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How much pressure is Mikel Arteta under? How low can Arsenal go? The Pitch to Post podcast panel discusses the crisis in the Emirates.
The Gunners were defeated 1-0 by Burnley on Sunday night, thanks in large part to Granit Xhaka being sent off for grabbing Ashley Westwood by the neck, meaning Arteta’s team has just 13 points from 12 games.
This was the first time Arsenal have lost four straight home games since 1959, it was Burnley’s first top flight win over Arsenal since 1974, and Arsenal’s 10 goals in 12 Premier League games are his most outstanding performance. low since 1981. A truly season-record record for all the wrong reasons thus far for Arsenal.
Will Arteta be fired?
Brand Gerard from Sky Sports
You can plan for the future, you can sit as a meeting and say, “This is our direction, we will follow it,” but it only takes one person at that meeting to say, “I don’t like this” for that solidarity stance to fall. And indeed, if one person on that board starts to doubt, that gives others on the board permission to doubt, and that’s when it all falls apart.
There may be a great plan here, but the interests of the club will come first, not the interests of Mikel Arteta. Arsenal have 13 points from 12 games. This is not a fall at the beginning of the season, this is a dozen games now, we are almost a third of the way into the season.
If they continued at this rate they would end up with 41 points at the end of the season. That was good enough for 15th last season.
I think it will have a little more time, and this time it is crucial, because things can get really ugly if those players reduce the tools. We’ve seen it over and over again: players can get managers fired. I think some have already used tools, you can see from the amount of changes Arteta makes.
He has a great job to keep them in play, otherwise I think he will go away eventually. It’s the Saints at home on Wednesday – they’ve lost one in 10!
I don’t think Arsenal or Arteta can use the excuse that this is a strange Premier League season. They are 12 points off the top with 12 games lost. This is below the mid-table shape, and they look like a team under the mid-table on the field. The performances have not deserved any kind of result, and that is the worrying thing.
I think they will end up finishing in the middle of the table this season, but that’s not good enough, no matter what the Premier League looks like at the moment.
Are Xhaka’s actions unforgivable?
Kate Burlaga from Sky Sports:
Xhaka has lowered her side. We’ve been here too many times before with him. Arteta then tried to excuse him in some way, claiming it was part of this higher will to win. That may be the case with the initial challenge, but not the later ones. Don’t get in the face, put your hands on someone’s throat.
This is a senior player. He is captain of Arsenal, although many would have questioned him, and he is an experienced international with 80 appearances for Switzerland.
You could feel some sympathy for him last season when he was booed by fans, that wasn’t pretty to see. But this pseudo rude guy thing goes on and it doesn’t make sense to me, it’s a temper issue. It’s happened before, and if it keeps happening, that’s a point where you don’t just look at the player, but the coach looking at him.
When was the last time Arsenal came up?
Brand Gerard from Sky Sports
There have been times when they have had a good team and there has been a lot of hope, but there always seemed to be hope, optimism, dreams, no real quality to win games, and the success that follows.
He has not been in the Champions quarterfinals for a decade, he has not been in the Champions League since 2017.
Arsenal were probably the best team in Europe for three years in the early 2000s, and those memories and feelings linger, they stick with Arsenal fans, that becomes a benchmark and it hasn’t been even close since. so. I think they find it difficult to accept it. Manchester United are going through the same thing now, through earlier stages, of course. Liverpool have had it for 30 years and have barely succeeded. But this is so low and I think the fans deserve better from the players.
From what I can see there is a good vibe at Arsenal: they always laugh, joke and smile in training, they all seem to be friends, they make their Adidas promo videos, they are great, they connect well with the fans. On social media, they have good merchandising, they have class off the court in their image, but on the court, and behind the scenes with the structure, there is little class. In football, I believe that the class and the winning mentality are not mutually exclusive.
I wonder what Arsene Wenger thinks of all this. He got a lot of stick in his later years at Arsenal and while some of it was deserved, it kept them competitive in the top four.
Disappointing senior players
Kate Burlaga from Sky Sports:
I was very struck in the North London derby by Bellerin’s carelessness, Willian’s side passes, the way Aubameyang was beaten in all his duels, as well as how peripheral he was in his attacking role.
Willian got off to a great start in life at Arsenal, but he seems like a shadow of the player he was, it doesn’t seem like he knows what to do with the ball in the opposite third: two of his 14 crosses found a teammate against Burnley, and he did. What really caught my eye was the fact that he made four forward passes. Four! The number of times it backed off was quite surprising.
I think they still look devoid of leaders. Arteta has sided with experience time and time again, and has not been vindicated. That’s where patience runs out with followers.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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