Morning all.
International breaks are boring. Even though Arsenal seem to have a few problems, i miss watching them. No doubt like the rest of Arsenal fans, I’m desperate to Mikel Arteta rectify whatever it is preventing Arsenal playing much better than they have been, especially at The Emirates where we’ve lost twice. Leicester City parked the bus but even so we should have beaten them in the first half but Aston Villa played in a very different way and battered us.
As many football managers both past and present have said, the best way to put things right is by playing much better in the next game and winning. Man Utd did that as after we beat them they went to Everton and gave them a good hiding. OGS and his players were given a right verbal going over in the media as have Arteta and his players, albeit not quite as cutting. Arsenal really could have done with having a game soon after last Sunday’s pathetic performance.
Not every Arsenal is away on international duty and those who aren’t, continue to work hard in training. From Jeorge Bird:
Mikel Arteta called upon some of the club’s prospects, including Swedish striker Nikolaj Moller, who has produced some impressive performances since joining the club. All-action midfielder Mauro Bandeira also trained with the squad along with Ben Cottrell and new arrival Joel Ideho. Left-back Joel Lopez and midfielder Tim Akinola were involved, as was goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo. Catalin Cirjan, Joseph Olowu and Jonathan Dinzeyi were also called upon. First-team players involved in the session included Alexandre Lacazette, Dani Ceballos, David Luiz and Emile Smith Rowe.
One or two of them might fancy their chances of a first team call up too. It must be tempting for Mikel Arteta to dump the under performers in favour of playing the younger players who might be raw but are full of energy and enthusiasm. But of course, it’s not quite as simple as that.
Training with the squad is a very different proposition to playing competitive matches for the first team. The physical side of the game can cause all sorts of problems for a young mans body. Jack Wilshere is proof of that. I’m sure I felt little different to most Arsenal fans when he made his debut under Arsene Wenger but over time, injury after injury had a detrimental effect on his career both for Arsenal and England.
Jack was one of the few Brits who could have made it big time at Real Madrid or Barcelona. Same with Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale – he could have been a proper English legend. He was just 16 when he first came to train with us and I was like “wow this guy is good, strong, sharp.” It’s a big shame what has happened to him, I feel sorry because he could have been a proper English legend of the game. – Cesc Fabregas.
Well Cesc, the other two are Welsh but even so, I get his point. Jack was a real talent, a cracking player who had his career ruined by injury. Maybe he played too much competitive football when he was young, maybe his style of playing didn’t help but even so, once his ankles became weaker, he was an easy target. Abou Diaby suffered similar injury problems, none of his own doing and Arsenal and France were deprived of seeing him become a great player.
Emile Smith Rowe. So much has been written about him. The player who could perhaps slot into the role Ozil once played, or Jack for that matter but already his injury numbers are totting up. I think Reiss Nelson has had a few injuries too, the latest of which kept him out of Europa League fixture against Molde so as much as some of us might want Mikel Arteta to ditch the underperforming experienced players, finding the right replacement is not always easy.
I wish Lacazette could be dropped but for who? Nketiah is struggling to make an impact in the first team and Balogun would be a risk. Willian and Pepe wouldn’t be missed by me either but who replaces them? Nelson is injured, or recovering from injury. If Partey doesn’t recover in time for the Leeds game, who replaces him? Xhaka I guess yet he’s hardly a fans favourite. I certainly hope Elneny has steered clear of Salah whilst he’s been away with Egypt. Heaven forbid Gabriel gets injured, or Tierney for that matter.
A week tomorrow we’re back in action against Leeds Utd who I imagine will play in a similar fashion to Aston Villa especially as they are the home team. Somehow, in the short space of time Mikel Arteta will have with his squad later this week, his job is to get a response from his team. To me it seems like mission impossible, not because he’s incapable but as Potter suggested on here yesterday, he’s having to work with players who perhaps don’t want to be at Arsenal, or simply can’t be bothered to put a shift in each week.
Mikel is reported to have once said he wants to emulate what Pep has done at Man City. I’d imagine the first thing Pep would do is sell half of the players Arsenal have on their books. In time, I strongly suspect Arteta will too.
Finally, well done to Bukayo Saka who won the man of the match award for England a couple of days ago. How old is he?
See you in the comments.
Afternoon Rico, I’m not saying that it was better back then because in a lot of ways it was awful, particularly for the fans who were treated like cattle especially the away fans. But it was almost a different game, not as media driven as it is today where every game is life or death and if you lose three games in a row you phone up a radio station and demand that the club sacks the manager. Directors/owners of clubs usually were local people and had a connection to the club a bit like the Mears at Chelsea, the Edwards at Man Utd, Hill Woods at Arsenal, so things seemed a bit less frenetic in the Boardroom. If you got into europe it was seen as a bonus but it wasn’t essential, win a cup and you was a legend, TV was Saturday night, Sunday afternoon and a midweek sports special, it just seemed a lot simpler, but then I have got my rose tinted spectacles on… 😉
G’day Rico and all.
