Arsenal v Liverpool – FA Cup 3rd Round Matchday

So Arteta’s out thought and our fought by a manager who had a high number of players injured or unavailable. At nil nil Klopp brings on a couple of kids and goes on to win it – the only change Arteta could make until chasing the game was to take a back up player off for a starter.

Not surprised and honestly not even that disappointed – its what I expected one way or another so in 2 weeks we’ve gone from top of the table to out of all domestic competitions. We’ve no chance of winning the CL so the season is already over bar chasing a top 4 (or 5) place.

Can someone explain to me what Arteta’s “sauce” actually is or what is generational about him in any way?

All that said and done I feel sorry for Ramsdale who’s been fucked over by Arteta for another keeper who really doesn’t strike me as being better.

Ambarish and Marc-we’ve been so starved for any directness that you might be getting a tad carried away with your first-half assessment…Pool were tentative and disjointed, due to their shoehorned starting lineup, which led to some openings that should have given us a 2 or 3 goals lead…unfortunately, MA’s bestie ws simply pathetic in the final third

TRVL

No doubt the slow pace of play and passing it back and forth when the opposition has 11 players back behind the ball has been appalling this season.

Being the eternal optimist are go glass half full and say we can concentrate on the PL and CL now we’re out of the FA cup

It’s all about the threes.

Three x third round appearances in this poncy white kit. Three defeats.

Bucking that trend, our club is infested by 5 utter cunts. Tets, Edu, Kroenke x 2 and Mr Smart Arse himself Vinai.

the only possible silver lining is if “ownership” has been pushing for Havertz to get a chance up top before authorizing any further spending…of course, there’s no way our absentee landlord or his wannabe Bond villian son has ever interfered in any such capacity, but I can always dream…the very fact that they sanctioned MA’s 200M summer spend, even though he didn’t target a single player with goals in them, means they just might be stupid enough to authorize another big money purchase…that said, I do agree with KP’s concerns regarding the notion of throwing good money at a bad manager, but I would be less freaked out if they were actually pursuing a world-class Striker like Osimhen…sadly, they would be more likely to get robbed by Juve and acquire another underachieving overpaid player like Vlahovic, who just might be the second coming of Havertz…we need a readymade clinical finisher, especially on the heels of scoring 1 tally in 3 matches, not some sort of coin toss half measure

We had to loan Raya with an option to buy this coming summer to keep within FFP rules – I can’t see anything having changed financially in 5 months to allow us to spend the type of money a good strike will cost even if the Kroenke’s are happy to sanction it.

Even if we were to make some sales – Partey, ESR, Nketiah, Kiwior how much would we raise with the buying clubs knowing we’re desperate for the money? What other players could we sell to raise money and would we leave ourselves short in other areas?

fun fact:

Arsenal have now attempted 124 shots across their last seven matches and scored just five goals – an average of 24.8 shots per goal.

At the other end, the Gunners have faced 79 shots in their last seven games and conceded nine goals – an average of 8.77 shots per goal.

meanwhile our MIT has the nerve to implore the fanbase to get behind the team…it’s difficult to imagine someone with less self-awareness

I read on le-g that we should go for Zizou and sack Arteta. I would love that because we are winning nothing with the galaxy brain and Zidane will find it challenging to compete against two best managers to the world.

Can the management do it, is a while different story!

Marc-on a somewhat connected note, by the sounds of things we’ve already decided to trigger Raya’s clause come season’s end…if the total mishandling of the Keeper position isn’t proof enough that MA’s ill-equipped for the task at hand, nothing will…not only did he get rid of our best option within months of arriving, he’s wasted gobs of money on a variety of ill-suited replacements…then this season he not only re-ups Ramsdale, with a raise to boot, he then ghosts him on the bench, thereby making him far less attractive on the open market…you can’t even make up this shit

as for the whole FPP gig, there’s no doubt, unless we get a player of consequence on loan, we need to sell off some assets before making any substantive moves…of course, based on what we’ve seen from Chelsea and others recently, we could likely finagle something by skirting the seemingly “soft” rules, but can you even imagine us navigating our way through a big money buy in the allotted time, considering our propensity to drag things out…this is the reason why I believe that our “new” Striker will be Havertz, as he’s already on the wage bill and it’s clear that MA will exhaust everything within his power to prove he was right when he vastly overpaid for this nothing burger of a positional tweener

TRVL

There are strong rumours that Ramsdale wants out because he signed with promises from Arteta who then immediately turned round and signed another keeper.

Now not only is that a shitty thing to do to a player – all players need to accept that if an upgrade comes along then you run the risk of being side-lined – but to lie to a player to get them to sign on and then fuck them will get round the training ground.

