Well lovely Arsenal people, I’m still gutted. The standards to win this league demand perfection. If you have a lead on City you best hold on to it, or they will take it and not give it back. I read the articles and comments on this wonderful platform. People want an “explanation” why we didn’t win. It’s pretty simple, and I said it. We didn’t want it enough, we didn’t look like we cared. We crumbled at the opportunity to take control of the title.
We haven’t learned our lesson. You can’t win the league with 13 players. Pep is the master of managing his squad. He can write a book on how De Bruyne is managed. If he was in our squad he’d have played every second possible and most likely be nursing an injury right now.
The past 2 seasons we didn’t trust our bench, and after 200+ million spent we still don’t. Raya, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Saka, Odegaard, Rice and Havertz play every minute. It’s not a coincidence Villa looked fresher than us even though we had 48 hours more rest. The players are vastly overplayed.
Sure Havertz, Jesus and Trossard all missed chances, but the fact we don’t rotate and trust the bench is solely on the manager and that is his squad. He gave Eddie 100k/w and number 14. Numbers mean nothing anymore I guess, because Smith Rowe with number 10 on his back did absolutely nothing, but is it his fault really? He’s played one game against Luton. He doesn’t have match rhythm.
People sing 60 million down the drain, but Kai at least plays. The real money down the drain went for Fabio Vieira. 35 mill for a player who doesn’t play. I don’t even know if he’s good or not, because all I saw this season was him turning the Fulham lead on his head, before a certain left back gifted them a corner and the game ended 2:2.
But again with no game time what is he going to do? Why did we extend Reiss’ contract? Is Thomas Partey a ghost? The lynchpin of our midfield last season. We needed legs in our midfield which was overran once again and we brought on Jorginho. Do late and poor subs remind you of the previous 2 seasons? The way we crumbled when the expectations were on us.
People voted with their feet when they left the Emirates early and I can’t blame them. They were let down once again. I haven’t forgotten that Villarreal performance and I tried to warn you, but Arsenal fans don’t want to hear the truth. We’re not as good as we think we are.
This has happened 5 season in a row under Arteta and people still want “reasons”. The only agenda I have is for Arsenal to win major honours. Zinchenko shouldn’t be near that squad. The guy is a liability. He cost us against Liverpool last year which started our downfall. This season he cost us against 10 man Fulham at home giving away the corner that they scored. Against Brighton he let the ball past him to put us in danger. I thought we moved past him, and when he was out of the side our defence was solid. Gabriel has looked a mess since Zinny went back in the side. Is it a coincidence?
Player favouritism strikes again and I must say, there’s another player Arteta brought who’s cost us. David Raya. I’ve seen Van Der Saar win United titles with saves that won football matches. When will Raya produce one? Fair play for the Porto penalties, but his nerves set a domino effect that led to Bayern’s equaliser and then our mentality crumbled. He was lucky when we beat City at home that his mistake in the first 5 minutes didn’t cost us. We’re lucky he’s on loan and we can still save 27 million and go buy Milan’s GK for example. There are other options.
Finally, remember how in January 2 seasons back we binned Aubameyang and didn’t buy a striker, and eventually bottled the top 4? Imagine if we had a proper goalscorer, that put the chances we had against Villa away? We didn’t have money for him, because we spent in on player we don’t trust to play the games.
This is the first manager I’ve seen actually backed. We gave him a proper war chest. City at the Bernabeau had Foden put an absolute worldie out of nothing! Then Gvardiol repeated it in the same game! Who in this Arsenal side can do that? We haven’t had a player that can decide games alone since Alexis Sanchez.
We don’t want those kind of players. We have a system and if it doesn’t work, we are done, finished. It suffocates the players. I’ve seen MacAlister put belters against Fulham and Sheffield that won Liverpool games. Their problem is that they relied on this too much on individual quality and eventually it didn’t work out against Palace, but how nice would it have been to have a player that can shoot from outside the box?
We play Bayern on Wednesday. They are not great, but that doesn’t mean we’ll beat them. Our European record speaks for itself. Saliba was shaking his head at the end of the Villa game and that shake told me everything. You think when he goes to the French camp and meets Camavinga who tells him of CL and league titles, he’d want to stay here? Saka has been the best player here how many years? He’s seen Harry Kane waste his career at Tottenham, he’ll move on eventually to actually win things.
We’re no longer a project, it’s year 5. We were promised when we moved from Highbury that we’ll compete with Bayern. Wednesday is a great time to prove that. We need a performance for the history books, but even if we go past them, whixh is highly unlikely. What will we do against Man City? They may have not beaten us this season, but the mental edge is firmly with them. If we play now, they’d wipe the floor with us. They beat Villa 4-1. No choke, no bottle, job done.
I’m sorry for the long piece. If people find my articles annoying I’m happy to leave at any time, but the truth is we need a really hard look at ourselves. Who we are and what we want to achieve. I saw Xhaka lift the Bundesliga title without losing a game all season up to now and Arteta had the audacity to say that our record would be worthy of a title in any other European league. Really, Mikel, really?
Wednesday is do or die. The players didn’t have the fire in their eyes against Villa, will they summon it at the Allianz Arena? I doubt it. And the false positivity I see with a majority of the Arsenal fans will not do the job for sure. Unfortunately this is the real reason we’ve not won a title for 20 years. There’s no accountability, because when someone does an inquest on why we didn’t win the title, they’re deemed negative.
Wenger was labelled crazy for saying a team can go Invincible. He set a standard and defined the odds. It’s what great managers do. Mourinho beat our invincible side and Fergie’s United.
Conte won while Pep was here in the EPL, so did Klopp. It can be done. It’s our own fault if it doesn’t happen. Don’t find excuses and don’t blame anything else.
Konstantin
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