I should think Mikel Arteta knew precisely what he was getting into from the first moment he took the Head Coach title at Arsenal.
A club and squad in disarray following a decade of mediocrity. The revolving door spinning out of control as the “executive team” changed almost weekly. The squad disillusioned and seemingly un-coachable. Add in the lack of transfer funds, the failure to manage player contracts and wages as well as the difficulty in moving on the non-achievers and there is a clear recipe for failure.
After the initial bounce inspired by the new regime of Edu and Arteta certain of our top players have slipped back into their old lackadaisical ways.
I am certain that Arteta has a clear idea of which players need to be shipped out, Ozil being top of the list, but that cannot happen until the end of the season although some may go in January
In the meantime the club must soldier on and get the most of what assets it has.
I was interested to learn a new term that has come into use in Rugby Union, “Doing the basics brilliantly”. Could such a philosophy be applied to our squad and would it work? Worth a try I should think.
Reiss Nelson is back training Rico and looking sharp and Calum Chambers is close to a return after featuring for the U23’s recently, Chambers may not be everyone’s cup of tea but Arteta was playing him regularly prior to his injury and he’s an option to Holding if Mikel wants to freshen things up?
As you mentioned in your post, if the finance at Arsenal was as forthcoming at Arsenal as it is at Man City then I’m sure that Arteta would have made many more changes just as Guardiola did.
But he has to work with what he has and to have got what he has out of some of our longer serving players is remarkable.
You know, I think that, as many have mentioned before on here, that Arsenal have paid well over the odds for a lot of our longer serving players because we rarely sell any of them for a profit anymore. The days are long gone when David Dein extracted the maximum for players like Anelka, Petit and Overmars. Even after Dein had gone Wenger still did some great business selling Clichy, Adebayor and co, but that’s fallen away and now we almost have to give our players away.
Thinking about our squad today and due to their wages I reckon that most of them are almost worthless in comparison to what we think their value is.
Take Lacazette, with a year left of his contract this summer, what do you think we’d get for him if we made him available for transfer, £20m max, if we’re lucky?
I know that Covid is an issue but even so, then what about Kolasinac? What could we hope to get for him £10m, £7.5m, £5m..?
Even our young guns, the players who you’d see real value in, what if we put Nketiah up for sale or Maitland Niles or Willock?
It’s a nightmare…
Afternoon Kev. I thought it was better back then because it was football without the money, agents, Sky etc and more homegrown.
Afternoon Cicero. Couldn’t agree more and I’m sure the board were and still are aware of the situation they were throwing him into too. Any fix isn’t coming quickly imo.
Gotta go, England Vs Georgia on Amazon Prime. I’ll see if they are doing the basics brilliantly. 😉
That’s good re Nelson Kev, even if he only makes the Europa fixtures. Good points on our sales, which after the £15m for Song to Barcelona have been quite poor. Pay big, sell poor has been our way, right through to Martinez this summer.
I guess though, if Arsenal want to progress, the club are going to have to suck up the financial losses which loom large and just get wages off the bill.
The one player we do have who would bring in a large profit would be Saka.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be Kev it I remember we would leave the marshes or the scrubs in time to get back for the big match , we also switched training to Thursday so that we didn’t miss Sportsview with Peter Dimmock om Wednesday..
However that brings me to a subject which was pointed out to me some years ago by a physio who used to work at Watford . She said that the spate of ankle injuries were made worse by the perfect pitches and that when you played on uneven surfaces the constant twists and turns strengthened the sinews and tendons and gave them greater flexibility.
part of her life was as a sports physio which is how we met in fact if it wasn’t for her my son would have been in a wheelchair aged 11. , but thats a different story.
She did a lot of work with local athletic clubs and similarly said track athletes get strains and sprains that cross country ones do not , which is why she advised that anyone going jogging do it on grass rather than track or roads.
When I look at the billiard tables that they play on now and look back at penalty areas with no grass for most of the season it makes you realise just how much has changed.
Makes sense too Potter. Some of our recent injuries haven’t been down to bad challenges, or any challenge.
Just watching Millwall vs Portsmouth circa 1974.
Tommy Baldwin playing for Millwall (on loan) and Peter Marinello playing for Portsmouth.
A lot of high balls and tough challenges…
Perfect for Giroud…. lol
1970s football, the players had Afros and the refs were bald.