ACCEPTING THE PAIN OF PROGRESS (LONG READ)

Arsenal internet of 2017 is back and the screamers have been set loose. After 4 years of having to mostly earn scraps after the cratering of ScreamerTube traffic, we’re back with a bang, being lectured on standards by people who make their money appealing to 14-year-olds. Having to listen to people who have never performed at the elite level of anything lecture the world on the mediocrity of Arsenal is painful, painful viewing.

Screaming into a microphone if you don’t have any ideas of your own is not analysis, it’s attention-seeking.

Sack Arteta? You are a deeply unserious person if that’s your view.

The good news is a couple of days after a nightmare, the serious narratives being to shine.

The Athletic ran a piece that basically stated we are doing all the things you want from an elite side, bar putting the ball in the net. The thesis is we don’t need a dazzling number 9 to get to the promised land of free-flowing goals. We just need luck to catch up with us and show a bit more composure.

Our off-the-ball approach to pressing is amongst the best in Europe, only one team creates more shots creating actions by winning possession in the opposition’s final third and that’s Brighton.

The quality of the chances we’re creating is good enough, we just need to sharpen up. Put it this way, it’s no shame to lose to a Liverpool side we battered with 18 shots. No team has done that to Liverpool this season. We haven’t been able to do that against Liverpool in 10 years. The result didn’t go our way, but over the long term, those sorts of games where we are clearly the better team will give us strength. We’re no longer the inferior team of boys that hides. The fear of two seasons ago against big teams has gone. That is progress.

Over the longterm, those sorts of underlying numbers will bear fruit. The catastrophizing during this period is absolutely predictable because no one can handle the idea of luck playing a role in football at the elite level – and that we can measure it.

You could rerun Villa, Liverpool, Newcastle, and West Ham 100 times again and not get to 4 losses with performances like the ones we delivered.

In sport, sometimes you need to lean into the intangible, and that’s faith.

If the system delivers an abundance of chances against top-tier teams, if it constricts those same top-tier teams to very little action in your box… then you have to believe at some point the results will drop.

Arteta cannot do any more than coach a system that delivers what we delivered at Liverpool, West Ham, and Aston Villa.

What factors should we consider?

The team is very young and inexperienced. They have to build out winning IP. They need to find ways when things are clicking and they haven’t found a way to roll the ball into the net. Confidence and endeavor when the chips are down is something you learn. Our players need to learn that. The important thing is they are not letting bad results get in the way of performance; that is half the battle.

We also need to deal with the statistical oddity of every single forward player losing their mojo at the same time. It’s so weird that super-talented players are all going through this together. If they can stop scoring at the same time, there’s no reason to believe it can’t click back at the same time.

The final part of this shit-sandwich equation is the defensive part of the game. It is simply not sustainable for Arsenal to keep restricting sides to under 4 shots on target per game and keep conceding 1+ goals. It won’t last. It is a freakish anomaly that will sort itself out.

The combination of conceding from very little and not scoring from an abundance is the nature of football. Pep Guardiola said, ‘people love this game because a team that has 20 shots can lose to a team that has 2 shots. But I tell you which team I prefer.’

Big clubs around the world look at underlying data before they sack a manager because proper leaders at those clubs know that sport has ‘fuck you’ variables you can’t control. Jurgen Klopp famously ended his Dortmund career on a slump to 7th. People thought he was done. The Liverpool data nerds analyzed his performance and concluded he was the unluckiest manager in Germany that season. They hired him, the rest is history.

Unserious people will blame Arteta for this slump. They will also blame the players. My take? We are doing everything right, keep the confidence high, believe in the approach, and it will deliver big time in the backend of the season when we start bring bodies back into the mixer.

The most important two games now are Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest. Win those two, and we’ll be right back in the mixer.

Are there things that Arteta could be doing better? Absolutely. But one of those is not bringing more academy kids into the starting 11. I wrote about this reality a few years ago. As we get better, it’s going to be harder and harder to blood kids like we did when Arteta took over. If you’ve been reading this post banging the table in fury because I’m letting Arteta off the hook, imagine how you’d feel if Ethan Nwaneri cost us in a Cup game. Fans would be in his DMs abusing him, how do I know? We’ve seen it before. Martin Odegaard had to delete his IG because of the criticism he was getting. Everyone loves an academy kid until they’re not delivering fantastical numbers. Ask the players struggling at the club now that Arteta is begging fans to support.

Balogun couldn’t make it at Arsenal, Patino might do but the jury is still out, Smith Rowe, Eddie, and Reiss will all likely be chopped. The idea that players that are closer to 16 than 21 are going to waltz into a team that is fighting for CL and PL is fanciful. We’ll be lucky of one of our current crop makes it with us.

That might sting, but it’s the reality of football at this level. A lot of our great academy prospects will have to boomerang out and back if we want to see them. It happens at City (Sancho, Palmer, Lavia), it happens at Liverpool (Antony Gordon), and it happened to Chelsea during the winning years of Mourinho (Salah, KDB, and Lukaku).

The biggest focus for Arteta in the backend of this season is to take his foot off the gas with his players. He is a control freak and I don’t think that always plays well with a squad of players. Taking all the boys to PSV in a dead game is just one example of over-enthusiasm for ‘the culture’ that eventually costs you in physical and mental fatigue. You saw it in the Fulham game, the players were dead.

The manager also needs to get serious about protecting players from themselves. Thomas Partey picked up two injuries at the training ground. That is on the club. You cannot be breaking players like him in training sessions. He never reads the tea leaves when it comes to Tomiyasu, he overplayed him, we all knew he’d break, and he did. The same issue with Zinchenko, we know he’s breakable, and Arteta will always find a way to break him. God knows how Ben White hasn’t had a serious injury yet, but he’s next.

Then you have the starboy, Bukayo Saka. He looks cooked right now and with good reason… he never gets a rest. How many more games in a row before he breaks and we all act surprised?

The only way we exit the season with objectives met is if we keep our best players fit. That means more voluntary rotation in games we can control.  If we’re blaming injuries again, that is on the coach.

The final thing the club could do is add players, but I’m just not sure we’re going to get what we need. Amadou Diarra has been hard-linked again today and I’m not a fan of the link. Though it does seem to make sense in the context of Paulinha. Two defence minded midfielders that are mobile, press resistant, and aggressive. That must be a profile they like. It would come at a cost, because I think what we’ve missed is the dynamic passing of Thomas Partey. Moving to more rock and roll midfielders feels like a step back, but it is what it is.

My hope is we keep Partey at the club, but with the team going out to Dubai, you can’t help but imagine the PIF Fund will be in the lobby awaiting Partey’s people to negotiate a big-money exit. If we sell, we buy, if we buy, all the hot ITK talk is Onana.

That we’d solve our striking problems with a midfielder more limited than Thomas Partey does feel like peak-banter days when he’d hoover up #10 like players for fun.

The summer is where the best deals are done. Bringing in players now doesn’t give them time to integrate into the system. Those deals rarely offer value in the short term. But the summer is interesting. Ivan Toney taking up the striking spot is exciting, this Hato fella only has a year on his deal and I can’t imagine he’s not exciting the club, then we have a slew of pace monster wingers we’re looking to bring to the table.

This summer will see the squad finalised. We have to make the next 5 months work and not give up. But I have faith in the manager, the system, and a group of players that are progressing even if you can’t see it right now.

Football is hard. Pain is part of the process. We are on the right path.