I did tell you he was a fraudulent CUNT.

This club is dead, simply a cash cow for KSE.
Woke virtue signalling carcus of a football club, with its white shirt bollocks.

Marc-there’s no doubting that Ramsdale is going to push for a move elsewhere, but considering his wages and MA’s typically unrealistic demands for outgoing periphery players, it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion…it would be interesting to get the real skinny on whether or not assurances were given, especially in light of the reasoning behind Emi’s dismissal

TRVL

We’ve got the Euro’s in the summer and injuries to an England Keeper and Pickford’s pretty dire – Ramsdale might be willing to take a drop in salary to take a big step forward.

As for getting value for money in sales who was the last player we got a good fee for?

Marc-we’re in agreement on the piss-poor sales record under this administration…MA did the exact same nonsense with Leno, then he left for pennies on the dollar, but I just can’t see him doing likewise with Ramsdale because he’s homegrown and has a much higher up-side…I guess only time will tell…Cheers

Mikel Arteta fears his Arsenal players have developed a psychological block in front of goal and has called on them to reset after Sunday’s 2-0 home loss to Liverpool in the FA

This from today’s Guardian. In other words….

Meester Kroenke – I have a massive and irredeemably stubborn personality and I think it’s absolutely fair to disassociate myself from this utter fucking mess. I didn’t pick the players, buy them at such fantastic prices, coach them, nor manage the game so I’m completely innocent! If you’re going to blame anyone, point your twisty money grubbing fingers at Edu, Vinai and that nasty Spurs-supporting prick Pedro who writes pages about how wonderful I am. Please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeese let me keep my job til Barcelona need a new manager.

If I was Rice, Odegaard or Saka reading this, I’d be thinking ‘maybe it’s time to down tools and press the case for a better manager.’ Fucking disgraceful – the guy exemplifies everything that a club like Arsenal doesn’t. A useless, egotistical, psychopath. Oh and a wanker who doesn’t see a need to be sporting to the opposition.

One win in 7 games. Generational potato juice sauce (ie gruel thin spunk) emanating from Arteta’s brain.

PS to that begging letter to Kroenke

All I need is another 600 million quid to revamp the team and I think we’d give Liverpool a harder game next time. (nb – not promising any trophies of course).

Kroenkephobe

Your stories sound so plausible…

Feel like tonking the nose of that specimen myself as well as of Stanley..of course , after respectfully whipping off his toupee

In isolation yesterday wasn’t a big deal, in fact the first half performance was a lot better than most of our performances this season. Liverpool may have injury problems but we’ve looked really poor against some pretty rotten teams, the fact we’ve scrapped results has been something that the fanboys and Arteta has used as a distraction.

The simple fact is a team can get away with a few poor performances and still get results – when you’re halfway through the season and can only count the odd good performance what we’re seeing over the last couple of weeks wasn’t an if but when it was going to happen.

A good manager would have recognised this in September and attempted to correct the problems. Arteta believes his own bullshit to such a degree that when it doesn’t work its not the tactics he’s set up, its not picking the wrong players to do a job they’re not capable of doing its all someone else’s fault.

I’m just wondering who’ll get the blame for yesterday?

“there’s no way our absentee landlord or his wannabe Bond villian son has ever interfered in any such capacity,”

Made me smile, TRVL. The rest can’t be challenged and on the money

Ditto Marc, we are stymied.

Ambarish, ZZ? Now you’re talking. In fact anything without Arteta and Edu would be a good start mi amigo

That’s the problem, Marc. We tend to have good first halves and shit second 45s. Watching the 2nd half, we were still respectable until the first goal. I thought we might nick twitch an in off the red effort from 4 yards. Very little beats Allison even on a bad day.

TRVL’s fun fact wasn’t fun at all really. I mean WTAF? 24.8 shots per goal. Arteta wants to buy a defender? It’s buying White again when we needed an 8. Roy Orbison playing American cop; Ironside could do better FFS!

Seriously, how did we become so bad from last season? I said it would happen as many here did. Last season most top 6 teams were off their best games and we have ze mental strength to scrape impossible wins way above our real baseline. We had lady luck, rub of the green and beat the northern ref conspiracy.

Inadvertently, Marc, Arteta is blaming the players and their poor shooting ability.

He is asking them to be much better in belief. I mean the right tactical subs to change a game around 50 to 60 minutes would be a big help. A fully interchanging front 3 or 4 with false 9 and one touch football to beat low blocks would be different choices.

KP
Fully support what you’re saying.

I would never have known. Henry hid it well.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/index.html

I’ve always respected most of Midwestgun’s POVs where below he’s right on all areas. LG is slowly coming over to the dark side of the Arteta out sensible fans.

