HEADLOSS FC - GET IT TOGETHER
ADDRESSING THE WORST OF ARSENAL FANDOM
Being internet famous is hard to achieve when you have nothing particularly interesting to say - but if you are prepared to debase yourself and say anything to earn rage clicks, it can make you a few pennies. Mikel Arteta has been bad for a lot of people in the rage business. There hasn’t been a lot to cry about, we’re stable, we’ve been making good progress, that makes it hard to make a living if all you have is screaming in front of a camera (and to be clear, some made a very sharp pivot out of the banter era and do just fine).
So when Arsenal has a bad moment, it's not surprising these folk come flying out the gates with embarrassing attempts to make themselves relevant. I cannot imagine being so visibly high on a bad Arsenal result that I would tell the world I want to shoot an Arsenal captain. A guy who just brought a new baby into the world. A man who has given nothing but energy and love to our fanbase. Why should he have to hear someone on Arsenal's property say he'd kill a player if he had access to a weapon? These 'fans' are disgracing the global brand of Arsenal fandom for an extra few hundred pounds. They are so insecure, they think this represents football masculinity. It's Stone Island 'point to the badge' YouTubing, and it's so out of place with where we are as a club these days. The joke of the whole thing is the kids watching these videos are doing it because they pity the people in front of the camera, not because they think they're learning something important.
Today’s post will be a counter to thoughtless ranting. This won't be about condemning the club, the players, or the manager - it'll be framing where we are now through a more considered lens. You might not like it, but I promise you, this is how professionals at every major club will be looking at Arsenal right now.
Load Management
Arsenal totally dominated Everton. It wasn't our best performance of the season, but 9 times out of 10, that sort of possession, against that sort of opposition would normally end up with the home team squeaking a win.
The players weren't as sharp as we needed them to be, the team looked out of ideas at times, and we were snatching at moments instead of moving through the process you need to when breaking down sides like Everton.
They didn't come to play; they dropped a dirty deep block, and they executed it to perfection. Arsenal should have been better in key moments, but 3 games in a week seemed to take its toll on the boys.
Now, you could look at Arteta in that scenario: How hard is he training the boys? Right now, they should be doing next to nothing, they're fit enough, and they're tactically educated not to need to rehearse everything at Colney. Arteta has lost players to training ground injuries (Merino, MLS, Partey in one session 2 weeks ago). We know Arteta is a psycho when it comes to intensity in his sessions, so one needs to ask the question of whether he's drilling players too hard.
You can also spare the boys some empathy. Arsenal have dealt with a lot of injuries this season. Injuries mean you can't rotate. When you can't rotate, you put more load on fewer players, this means leggier players. Again, you can point to Arteta and ask 'MLS seems very much at the level, was he not at this level 7 weeks ago?'... 'Sterling seems like a good player, is he so bad he can't do better than Martinelli or Trossard?'... these are all things we have to consider.
Mental Load
Then we get into some more of the nitty-gritty. December is really f*cking hard when you're a Champions League club. The games come thick and fast. You're in hotels a lot. You're on planes, buses, trains, life is happening, wear and tear is ripping into your body, there are teams you don't like playing.
The way YOU feel after your 7th client Christmas party is how players feel. Now imagine you are playing Everton, they've had 10 days rest, their players have been given days off (no other teams are getting that), and they've spent an entire week focused on one approach... litter the box with bodies and clog up the Arsenal attack.
Fresh players vs. dead players.
We have a tendency not to look to our Euro counterparts when we have off results... but here's how some of the Champions League teams performed this weekend.
Vallecano 3-3 Real Madrid
Juve 2-2 Venezia
Mainz 2-1 Bayern
Heerenveen 1-0 PSV
Liverpool 2-2 Fulham
Arsenal 0-0 Everton
Lille 1-1 Marseille
Reims 0-0 Monaco
Mallorca 2-1 Girona
Dortmund 1-1 Hoffenheim
City 2-1 United
Milan 0-0 Genoa
Big teams, big players, underperforming in lesser leagues after heavy Champions League nights. Speak to any of your High Performance Director friends, or anyone who works in sport at literally any level and ask how hard it is to perform three times a week. Then, ask them how tough it would be to play a team that had 10 days of rest. They'll all tell you the same… extra days off make a huge difference.
