Are Arsenal as bad as everyone is making out, are they in the mess we are constantly being told they are?
On average to win the PL you need 87 points, Arsenal last season finished with 63 point which on the face of it is miles behind that total, but let’s look at the games Arsenal lost :-
Liverpool away
Stoke away
Watford away*
Man U home
Man U away
City away
City home
Spurs away
Swansea away*
Newcastle away*
Brighton away
Leicester away
Bournemouth away*
*lost from winning positions
Drew :-
Chelsea away
Southampton away
West Ham away
Liverpool home*
West Brom away*
Chelsea home*
*drew from winning positions
So from those results can Arsenal pick up the 24 points they need. If and yes it’s a big IF, if Arsenal can hold on to winning positions in games then they are looking at 18 extra points. Okay I accept that you can’t always hold on so if we say in 2/3rds of the games that’s 12 points.
That leaves games in all honesty they should not be losing, Stoke, Brighton and Leicester all away, if you are looking to win the league these are game Arsenal should be winning, the last two loses near the end of the season we more of an issue with out woeful away form and a lack of confidence. Stoke was down to appalling officiating was it 2 or 3 penalties we could & should of had? So that is another 9 points, that leaves three points needed to get to the 87 points, I know it’s all ifs and buts, but are we not capable of gaining those results with the squad we have?
Are we in the mess that everyone is saying we are and has Wenger left us in a bad position? Confidence away from home ,as seen above was a major issue, for all the mental strength Wenger used to bang on about in his press conferences, we lacked that last season away from home. With a change of manager can he improve that confidence, it will be interesting to see how he handles the inevitable bad decisions Arsenal get (stoke & Watford away for example)?
Going forward Arsenal are as good as spurs, 74 PL goals each last season and that was good enough for them to be in 3rd. Emery needs to improve the defence, but allow the attack to continue scoring as it is and by the sound of the rumour mill defenders and a defensive midfielder are high on his shopping list.
We have also been accused of being a mess behind the scenes, but over the past 12 months we have seen
Sven Mislintat – Head of recruitment
Raul Sanllehi – Head of football operation
Huss Fahmy – Contact negotiator
Darren Burgess – Head of high performance
Jens Lehman 1st team coach
Sal Bibbo – Goalkeeping coach
Per Mertesacker – Academy boss
Lee Herron – Academy football operations manager
Richard Allison – Performance Nutritionist
Tom Allen – Lead sports scientist
brought in, plus Emery and whatever backroom staff he is bringing in with him.
To me that looks like the board have had a plan and are executing that plan to make Arsenal less reliant on one man (Wenger) and creating a proper structure to the club from top to bottom. Does that sound like a club in crises or a mess like Wright, Morgan and the rest in the media are saying.
We were accused of being in a mess around the appointment of a new manager, but again this was more to do with the media creating headlines because they didn’t have a clue what was happening. In business is interviewing all available candidates and then having a second round of interviews not showing organisation and planning does that not show due diligence and responsibility to the club and fans?
So are we a mess, are we as bad as our league position shows?
I don’t think so, but I do always try to have a positive outlook on Arsenal and as we know it’s negativity that sells and creates headlines. Some prominent bloggers/vloggers are already laying the foundations to criticise the board if things do not start well with transfers, but if we look at the club from a positive angle, we are not as bad as everyone is saying.????
@Swales1968
Positively Arsenal 
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West Germany were the first and last team I can remember starting the World Cup fast and managed to keep their form to the end. But it was very ugly towards the end.
The team who gain form and momentum in the second half of the tournement is the team to look out for.
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@fins
All great things do come to end…such a tragedy that Santi’s was ended by an injury.
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Link no. 228 of summer. Love the look of this guy.
As short a ‘beast’ as you could find, but I believe someone with passing, tenacity, intelligence, mobility could easily be more suited to and better for us than a juggernaut who excels in duels of pure strength.
Sure won’t have Santi’s skills- who does?- but looks like he can also make very good use of low centre of gravity.
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One concern with little fella is that he’s brilliant at earning free kicks through dribbling to relieve pressure, and also gets whacked when clearing ball.
Pgmol would use first by not giving free kicks in dangerous areas, and 2nd presents injury risk as challenges would be harder and more reckless here on him
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@gf60
It was a great team with many many great players! I have my favourite.
There was a beautiful symmetry to that last FA cup victory, beating the champions and Pep’s Money City, both petro clubs in the final and semi-final after an earlier run against lower league teams and a youth/reserve team mincing Southampton.