“Basically what you’re saying Pedro is the entire team has a case of the Kai Havertz. Moving around smoothly , doing football type things and producing absolutely nothing at the sharp end whilst looking like the shooting confidence of a cat scared of its own shadow. For me this all goes back to that decision last summer to replace Xhaka with Kai. It can only be described as a vanity project.

Arteta has to turn Kai’s career trajectory around like he did for Xhaka his last season with us… or it’s over for Mikel. So yes in the end it will come down to coaching… because he took that massive 65 mill risk… for what purpose I still do not know and it has let us short with no money to spend. Is he a 9? Nope… that much is clear…..left 8 ? not really… impact sub? perhaps… at best, but we could have gotten that for much less and bought a proper midfielder that isn’t a jack of all trades master of none.

But in the end that’s the main thing that has changed from last year’s season regards personnel along with Partey’s perma- injury.

And it most likely will be Arteta’s undoing. You push All in with a move like Havertz and it has to work or you are the weakest link………

Good Bye Champion’s League is becoming the only path to redemption. A Long shot at best.”

Good points across the board, as per usual…in regards to Marc’s “believes his own bullshit” commentary, I would simply say this, it’s clear that Arteta suffers from imposter syndrome, which makes perfect sense considering his precipitous rise through the ranks…as a general rule, I tend to excuse some of the nonsensical bravado/machismo that generally accompanies this sort of situation, at least in those early days, as it’s only natural that one might overcompensate for self-preservation purposes…the problem here is that his highly manufactured/contrived veil of infallibility never gave way, in fact, it actually grew expotentially because he could never truly establish himself as a footballing manager through the devising of a multi-faceted tactical plan…instead he’s blamed everyone and everything whenever his plan A has failed to yield the necessary results…he’s so fragile that if he were to ever change courses, from a tactical standpoint, he believes he would appear weak/flawed and his house of cards would immediately crumble…if he actually possessed the requisite amount of managerial juice these sorts of circumstances would be used as a motivating force, then he would dig in, do the work and emerge with a new plan in place…let’s face it, if he were elsewhere and/or under the same financial constraints as the vast majority of newbie managers, he would have been suitably axed some time ago, but the fact that he’s been afforded the luxury of putting band-aid after band-aid over each and every organizational boo-boo has enabled him to wrongly stay on far past his logical best before date…sound familiar?!?

Yesterday junior sent me Bolagun’s stats and probably like me you lost interest in him too.

4 goals and 3 assists in 14 games for Monaco put’s Eddie’s Sheffield hat trick an 4th goal elsewhere to shame that Pierre is frantically spinning at every opportunity.

Just think if we’d kept Bolagun instead of Eddie, as most here wanted?

Another player Arteta can add to there Emi mistake list where if we still had both players along with Willock, we’d be top with a few points to spare. We’d still be needing a LB, but with Willock, as 8 helping defensively, our porous left side would be fairly balanced with our right. Willock would have worked well with Martinelli.

Arteta had the players, but not the vision because he lacks the coaching skills to improve players, so has to buy ready made PL versions that other than Rice have flattered to deceive as Rice will eventually.

All foreign league imports have either been broken or fall off cliffs form wise or simply not improved to the level required.

Anyone disagree?

https://www.fotmob.com/players/982677/folarin-balogun

there’s been some chatter regarding us actually bidding 22M for Borja Mayoral, the 26 year old Getafe Striker…now some will try to focus on the supposed positives, considering his scoring output this particular season(12 goals) and the fact that he’s a former Real academy player, but one must be careful not to fall for this sort of classic apologust nonsense

tbf he’s a bang average undersized Striker, at just under 6 feet and 155 lbs soaking wet, which could definitely be problematic in the presently-constructed PL…just ask another of MA’s underwhelming recruits, Vieira, who’s spent much of his time on the pitch looking like a proverbial deer in the headlights…furthermore, he’s been described by some in the media as a “Trossard-like signing”, which for me is a serious red flag, unless you’re a fan of settling for someone who doesn’t properly redress your most pressing concerns and who’s never going to move the needle when it matters most…not to mention, like Tross, he might be a stumbling block stop-gap option who could stymie future moves of much greater import

finally, the Pedro’s of the world might be quick to unearth some old-timey quotes about this particular player, like those who called him an “unapologetic scavenger” or when Zidane stated that he “scores everytime he has a shot”, but don’t be swayed by these attempts to deceive…the former scares me, as some said likewise about Eddie, whereas the latter was offered up quite some time ago by his former manager who had no problem whatsoever pushing him out the door; not to mention, his lackluster production, since that time, suggests this was undoubtedly the right decision

now I get why MA might be interested, much in the same vein as he was all gaga for Havertz once it was suggested that Real were pursuing him, (which btw was total bunk) as he’s much cheaper than the “real” options and he appears to be a better fit for MA’s pass into the net/garbage goal offensive tactics, but there’s no way we should be leaning into this particular failed narrative any further…so no matter what you hear, don’t believe the hype train that’s heading your way

Tony
Emi’s ego was too big for Arteta to manage – he had to go. ESR loved Ozil who taught him a lot.