'WE HAVE TO FIND A WAY'
I agree with you. But that demand isn't a strategy or a good halftime talk to dead players. Football rolls in waves, you can be Chelsea, in a magical moment, and Cucurella can score a diving header against beastly Brentford centre backs… or you can be Manchester City, who go from being perfection for 5 years, to conceding two goals within 115 seconds to a dirt-poor United side to lose ANOTHER game.
X Factor Baby
The biggest miss in this current Arsenal side is the X Factor. We only have one player who can do Thierry/Bergkamp/Pires things. When the chips are down, we're short of inspiration. Arsenal didn't do what was needed in the summer and it's costing us in this particular moment. You might find yourself in a slightly forgiving mood, because Arsenal scored 91 goals last season. That's hard, when you know the missing ingredient in the BIG moments last season was a Leroy Sane who could take the game by the scruff and move to another level regardless of team performance.
There are factors that impact finding that sort of signing… Mikel Arteta, whether you like it or not, will not break his system to sign a player that is pure chaos. He believes in controlling spaces, dominating teams physically, and he will not allow anyone to opt out of that mindset. Alexis Sanchez didn't make it under Pep and he wouldn't get a space at Arsenal. I suspect there are similar issues with Alex Isak, great player, but he can't do the bits of the job Arteta values. It feels like we're getting to the point where the profile is so, so narrow, we're killing ourselves this season. Are you telling me £35m for Ivan Toney, a player so good he occupied Gabriel and Saliba, wasn't better than Gabi Jesus? Or are you telling me Arsenal couldn't move on a player like Toney because Gabi Jesus couldn't be shifted? Whatever it is, understand this, Arsenal know what we're missing and we'll get those players next summer.
... but the season isn't over.
I know, mad right? We're still in the mixer. Our feelings have been far more shaped by the misery of those three objectively shocking red cards earlier in the season than by our issues in front of goal. We lost 7 points because of reds that no other team will get this season. If those don't happen, we're right in the mixer with Liverpool and no YouTuber would dare call for the head of the manager.
Instead, we're in a situation where the margin of error is basically zero and certain folk have lost all perspective of why we are where we are... and they're even forgetting what has happened.
Arsenal, in their last 7 games, have scored 19 goals, and we've conceded 4. Liverpool have scored 13 and conceded 6 in their last 7. We've had two draws in the last two games that should have been wins, we outperformed both teams, the games didn't fall our way... but only one set of fans has lunatics begging for change.
The headloss is mad.
5 years ago we were meandering under a manager and a footballing structure that was taking us nowhere - even at his best, Unai Emery was never going to be capable of turning Arsenal into a modern super team capable of competing for the biggest trophies consistently.
The last two seasons under Arteta, we've accrued record points, record goals, fans are connected to the club. We have tied down all our best players to new deals. Our ownership group actually spends money now. We are the best team in England this season and we're doing that with the 5th highest wage bill in England. The team we've been pipped by the last two seasons has 115 charges against them because allegedly, they've not been doing things by the book.
If you think the problem here is the manager, I honestly don't know what to tell you, because you are deeply unserious.
Football, when you play by the rules, is about consistently doing things the right way. Creating an identity, recruiting for that identity, leveling up the basement, building extra floors at the top, evolving the thinking, and nurturing the culture. City have been at this for 15 years, Pep, the best coach in the world, has been working with unlimited funds for 8 years. Liverpool has had a serious setup for a very long time, Klopp built a machine, and when he left, the machine didn't follow. Arsenal don't have VVD in defence, a guy with 3 CL finals under his belt, multiple Premier League runs in him. We don't have a Mo Salah in the side, a man at his absolute peak, having been there and done it all before.
Arsenal has a young group of players trying to figure things out. The young players are excellent. Some of the best in the world. Is there enough of them? Maybe not. But we’re awfully close to where we need to be. The only team in the Premier League right now capable of a Man City like run, in my opinion, is Arsenal.
BEST CHANCE IS NOW
The naysayers said we were finished after Conte beat us to top 4.
'we'll never have a better chance'
How did that work out? Did those guys see us coming the year after when we went on that amazing run?