The 2017 cup final is a comfortable second in my list of top 5 FA Cup triumphs.
And then Arsene stayed on to begin the transition into a new team cycle. As George describes above it’s not looking too bad. By contrast Zidane didn’t want to make the call on Ronaldo etc. and with Florentini Perez slithering about in the background who can blame him if his love for Madrid is not as great as Arsene’s for the Gunners. I’d hope Arsene doesn’t take on the job of rebuilding that Madrid squad.
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We managed to sign Ozil, get him to renew his contract (when everyone said he was going), and get him to speak out on social media against the false legends.
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Pires still got it. Majestic player
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Sane left out of the German squad of 23 for Russia – !! He has never torn up trees for the national side but even so I thought the World Cup would be a place for that to start. Low eh – that is what being te manger is about.
And no Draxler either, which is probably more predictable.
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Draxler’s in squad.
Looking at it he had very tough call and went for Rudy- steady, disciplined player- as otherwise they’d be too short at centre mid.
Little doubt Sane is a better player than Mario Gomez but, again, squad balance first and he wanted a big striker in mix.
Feel a bit for our Mustafi. Would have thought his ability to cover right back (think he played a couple games there last world cup) could have helped, but no
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Ha, what a sneaky thing Besiktas are trying to pull, according to report i just read.
Our much-talked-of ex-player Ozyakup has a clause saying we receive 30 per cent of any transfer fee for him, and supposedly their plan is to let contract expire (this summer) without renewal… then sign him on a free, sans clause, then sell him on minus any payment to us.
https://turkish-football.com/truth-behind-newcastle-reportedly-striking-13m-deal-ozyakup-arsenal-involved/
If true, I guess they don’t plan on any dealings with us for the next 50 years.
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*Confused of Norfolk
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Jay Jay Okocha sometime in 2017
“It’s not easy to break into an Arsenal team from youth,”.
“A young player won’t cope with a whole season. It’s understandable he’s not been playing recently. Overall he has done well.”
Please note how the former pro specifically mentions breaking through directly from youth team to first eleven, not arriving after two three years under his belt elsewhere. Iwobi is only reaching that equivalent level around about now. It is almost as if Okocha sounds like he knows what he is talking about?
I understand that the “can’t coach” meme was willfully adopted by strong souls that couldn’t cope with the attacks against AW being pumped out into the ether. There will always be those who like to join in the chorus and to bark with the hyenas. We can understand.
I hope that no one is offended if I kindly lay that last spasm of a meme to rest into a pauper’s grave with the assistance of Iwobi’s uncle who may know a thing or two about this Football malarkey. There are further quotes of Okocha praising of Wenger’s handling of his nephew available for those not sucking up and regurgitating the, ah, proven wisdom of our expert poscastateeers and arseblaggers.
I don’t even need to mention Maitland Niles.
And how we’re all looking forward to seeing how many more minutes Nketiah racks up in the Europa league next season etc. Holding…
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fins
I really don’t get the whole issue around Iwobi. Of course he’s going to take some time to be a first team regular. These same guys also said the Ox wasn’t developing, but now think he’s great. Even World Class. Because Klopp has apparently transformed him.
Also, I’m sure these people decried the project youth years because they would rather have ready made talent brought in instead of using the first team as a ‘creche’. Almost as if they just want the club to be wrong about everything. I wonder why.
Not unrelated, did you see the chat with Ozil’s agent? Towards the end he talks about how ‘bad agents’ are there because people within the clubs use them to do the bad stuff. He mentioned kickbacks to managers. And how you can’t get into certain clubs because some guy unofficially appointed by the people in the club, is standing outside the door. His advice to agents was to stay away from all of that. Do you think this might have had something to do with Ozil staying?
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Probably been gone over many times on here but what are your back of envelope calculations for our wage bill changes in past year?
Just reading article about how much of Summer budget will, or so is the hope, be committed to securing Ramsey’s future, and it contained this
‘…..That would amount to a commitment (new contract) from Arsenal of around £50 million until 2023 and further increase a wage bill that has already risen hugely this year following bumper contracts for Mesut Ozil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.’
Huge contracts I’m sure for those three, but we did let go of about 10 senior players.
Gabriel, Gibbs, Ox, Walcott, Sanchez, Giroud, Coquelin, Mertesacker, Sanchez, Cazorla (Szcesny I’ll presume hadn’t been on wage bill for couple of years)
Can’t guess what all those players were on, and no doubt those 3 were bumper contracts, as were Laca and Kolasinac, but, I don’t know, those were ten big players for us and surely it amounted to a lot in wages.
