When will Arteta be sacked by

[LDG]

I think you have to be more pragmatic to box up what Arteta has done for the club, and you have to separate the business end from the football end (even if the are inextricably linked).

Top 4 should never be the ambition, first place should. But without complete financial doping, you do need CL football to attract a higher level player to get yourself to the top.

Whilst footballers and their greed (as a collective) disgusts me, you don’t become a sportsman in general if you’re happy with fourth place. So if you have a choice between a club playing Europa or CL, you’ll pick the later for all kinds of reasons.

That is the reason why I wanted us to get 4th this year, hand in hand with beating those cunts down the road.

That all said, what has Arteta achieved? Well, I like to think we have a basic structure to build on. We have players playing in a more organised shape. We have players who seem to want to play together. And we have some real talent.

Compare that to seasons past with countless players on excessive wages who couldn’t be bothered to train let alone play. We were at rock bottom. Since then we’ve addressed that issue, and managed contracts properly.

If we had top four, I think we could have pushed on quicker next term, but we’ve lost an entire season by losing at Newcastle. Arteta is at fault for that, and under normal circumstances, its enough to call for his head. But I will give him another season, on the badis I believe in the direction (despite not reaching the destination this year). It all rests on what he does in the transfer market for me….I want Xhaka gone, and I want winners in…this window will tell us whether we demand success now as a club, or whether we’re going to keep sticking selotape round leaky pipes.

If we had put up cash in January to add depth and a striker, I honestly think we could have been third. That is the failt of Arteta, regardless of where the money is, because he should have been demanding it.

[IBK]

I think you have to be more pragmatic to box up what Arteta has done for the club, and you have to separate the business end from the football end (even if the are inextricably linked).

Top 4 should never be the ambition, first place should. But without complete financial doping, you do need CL football to attract a higher level player to get yourself to the top.

Whilst footballers and their greed (as a collective) disgusts me, you don’t become a sportsman in general if you’re happy with fourth place. So if you have a choice between a club playing Europa or CL, you’ll pick the later for all kinds of reasons.

That is the reason why I wanted us to get 4th this year, hand in hand with beating those cunts down the road.

That all said, what has Arteta achieved? Well, I like to think we have a basic structure to build on. We have players playing in a more organised shape. We have players who seem to want to play together. And we have some real talent.

Compare that to seasons past with countless players on excessive wages who couldn’t be bothered to train let alone play. We were at rock bottom. Since then we’ve addressed that issue, and managed contracts properly.

If we had top four, I think we could have pushed on quicker next term, but we’ve lost an entire season by losing at Newcastle. Arteta is at fault for that, and under normal circumstances, its enough to call for his head. But I will give him another season, on the badis I believe in the direction (despite not reaching the destination this year). It all rests on what he does in the transfer market for me….I want Xhaka gone, and I want winners in…this window will tell us whether we demand success now as a club, or whether we’re going to keep sticking selotape round leaky pipes.

If we had put up cash in January to add depth and a striker, I honestly think we could have been third. That is the failt of Arteta, regardless of where the money is, because he should have been demanding it.

I pretty much agree with all that. I also get the disappointment of those who lament our club's decline since the glory days of the 00's. But we have little option but to accept this and look forwards. I like the phrase 'there may be no excuse but there is an explanation'. In hindsight, I am certain that Arteta and the club would have done something to address the striker situation in January. But I also don't think this lack of investment was simply down to a refusal to spend money. We had made many mistakes over the previous few years in investing in expensive - and in some cases short termist - players who did not fit into a cohesive plan. We have been damaged by players with the wrong temperament who did not foster a team ethic. It's clear that avoiding the same mistakes - and also, IMO, a belief that top 6, not top 4 was our realistic objective - was the driver for what now seems like a mistake. We don't know whether Arteta 'demanded' any acquisitions but I find it doubtful that he did not ask.

[KSE Comedy Club]

A problem with most of the fans here on this forum and maybe in general is that they are like mothers defending their child. They will hear NO criticism. Dreaming and conjuring up excuses for why the child has performed poorly compared to its mates. This club is a professional sporting franchise. It should strive to be the absolute best in its field. Instead we coddled failures and rationalise it. Sure we can defend ourselves from other fans but when we cannot even be sincere amongst ourselves, all ambition is lost
We blame luck instead of bad planning. Circumstances instead of strategy. We blame the other kid for having unnatural attributes for our offspring coming up short.
This is exactly the autopsy we gave last season. Next season will be better....Yeah sure it will.