“Zidane stated that he “scores everytime he has a shot””

If there was a striker who scored every 5 shots he’d be worth over £100 million to any team who can create a few chances.

I always take anything about transfers as clickbait unless the rumours really have something to them. If there’s anything to this its a desperate throw of the dice with not much to spend.

Marc—this one has legs, as the actual bid was reported on our team page on the Sky website, not in some sort of newsnow rumour mill clusterfuck…I just don’t want us to go down the MA coin toss road again, as we’ve got far too many of his half-measure options currently rostered…we need a readymade Striker, not this lightwieght, Zirkzee from Bologna, who some moron called better than Haaland, or even an underperforming Vlahovic, unless we get an extremely sweet deal in the process

lightweight

TRVL

So we’re looking at a desperate throw of the dice with Arteta attempting to save the season or more likely his job.

Marc-so desperate that these other teams with players of interest will likely jack-up the price and we’ll end up with a disgruntled Eddie and a useless Havertz being relied upon, then MA will purchase another half-assed LB and/or CB

Good points TRVL & Marc. Arteta in desperation we should call this part of the process or the main stage.

Norg
Good to see you in these parts. I see it differently but we can agree to differ as LIR is different with its debating. From what I remember Emi had been with the club around 10 years at that stage and had been given a run because of Leno’s injury that also fueled the Gwendouzi spat in looking out for Leno and going after Malpauy(?).

Emo saved Arteta’s bacon as did ESR. Emi was also very instrumental in Arteta winning his only trophy.

Sorry, Norg, but had I been Emi in the best form of his life and giving out back 4 the confidence they needed from assured handling and commanding the box better than any of his replacements, which he’s now doing under Emery very successfully.

Emi was right at the time to claim the number one keeping spot; 10 years learning his trade and under Arteta he had every right. This has now been proven even more with Arteta’s diabolical keeper handling. Promising at contract tie and flipping the bird at the contract when Arteta has a brain fart signing a midget with few or questionable more favorable skills than our very likable Ramsdale.

Look who Arteta bought after Emi, Norg. It’s been a comedy of errors where Emi has proved at Ville he was right to go and Arteta is simply a narcissist in full bloom who has backed himself into a corner of repeated mistakes and averageness.

In all fairness to what our club needs, Norg, it’s been proven over again that selling Emi for a pittance, mind, was a huge mistake by Arteta that he has yet after 4 years to rectify along with an 8, 9, LB and Partey replacement.

Now, from from what Marc and TRVL says, we are after another midget to play the required and coveted ‘Drogba’ outmuscling with skill and screamers from left and right peg very much needed role as our 9.

Arteta is likely to buy a 9 the size of and with mobility of R2D2!!!!!!!!!! Because Arteta seems to like his 9s vertically challenged, under 6 feet lightweights who spend most of their time trying to con refs through their lack of being anything more than a 6/10 on their best offerings.

That’s my 10 pence worth for what it’s worth with our current malaise of Artete’s offerings.

Emi was a huge loss for us.

Manic Stage*

Tony

I agree totally about Emi – a far superior keeper to what we have now. He is a joker and wound up Arteta. ESR also wound up Arteta by declaring his admiration of Ozil (who was a lazy sod at the end). Arteta will only accept yes men – probably the only thing he learnt from Wenger.

Norg
There is no question Emi is a dick of epic proportions; just happens he’s a world class keeper who Arteta needed the requisite man management skills…………

I wasn’t aware of the ESR, Ozil smoke blowing, I could see Arteta not taking that well, but a good manager like Klopp would have laughed it off citing footballing reasons.

The issue isn’t Arteta having an issue with Martinez – good managers will decide that some players just carry too much baggage or can cause issues round the squad.

The issue is two fold – firstly if you don’t like the player fine but you have to have a better solution lined up, we’re now 3 1/2 years and what £50 million (we won’t get Raya for less than £25 million) spent and still don’t have a better option in goal.

Secondly don’t destroy the value of the player when getting rid of them. £20 million for a young keeper who goes on to win the world cup shortly after is moronic and takes the piss out of the paying fan. If it were a one off you could put it down to needs must but we have a list of players who’s values have been eviscerated by Arteta’s actions – Guendozi, Torreira even Auba can be added to the list off the top of my head.