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Rich
By my calculations last season, I thought we’d basically kept our wage and transfer spend at the same level. Even with Ozil’s new contract.
PL rules allow for 7m increase in wages every season. Plus any increase from commercial deals. We seem to have signed a lot of those this year. No idea for how much. We also have a sleeve sponsor for around 10m, so that can go there too. And we’re shedding wages for Per, Santi and likely Jack. That’s got to be around 300k+ there.
I think we should have 17m+undisclosed sponsorships (3m?) + 300k/wk ~ 16m = 36m wage room. Around 700k per week.
That’s the max we can spend. Not that we would want to. But spending a little more than necessary can bring some benefits for the year beyond. Because your max allowed always goes up by 7m from the previous year. So if we sign Licht on a 1 year 150k deal with the option to extend but at 20k in the second year, you’ve paid him 85k on average. But you’ve created more room to make a big purchase next season with higher wage bill allowed. Without removing anyone, you get the 130k increase and you shed 130k more. This would make sense if we think we’ll have more transfer money next season. (No idea if this sort of contract is allowed under Fifa rules. Where players wages reduce instead of increase)
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Shard
Reckon you could get in Man City’s accounts team with that sort of ingenuity.
Made me laugh a few years ago when their biggest stars- Aguero, Silva, De Bruyne, Kompany- were supposed to have signed new contracts for less money, only (if pressed to explain how in the hell), it maybe wasn’t really less money, just done in a different way, – (Me: so they’ve not taken a pay cut then? Gits: oh no, they have; on the books anyway; brilliantly well-run club)
All i know is that I’ve never heard of massive players taking serious pay cuts, en masse, in their prime, especially not in this era, but that’s what the papers gladly reported, praising City’s genius planning, management etc.
On your one, I’d be a bit worried the player in question would just go ‘thank you very much for the great wages 1st year…but I think I’ll be off now’. Unless he has no choice of course.
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Currently reading a book, ‘The Deal’, about football agents, by well known uk agent John Smith.
Did Arshavin and, I think, many other deals with us. Can’t wrap my brain around much of the financial nitty gritty ,alas- not my forte.
Instead of feeling illuminated by it, I just feel mildly depressed by all the details, especially tax stuff.
Was amused by the mention that Levy often makes agents buy a hospitality box for a year as part of deals. Weird. Must be small fry in comparison to the money these days, but I guess he wants those boxes sold or something.
Also a mention of Welbeck’s brothers representing him and, I think, some grudging praise for their method of meeting with a large variety of agents, ostensibly with a view to them taking over, then carrying on themselves afterwards. Implies it was a good way to pick up extra bit of knowledge, and I got sense he was one of those who had made a pitch.
By end of book, think I will have firmly concluded I am better off not trying to understand all the mechanics behind the game. We’ll see if I can stick to that though.
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Yeah team option, not player option I meant. This sort of stuff is fairly standard in the NBA and other US sports because they have salary caps.
Just think about the administrative task of it all. The club needs to consider the salary rules and how they’ll affect us this year and the next. They need to see who will need to be registered as over 21 in the next couple of years and award senior contracts accordingly. There are also two sets of HG rules. Domestic and Uefa. Likewise FFP rules. And you need to abide by them all.
Unless you’re ManCity of course. As I recall, they got them to reduce their wages, in exchange for getting payments from an image rights company created by the club (or someone close to it)
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Is there anybody in the PL over the past 10 years as skillful as Santi Cazorla. Magician. I saw a move where a team rushed 4 players at him and he simply bamboozled them. Santi had the greatest moves when hemmed in by the sidelines. How often did we see 2-3 players rush at him, with venom, and Santi leave them for dead.
Oooh, Santi Cazorla!
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Hey Shotta
Thanks for the previous article and also your reply to me from the article before that.
I wrote a load of stuff and parked it, then as usual, a few hours later regulars posted things I’d written about and better. Ta to them too.
I hope you produce an article about Arsene Wenger being kicked out. It wouldn’t matter when, I think it needs to be done.
The replies to the various unfoldings were magnificent.
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Shotta
Saw on tv last night that excellent left-foot goal he scored against West Ham. Technique even better than I remembered it because he put in a bit of deceit, in movement of striking it, which made defender and keeper shift other way. Masterful.
Got a feeling that was one of his very best games for us, one where he was on the ball a lot and put on a real show. Vaguely remember another like that against Fulham away, then of course there were brilliant big game performances at Anfield (Diaby rightly got most plaudits that day though) and then that memorable game at the Etihad.