Arsenal ain't your kid. You are not its Mom.

Fantastic analogy, one of the best I've read tbh.

I think it sums up the fanbase/Arsenal issue quite perfectly.

Well said

[Marc Overmars]

Best thing for Arteta is to get the signings done early and start the season quick out of the traps. We always seem to begin a new season under prepared which costs us far too many points. His rookie years are over now, he’s had sufficient time to find his feet and understand the requirements of the job. He’s had highs and lows so the inexperience card has worn thin. 4th has got to be mandatory next year but I do fear we’ve missed a huge opportunity.

[IBK]

A problem with most of the fans here on this forum and maybe in general is that they are like mothers defending their child. They will hear NO criticism. Dreaming and conjuring up excuses for why the child has performed poorly compared to its mates. This club is a professional sporting franchise. It should strive to be the absolute best in its field. Instead we coddled failures and rationalise it. Sure we can defend ourselves from other fans but when we cannot even be sincere amongst ourselves, all ambition is lost
We blame luck instead of bad planning. Circumstances instead of strategy. We blame the other kid for having unnatural attributes for our offspring coming up short.
This is exactly the autopsy we gave last season. Next season will be better....Yeah sure it will.

Arsenal ain't your kid. You are not its Mom.

Wrong. You conflate offering an alternate view and trying to find some balance with blind defence. I have seen noone on here (or in the real world) who doesn't freely admit that Arteta and the club have made some serious missteps. You are entitled to your views, but few clubs have achieved any success with fans failing to get behind the project. Those of us trying to do so (and on the few times I have been to the Emirates this season I would say that this is the majority of the matchday crowd) should not be dismissed as blind or accepting of mediocrity.

[Letters]

A problem with most of the fans here on this forum and maybe in general is that they are like mothers defending their child. They will hear NO criticism.

Well that's just demonstrable bullshit
I have no idea at all where you get that from the posts on here. People - me included - have been hopping on and off the Arteta Out bandwagon all season.
No-one on here thinks the club, players or manager are beyond reproach. There has been a lot of criticism of all those things all season on here as there always has been.

Dreaming and conjuring up excuses for why the child has performed poorly compared to its mates.

Well, that's where the debate lies. Have we performed poorly compared to our mates? Who are our mates in this analogy? Liverpool and City? They're top of the class right now while we've been just above middle of the class. Even if we want us to ultimately join City and Liverpool at the top table, some realism is needed about how quickly that can happen. The question is whether we are heading in the right direction.

We blame luck instead of bad planning. Circumstances instead of strategy.

Who is doing that? Arteta left our squad threadbare in January, that has ultimately cost us and has been widely acknowledged. We didn't miss out by bad luck, even if things went against us at Spurs it was still in our hands. We shat our pants at Newcastle, that's where we lost it.

We blame the other kid for having unnatural attributes for our offspring coming up short.

I think it's reasonable to acknowledge that City and Chelsea have been able to afford a private tutor which gives them an unfair advantage. But we aren't exactly paupers, we should be doing better. But the delta between us and the top 2 over the last few seasons has been huge, to think we can bridge that gap in one or two seasons is unrealistic.

This is exactly the autopsy we gave last season. Next season will be better....Yeah sure it will.

And it was. 8 points and 3 league positions better. That might not be enough for you, but it exceeded my pre-season expectations. I asked you before what you were expecting from this season in terms of league position and what that was based on and you didn't respond. You didn't post in the season predictions thread either so I have no idea what you were expecting. The top 2 are clearly miles above us, we were never going to finish above either this year. Chelsea seemed to be pretty well above us too although they have underperformed this year and we were closer than I expected. That leaves Utd, Spurs and us competing for 4th spot, I saw no reason to think we would finish above both. I didn't anticipate Utd having such a car crash of a season, I did think Spurs would finish above us although they Spursed it up enough this season that they shouldn't have.

Next year it's top 4 or bust for me. If Arteta doesn't achieve that then he should go. We were close this year, if we do the right things this summer and with the young squad a year older and more experienced then that should be achievable. I don't think we can trouble the top 2 next year but like it or not Top 4 is a step towards that, it unlocks the finances and prestige to attract the players we need to push on.

