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Ten Premier League spots and 11 points separate Frank Lampard, Mikel Arteta and their respective teams.
Lampard’s managerial career is going from strength to strength as the 42-year-old plans a title challenge.
Arteta, on the other hand, despite the most promising of the openings, is more concerned with the bottom of the table than the top.
On Saturday, the two rookie coaches square off in a crucial London derby, both intent on finding success in the treacherous game of club football management where they shone as players.
That weight of expectation now weighs significantly more on Arteta’s shoulders.
His first eight months in charge were very promising. An FA Cup win, a Community Shield win and victories over Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea made Arsenal fans dream.
A win streak in 10 top flight matches has turned those fantasies into a nightmare.
Arsenal remains fully committed to Project Arteta and sources claim, despite its downfall, that its work is safe.
However, if it falls into the last three, that robust support could evaporate.
“The next seven to eight days will be crucial to see where we are headed in the Premier League,” admitted Arteta.
The problems of Spanish do not stop there. Factions in the dressing room are increasingly difficult to negotiate and satisfy.
“At the moment of keeping the team together, the team alive, and being a team instead of a group of players, at this moment it takes a lot of energy,” Arteta said.
“When you are losing football games you have to pick them up and you have to put them together. You have to get them to be positive with each other, to try not to start blaming any external factors or any individual when things do not go well.
‘The best thing you can do when you are like this is to be able to do things outside of our site. Bring them together, change the environment, but at the moment we can’t do that.
“We are not going to be able to do that for a while, so we have to find other ways.
I don’t make excuses. I think I have been very clear in many moments that we are losing football matches. That is my responsibility to fix that and regardless of what happens, it has been us.
We have been the ones who have been disappointed and it is up to us to change that. I don’t think I ever used an excuse.
‘Mistakes, mistakes, whatever happens, I will support you until the last day.
‘Of course they have to play the field and do the performances. We are here to help them as much as possible, and we have to accept that right now it is not close enough. ‘
Lampard insists his quest for success is the same challenge at Chelsea that he faced when he began his managerial career at Derby.
But he adds: ‘To contradict myself a bit on that, because I love the club (Chelsea) so much that I probably put a little more weight on my shoulders.
“ It probably doesn’t affect me too much in my day job because it consumes me. But having been a fan of the club, a person of the club, I really want to be successful on a professional level but also because of my attachment to the club, if that makes sense.
“I would like to see it (that attachment) as something positive and I would like to see him working as hard as I can to bring success to my own club.”
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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