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Gary Neville thinks everything is going wrong at the same time at Arsenal, but says Mikel Arteta should start fixing it by making them entertained again.
Arsenal’s 2-1 loss to Everton on Saturday leaves them with just 14 points from 14 games, their worst record at this stage of a campaign since 1974/75. Arteta celebrated a year at the helm this Sunday with a record of five defeats and two draws in his last seven Premier League games.
On Gary Neville’s latest Podcast, the Sky Sports expert says that Arsenal’s players look boring and methodical, insisting that the first step to recovery should be to make sure players start loving their football again.
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First step for Arteta: have fun again
5:13
A year has passed since Mikel Arteta was named Unai Emery’s replacement. Here we take a look at the ups and downs of his reign so far …
I think Mikel Arteta has to do one thing in the coming weeks: the results may not come, the performances may not come, but he has to make the Arsenal players seem to be enjoying themselves. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like they’re having fun.
On Saturday they looked like a bunch of players struggling and struggling for the way they had been asked to play, maybe they didn’t believe in the system, or maybe they don’t believe the players next to them are good enough. Something is wrong.
Although it seemed that I did not enjoy my football, because I was always very serious on the field, I loved playing in this team of Sir Alex Ferguson. It was exciting, we were going to move on and we were committed.
1:18
Arsenal players have not turned against Mikel Arteta despite a seven-match winless streak in the Premier League, says The Athletic soccer correspondent David Ornstein.
Arteta has to get those players to accept this again, the idea of going to the field and enjoying, loving and getting excited about football. Wenger teams always had that. This Arteta team looks more rigid, solid, but it’s a bit boring. He used to say at Old Trafford, you can win, you can lose, but you can’t get bored of coming to Old Trafford.
I think Arsenal fans and most football fans are the same. They will not accept being bored. To me, the Arsenal players seem bored and the football they are producing looks like a real fight.
Everything goes wrong at the same time
1:24
Arteta insists that the atmosphere in the dressing room is ‘good’ and thinks the recent results are ‘quite incredible’ when looking at the statistics
I don’t think they are relegated. The fact that we are even discussing that is a real problem.
We know what has happened at Manchester United since Sir Alex Ferguson left, the challenge when someone has been there for so long, and we knew that when Arsene Wenger left there would be a period of transition and a period of transformation, which would take something of time. Unai Emery didn’t work out, although I keep what I said at the time, he is a great coach.
There are elements of what happened at Manchester United, happening now at Arsenal. I think Mikel Arteta has shown that he can coach a team and organize it, but something is not right and it cannot be pointed out.
You end up saying: is it the coach? The recruitment? But when you get results like they are getting, you end up blaming yourself for everything, because it’s probably all true. There is an element that everything goes wrong at the same time.
Towards the end of Wenger’s reign, there was massive criticism of him. People were accusing the club of becoming obsolete, of him becoming obsolete, they were getting tired of qualifying for the top four, or being out of the top four.
But football was still pretty good. When you went to see Arsenal, you still thought you would see good football. But now, football is really bad. It’s not good to see them. At Leeds a few weeks ago they were enthusiastic, and watching them against Everton was methodical, but not Arsenal.
Because we are used to Arsenal being that free spirit for many, many years, playing good combinations, good passing, exchanging, now it looks very monotonous.
2:56
FREE TO SEE: Highlights from Everton’s victory over Arsenal in the Premier League.
How to beat Arsenal is obvious
Sky Sports’ Adam Bate Analysis:
“We need to generate more to win soccer games,” Mikel Arteta said afterward. That’s clear, but how do Arsenal plan to do that? Their 2-1 loss to Everton at Goodison Park on Saturday was more of the same from a team languishing towards the bottom of the table.
Ten games have yielded a victory and Arteta cannot argue that his team has been unlucky. Not now. This is not a false position, this is a poor Premier League team. The problems are obvious and, perhaps even more worrying, they are familiar. Arsenal don’t create opportunities from open play, much less score them, and that slow focus game is starting to look like it’s by design.
0:29
Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta says his former boss Pep Guardiola has given him “good advice” since leaving Manchester City to take over Emirates.
Has Arsenal been unlucky?
Sky Sports Adam Smith Analysis:
GRAPHIC
Looking at Arsenal’s last five games, Arsenal recorded more shots than rival in just two, while analysis of expected goals in those games also shows that Arsenal were second best against Wolves and Southampton, and only by in front of Burnley.
They also beat West Ham earlier in the season with a much lower xG (1.11 to West Ham’s 2.8) and beat Manchester United at Old Trafford with a notable disparity: Man Utd was 1.04 to 0 , 4 from Arsenal.
However, they lost at Liverpool despite posting an xG of 2.71 to 1.26, and at Manchester City with 1.3 to City’s 0.9.
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