My feeling about you is that you are one of those fans who is never happy unless you have something to moan about. No-one on here thinks that "everything is awesome", but many of us can see that we are trying to build something. I don't know how far Arteta can take us, but he's earned the right to try.

[Letters]

I think it sums up the fanbase/Arsenal issue quite perfectly.

Well said

It's not a good post. It doesn't sum up the fanbase. Pretty much every post on here shows it to be bollox.

[KSE Comedy Club]

It's not a good post. It doesn't sum up the fanbase. Pretty much every post on here shows it to be bollox.

you missed the sarcasm

[Niall_Quinn]

I think you have to be more pragmatic to box up what Arteta has done for the club, and you have to separate the business end from the football end (even if the are inextricably linked).

Top 4 should never be the ambition, first place should. But without complete financial doping, you do need CL football to attract a higher level player to get yourself to the top.

Whilst footballers and their greed (as a collective) disgusts me, you don’t become a sportsman in general if you’re happy with fourth place. So if you have a choice between a club playing Europa or CL, you’ll pick the later for all kinds of reasons.

That is the reason why I wanted us to get 4th this year, hand in hand with beating those cunts down the road.

That all said, what has Arteta achieved? Well, I like to think we have a basic structure to build on. We have players playing in a more organised shape. We have players who seem to want to play together. And we have some real talent.

Compare that to seasons past with countless players on excessive wages who couldn’t be bothered to train let alone play. We were at rock bottom. Since then we’ve addressed that issue, and managed contracts properly.

If we had top four, I think we could have pushed on quicker next term, but we’ve lost an entire season by losing at Newcastle. Arteta is at fault for that, and under normal circumstances, its enough to call for his head. But I will give him another season, on the badis I believe in the direction (despite not reaching the destination this year). It all rests on what he does in the transfer market for me….I want Xhaka gone, and I want winners in…this window will tell us whether we demand success now as a club, or whether we’re going to keep sticking selotape round leaky pipes.

If we had put up cash in January to add depth and a striker, I honestly think we could have been third. That is the failt of Arteta, regardless of where the money is, because he should have been demanding it.

That's absolutely right. Top 4 is a by-product of ambition, not the ambition itself. In competing to be first (AND ONLY FIRST) you can run into teams that are better on the day or better over a season, that's a fact of life. So you might end up second best, or even third. But you were always striving to win.

Arsenal has sold a bag of expensive shit to the fans that makes it admirable to hang around the big table and see if enough scraps can be accumulated to make a meal. That "coveted" 4th place that, somehow, on the back of being 20 or 30 points adrift of the eventual winners, 13 losses later, 40 fewer goals scored, an embarrassing goal difference, makes it progress to limp in 5th having puked in terror at every challenge. It's actually a shameful season piled on a rotten mound of prior average to shameful seasons going back a decade.

I don't think it's all down to Arteta either. When Wenger left we needed somebody to come in and install the basics, particularly with the defence. Arteta has achieved that much at least, but again some fans see this as an achievement rather than repair work and the absolute minimum that should be expected. He's also working with significantly inferior players as the standard of the game in general drops inversely proportional to the obscene cash fire-hosed at kids who are financially successful beyond their wildest dreams before they've achieved anything at all. It must be hard going trying to manage such excess and keep bloated egos hungry for a fight.

Is that what Klopp possesses? The ability to motivate his troops to leave their caviar littered harems and fight for a sporting concept? Is that what Arteta lacks? That Newcastle game was unbelievable. After ten years, to still be walking onto a pitch and lying down like that. Is there a single sign anywhere at the club to suggest it won't happen again and again when the chips are down? I don't think so. There might be a plan and the plan might be winding through its foundation stages. But does that plan involve leaders and fighting spirit and the "impossible" goals Wenger would set when he still had the heart for it?

We've gone from "go the entire season unbeaten" (from which obvious by-products materialise) to "Top 4 Trophy". That's quite the cultural shift. Sure, we know WHY we need to be in the CL - cash. Which is all that competition is about these days (when it used to be about champions facing champions). But what's that got to do with the nature of sport itself and fighting for each and every victory that, cumulatively, results in success? CL is just a business thing, for the owners, for the balance sheet, for the wild player wages and so the fans can spend even more. It's a marketing thing. The real business though is the 38 game season that gets you there, where the goal is a sporting one - the title, first place. Get that right and the marketing takes care of itself.

[Niall_Quinn]

Or, TLDR, Leicester City. Nothing is impossible before a ball is kicked.