I hope so, has come in and done a great job, has said he just wants to stay and is happy to be a squad player, great attitude apparently in training, I think he's improved his passing and build up play as well, a very useful player to have.
For sure, if you go down this route, and give Arteta the authority to freeze out and then free transfer their two biggest stars (Ozil & Auba), then it really doesn't make sense to suddenly do an about face and bin it all. It needs to be a medium-long term project, get the side evolving playing Arteta's way, developing the young players. What this means however is we need to be saying it doesn't matter what happens next season, Arteta will still be in a job for the following season, unless it's something totally catastrophic like serious threat of relegation. They will suffer growing pains, majority of the team have never played CL football, there will be heightened expectations whereby all the praise being heaped on the young players will start to morph into critisism when the going gets tough. Obviously Saka got some **** after the Euro final but the also got a massive amount of support - I don't want to downplay the importance of racism, but it's different to be given harsh measured criticism about your personal play from seasoned pundits, than just mindless trolling from some idiot on twitter.
agreed.
How hard is it to throw the ball back in correctly! An absolute farce, Tavares errors this season have cost quite a few goals, he is just not good enough right now. After that performance though half that team is not good enough and the other half need to up their effort. They should reimburse the fans who went to watch that embarrassment of a performance.
It's very hard to judge with the squad we have. I have some concerns re player management and squad rotation, we keep leaving squad/fringe players out for long periods and then expecting them to have worldies. No europe (even europa) and lack of runs in the cup have really hurt our ability to give them minutes and keep them sharp.
This point seems to have got missed by so many people. In the January window Arsenal let Maitland-Niles, Kolasinac, Mari, Chambers and Auba all leave without bringing anybody into the squad. In isolation you can accept the Auba situation - there were issues there and it was better for all if he was gone but to let a further 4 senior players go without bringing in any backup smacks of a club desperate to cut costs. Yes, those players may not have been up to it but if Arsenal could have afforded to then I'm sure they'd have held on until they could find replacements because ultimately the lack of cover in midfield and defence killed Arsenal in the 2nd half of the season.