They didn't. Same folk said that season was our best chance at the league.
'Never gonna be able to do it with Champions League football'
Wrong again. We were even better last season. There was no Newcastle-like dip. We took the league to within 2 points against literal perfection.
Whatever your personal feelings are about the manager, know this, within the game, he is a top 5 coach in the world. If he was available, Barcelona, Man City, and PSG would throw £20m a year at him. Madrid would move on him if he wasn't Basque. Everyone wants an Arteta, look at what United are hoping to activate with Amorim. They’re taking a chance on him because they want to replicate what we have with Mikel.
The people who want to consider a new manager because 'Arteta makes mistakes' don't have good ideas on why they'd break a finally tuned machine that is the way it is because it is wrapped around one man.
I've read people say this is the attitude I hated when it came to Wenger.
Wrong.
My ire with Wenger is we could all see the decline. We had a manager who didn't believe in modern data, had no curiosity as to why his players were always injured, allowed us to get destroyed away from home, had no ideas for Champions League, was intent on owning every single decision top to bottom. Worst of all, there was no evidence of progress. He was happy to stagnate as long as the money was good and the fans were obedient.
Arteta is not stagnating. His ideas aren't failing. Arsenal aren't falling behind. We are on the cusp of something very special and sadly, there are too many people blind to this because they can't handle a non-perfect season and they don't understand the process that goes behind getting to the top in elite-level sport.
But they will. They'll come crawling back to the joy when it lands. You just have to take names, numbers, and coordinates and remind them full force about their headloss when we had bumps in the road. I am looking forward to the 'no one likes I told you so' comments that'll no doubt follow when these people want to get back on the party bus. The beauty of being wrong about success is no one will call you on your bullshit when things are going great because it seems petty. That won’t be me.
Ok, that's me done. Enjoy your day. Plenty of season to go. Don't let folk who have never made a decision of consequence in their lives tell you how to feel about the team you support. x
Again - a completely disingenuous post, full of paradoxes.
You agree that Arsenal need something special when it comes to attacking talent. You agree that sticking with Jesus and Eddie was a mistake. You agree that Merino and Sterling were conservative and unimaginative acquisitions. But you won’t place that blame on Arteta.
The way I look at it, we seem to be very much in the Wenger territory. Or the Southgate territory. Or the Jesus / Zinchenko territory. People, who raised the standards but ultimately had a key weakness, not allowing them to goto to that next level. Southgate got England performing admirably. But everyone understood his system was flawed and wasn’t good enough to WIN. Jesus and Chenko raised our level. But they could neither sustain not being another level on top of that. Arteta made us competitive. He raised our level. But his continued blind sightedness towards attacking talent, his commitment to a very conservative style of play, his unwillingness to bring in special talents or superstars, are costing a team which is almost ready to win.
No one is calling Arteta a dud. But serious people with higher aspirations will now look at this pattern, and will wonder, how long are we going to make excuses for this guy. Unjust referees, red cards, teams parking the bus against us, all sounds very Wengerish to me.
You don’t buy pace merchants. You don’t buy fancy dribblers. You refuse to play through the middle. You confine your talents to hugging the touchline. You stick with non-clinical strikers (Eddie, Jesus and Kai are so blatantly wasteful infront of goal), your key competence requirement remains duels whether in MF or attack. Then my man, if then, if after spending $1bn, you don’t deliver results, then it’s on you. Is Arteta a top 5 manager in the world ? After this season, if Slot wins, and Maresca comes second, with Flick at Barca, Xabi Alonso for last year, Carlo just for his history, Pep and Klopp, who TF are you kidding with that chat. And please stop calling this team the best in the league. That’s literally looking into your readers eyes and lying to their face. It’s slap worthy. Call a spade a spade !!
I agree the AFTV thing was a disgrace. However I think we can ask serious questions about Arteta’s ability to get it over the line. For the last two years we gave him grace because he was competing against the best team and manager in the world. But now they’ve fallen off, we should have been ready to step into the gap. Instead it looks like Chelsea and Liverpool, with brand new managers, are a level up from us.
He’s clearly a very good manager. But the question is: is he good enough? That’s ok to ask.