yet this season has been little short of a disaster when it comes to pushing on and winning a trophy.
Last summer saw the exits of Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Vieira and Nelson – all attacking players who for one reason or another, were considered surplus to requirements. I think it would be fair to suggest that emotions aside, the majority of Arsenal fans would understand their departures. Hindsight of course tells us that keeping Nelson and ESR might have helped us through our injury situation but life doesn’t work that way. However, logic alone said that not replacing any of them was certain to bite the club in the backside at some stage of the season and bite it did.
The emergence of Ethan Nwaneri has been wonderful to watch but expecting a 17 year old to suddenly play at this level for a sustained period of time is unfair on him and his body. Of course he’ll be loving playing but too much football at his age can be a negative thing long term. Saying that, how many of us wanted to see him come into the team when Martin Odegaard was injured? Yep, me too.
Squad issues aside, what about our football which at times has been awful to watch. Shoot more we say, up the tempo we add, along with other suggestions. Mikel Arteta’s tactics have been criticised by all and sundry and reading around the blog world, his time at Arsenal should be coming to an end.
This is a part of Arteta’s post match interview on Sunday:
> It’s frustrating not to win the game with everything we did, especially in the first half, the first 43-44 minutes, how we dominated every aspect of the game, full control. We lacked a little bit in the final 15-20 metres, to have more shots, more purpose, more direction, the last pass, the last action, but the game is clearly for us and in the direction that we wanted. Unfortunately, one long ball and we didn’t manage that ball well, we give it away, created a foul in a really dangerous area where you have to rely on them not take advantage of the individual quality and that’s a really bad bet against Manchester United.
He talks about more shots, more purpose, more direction and the last action as well as lacking something in the final 15-20 metres. Basically, he wants to see more of what we want to see. If you and I are frustrated, imagine how he feels?
As many of us commented yesterday, when Arsenal face a team who are as interested in attacking as they are defending, we’re good. Very good, but when up against a side with a back ten, we can be pretty average. I think back to the game at The Etihad when for the entire second half, we defended as if lives depended on it and until the dying seconds of the game, City simply couldn’t find a way through even with a one man advantage.
Finding a way to unlock a stubborn defensive is something Mikel Arteta has to try and solve. Having a big fella in the box is one option but we don’t have such a player in the squad. Set pieces? They’ve not been going so well of late but there is another option now that Gabriel Martinelli has returned. Instead of having him head down running on the wings, play him centrally and tell him to be a nuisance. He’s the player with pace who can hurt defences in my opinion. He has to be a better option than Mikel Merino, Leandro Trossard or anyone else in the squad right now. He’ll run, he’ll shoot and you never know, he might score.
With tomorrow’s tie pretty much a dead rubber, it’s the perfect opportunity for Mikel Arteta to try something a little different.
Just a thought…