AD-Free Episode 411 - I Don't Like Stupidity

I agree to some extent but then the business has to match the football. If you don’t want to build around Auba, or change your style to accommodate him, then giving the 31 year old striker a record contract doesn’t match your football plan. If he’s not the center piece of your tactics and someone you’re going to bend to accommodate, then sell him and spend on the pieces that fit more neatly and match your time horizons.

Arteta is building a sustainable, long-term structure on the field. Just because we paid big bucks for some players doesn’t mean Arsenal is abandoning a longer-term project and that Arteta is prioritizing the short-term. He’s clearly not building a team around any one player (I.e. Aubameyang). In fact, what we see on the field should tell us that he’s building a team structure that will allow us to plug and play different personnel without losing the essence of our game. Maybe, we’re just not used to seeing that at Arsenal so it looks odd and “wrong” to us, but if you take a step back and think longer-term, what he’s doing makes sense. This is what good, thoughtful managers do. The challenge is to balance the need to build a team with the need to win football games in the short term. We created enough to win the Leicester match; the fact that we lost isn’t symptomatic of some underlying problem or indicative of Arteta’s inability to set us up to win matches. I personally remain as excited about Arteta and his approach as I was last season. In my book, he’s doing all the right things (Özil issue aside).

We want to do well.... but remember this was exactly 1 year and 1 day ago. The xhaka game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=MFu3GxiKb7U

Thank you for the reply! Appreciate it. I’ll take a look

Inverting the Pyramid is a great book on the history of football tactics. Don't know about coaching manuals but there's a lot on tactics, changing training regimes, coaches and cultural differences in styles of play in it.

Liam Lenihan

I want to learn to be able to analyse a game in more detail but not necessarily get into coaching? Does anyone have any guidance for this to be achieved? Thanks!

Arteta lost me when he said he has full backing of the board

That is why I don't think Emile Smith Rowe, Martenelli will get any game time.

Enjoyed this pod a lot. While Maitland Niles, Nelson, Wilock and Smith Rowe are not the answers in themselves - in fact, they won't all make it - surely they deserve a chance or a decent sub appearance when the senior players don't perform? No one is saying Nelson is the next Pires, surely he deserves a shot as an attacking midfielder or right winger when Willian or Xhaka etc. fail to perform.

Liam Lenihan

Good point Clive. I too though AMN comments were very synthetic to Ozil and then he was dropped. And if thats thr case then Arteta is slowly losing this squad

Sensible Gooner

Playing your most talented players in their best positions to maximise their talent/ strengths seems too obvious and simple. Arteta doesn't do obvious and simple.

I trust the manager to do another experiment we don't expect like playing Ceballos as RW, Laca as LW and Willock as false 9.

Thanks guys, good one! For me this raises a bigger question. As it is yet to be seen if Arteta can get our star players going, I wonder how you feel about his renewed position at the club as manager? Suddenly I can see a scenario where things don't work out. Feels like decision out of poverty to give Edu and Mikel all responsibility, with no other football brain at the club. While I still very much like Arteta, isn't it unhealthy to go down the Wenger path again? Example: Lacazette should have been sold this summer and I very much wonder how ruthless you can be on players when you work with them every day. Add to that the news today I read Mustafi was offered a new deal... That's not what we need. Also Edu talking so amicable about Mikel. This is not a healthy a professional situation for me, with KSE not creating a sustainable model. Who will judge on those two? What's the plan if things go wrong? Let's pray Mikel is what we all hope for and KSE will look for a director of football in the next years.

Absolutely killed it. Big love

I've zero faith the manager will tweak anything. Rag on Xhaka all you want, but it feels like he's doing exactly what he's told, and thus he'll keep getting picked.

hugplx

"if we won, and the entire second half didn't stink people would have differente view" ... thats legitimately insane thing to say. Most of the 'positives' about the games sound like "i like Arteta thus this makes sense to me".

Excited for some catharsis after a pretty depressing result!