A lot of very good players are primarily moments players, as wwwb might say, but Santi had capacity to do wonderful stuff, big and small, right throughout a game, all over pitch.
Also that superb free kick to dig us out of a hole in one cup final, and the next year he no doubt played a big part in a very different final, where we were completely dominant while playing top notch football.
Brutal we missed out on two and quite likely more years with the injury but at least he gave us a lot to enjoy in the other years.
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Serious allegation from Yaya Toure against Pep, but there’s one aspect I find pretty delicious, his calling out of Pep as only going where mega budgets are, and that his style wouldn’t work without those budgets.
Delicious, because true and yet almost entirely ignored, and because it is coming from one of biggest legends in City’s history.
Toure’s valid point of course applies all the way down the football ladder, and is what makes comparing managerial ability and success difficult should finances be different. Only a particular set of circumstances- animus towards Pep- have led to him raising the issue now, but it’s still good to hear mention of it anywhere from a big player.
His agent has chipped in as well : ‘. If you assign my grandmother to Bayern Munich, the team will still become champions! There’s a consistency with Guardiola’s choice: go to clubs with a huge budget which without him become champions all the time’
Yaya Himself : ‘Then, at Bayern and City, he tried to reproduce the same patterns [as Barca] but with this requirement: working with ‘his’ players and with almost unlimited means. It would not work at Crystal Palace or Watford.”
Really amusing that Yaya, City legend, has mentioned the key term, ‘almost unlimited means’, before any of the guys whose full-time job it is to report on the game, supposedly, objectively.
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Yaya’s willing to sign for a top 6 English club on a 1 pound salary (plus bonuses – unspecified obviously) to show Guardiola he’s still got it. Should Arsenal take him if the bonuses aren’t outrageous?
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So Pep “has a problem with Africans wherever he goes” ?
This will blaze.
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On Yaya I don’t think he has still got ‘itæ although I suspect he will find plenty of clubs willing to give him a go, and for more than £1. He seems to me to play like he is pushing a wheelbarrow.
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That may just be cruel on my part though.
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I’ve been following the changes in football, how the clubs are looking at revenue streams. How social media has changed the game, partnerships with ‘Franchise’ players.
The push by the big six for a greater slice of the foreign money that comes into the prem, is only opening up to opportunity for a higher bid for ‘Local’ rights from an entity like DAZN.
A Netflix style £10-20-month app, where the clubs are allowed to flood their own channels of content and live sale shows.
Live interaction where the club sell you stuff from their partners and tell you which players restaurant or hotel to stay at in the world.
All that juicy content converted to juicy cash.
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Well if Yaya didn’t like it he can only blame himself for staying on at City after he didn’t receive his birthday cake: If respect is what matters to him them he should’ve taken a smaller pay packet and come and played for the Arsenal and le gaffer, but he chose another path.
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Lichtsteiner is here!
I like that the club specified he will be wearing his surname on the back of the shirt. So you better learn to spell. Wait till they add Papastathapoulos!
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With a replacement for Debuchy coming in, someone who will not only play in order to get fit for another move but to provide a breather for Bellerin (please refer to the wisdom of Uncle Jay Jay!), the squad is already stronger then the one that began last season.
Lichtensteinaaaaaegggghhhhhhh done
Whoever next? (Special secret you could never have guessed at this time last year: It’s going to be and it needs to be a CB!)
Blimey.
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“On 7 March 2018, Lichtsteiner made his 250th appearance for Juventus in a 2–1 win over Tottenham at Wembley Stadium, in the second leg of the round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League, coming off the bench in the second half to help create Gonzalo Higuaín’s goal…”
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New post up
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Happy with Lichtsteiner signing.
Just seen Uefa have had a rejig of their prize money and introduced a brand new feature: (highest) ten clubs will be paid according to their co-efficient ranking of last ten years.
Bottom place gets a million, top 35 million. So a nice guaranteed extra 35 mill for Madrid for quite a few years, and 3 in a row should see them near the top of the payouts for about a decade.
I’d guess that until recently we’d have been in that top ten, maybe about 7th or 8th.
Anyway, not sure football was exactly crying out for the mega clubs to get some extra dosh but there it is.
Other figures are something like 13-15 mill for being in groups, and nearly three million for each win in group stage, which is a very surprising figure to me and I’m guessing something new (at that level). Massively incentivises going all out for wins.
We need to get back in there asap.
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