Bournemouth - on the bus. Bottle half full

Proper embarrassment in front of the home crowd.

Old man yells at an article

Before diving into a depressive aftertaste, I must first take aim at a BBC article published this week. I was disappointed with most of the statements there, and particularly with the decision-making process at our club. If Sami Mokbel has put this out on the BBC, he’s likely well-informed on the club’s inner workings, with information sourced from the top brass, and thus it must be taken seriously. I’ll extract the key quotes and give my two cents.

“From the ownership and club’s perspective, extending Arteta’s deal is what they want - and the manager is also keen to commit.”

Simply put, the club ownership wants to extend his deal regardless of how the season pans out. They haven’t considered what happens if we land ZERO silverware. They’re keen to commit anyway, probably banking on us mounting a title challenge every year and the sweet sound of Champions League revenue flowing endlessly.

I’m here to burst their bubble: if we bottle the Premier League this year, there will be no title charge in 26/27. The players will lose all genuine belief in Arteta. Where is that belief supposed to come from? Another tactical whiteboard session or ‘important learning’ isn’t going to cut it. If we managed to blow a pure six-point lead with just seven games left, where exactly do we need to be to actually clinch it? And all this is happening in a season without a proper giant steamrolling the competition. What happens if Liverpool or Man United finally get their act together next term?

The worst part is that they jumped the gun and prolonged Arteta’s contract prematurely five years ago, only to watch us bottle the top-four spot soon after. The call to keep Arteta was probably justified, but the contract renewal clearly did little to help achieve the season’s objectives.

“Arteta is understood to want assurances that the club remain committed to providing the level of backing that has kept the team competitive.”

So, Arteta is demanding massive investment in the squad, despite failing to win any major silverware to date? The spending is fantastic for the faithful, but it begs the question: why are the board so determined to keep him? The financial argument just doesn’t stack up here. I get it; during Wenger’s ‘youth era,’ the board was ecstatic because, for minimal outlay, Arsène delivered Champions League football year after year. That balance shifted in his last ~5 years, with costly signings failing to deliver UCL football, and he was eventually shown the door. With Arteta, however, they are ploughing in constant, massive investment (~250 mln spent only on expanding the squad last year) and are getting no easy returns.

“There will also be the issue of what will be an upgraded remuneration package for Arteta.

Only the salaries of Pep Guardiola (£20m) and Diego Simeone (£25m) are understood to eclipse Arteta’s existing contract in European football.If Arteta does put pen to paper, how much closer he gets to Guardiola and Simeone in terms of pay will be a key question.”

I’m sorry, but paying Arteta the same coin as Guardiola is frankly embarrassing when their pedigrees aren’t even in the same conversation. You’ve got Flick winning La Liga, Luis Enrique clinching the Champions League (though I reckon his wage should be top-three too), Kompany building arguably one of the world’s best sides. How, pray tell, should Arteta be on this level of remuneration with just a solitary FA Cup in his locker so far?

“At present, it appears the club will listen to offers for top England prospects Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri. Arsenal sources indicate they would look to recoup a minimum combined £100m”

And then we come to the issue of two exceptional young prospects. I appreciate they aren’t first-team fixtures right now, but both of these boys possess special qualities.

Myles boasts an unbelievable level of confidence and the mental fortitude to play at the Santiago Bernabeu at 18 years old and look completely unfazed, even netting against Man City and mimicking Haaland’s celebrations. Granted, his game needs improvement—he’s been figured out to an extent—but you simply cannot buy that top-level mentality off the street, as today’s match painfully demonstrated. To take his game up a notch, he needs a loan spell at a club where he can be a virtual first-team regular. A place where he can learn from his inevitable mistakes by playing, not by being benched. I’m confident he’s close to cracking it.

Ethan, on the other hand, is blessed with an unbelievable skill set—his knack for dribbling, his ability to hold the ball under Premier League-level pressure, his potent shot, and his capacity to fashion chances for himself. This is a rare commodity in the current Arsenal senior squad, so we can’t just keep handing out talent like this. Ethan’s current flaw is actually his concentration and consistency. He can go completely missing for spells, which is entirely normal for an 18-year-old. He just needs to mature and, once again, a loan move could be hugely beneficial.

But shifting him on for 50-60 million? To spend on who? We splashed 50 million on Madueke and I believe Ethan’s ceiling is considerably higher. Every player purchase is a gamble, and I don’t think it’s worth swapping a player who has already bagged 9 goals a season for another who might score diddly-squat.

All the decision-making exposed by this article has left me genuinely anxious, and the hope was that a win against Bournemouth would calm the nerves. Yeah, sure.

The Bournemouth game

Timber and Saka were still missing, plus Calafiori and Odegaard added to the list of injured after Sporting, so Arteta had limited options when it came to team selection. But “not much choice” is not equal to “no choice”. Arteta went with a front three of Madueke, Gyokeres, and Martinelli, with Havertz operating as a “floating number 10”, leaving Dowman and the returning Eze on the bench.

From the first whistle, it was abundantly clear that this setup wasn’t going to click. We’ve seen the Madueke, Gyokeres, and Martinelli front three deployed numerous times this season, and every single time it has been an attacking catastrophe for fairly obvious reasons.

Madueke is a great dribbler, but he’s disconnected from the team’s structure—he’ll take on his man, but there’s no systematic flow when attacks are built through him. Gyokeres needs a very specific kind of delivery in the Premier League. He can’t conjure up chances for himself and rarely comes out on top in a physical battle with top-flight centre-halves, so he requires precisely timed passing to find his runs. Martinelli, too, is better when he’s the one taking the final (or penultimate) action, but he isn’t great at knitting together complex moves to unlock a defence. He’s been thoroughly underwhelming in the Premier League, likely because the division has sussed out his game. (Though, if he puts in a run like the one against Sporting, most defenders won’t lay a glove on him, so it still remains a confidence issue).

To make these three tick, you need a mercurial creator, a genuine dirigent who can link the whole lot together and put chances on a plate for them. Rice and Zubimendi were never going to be that, and Havertz is hardly a creator, as his heat map proves (almost no activity in the middle of the park).

Havertz’ heat map - whoscored.com

Havertz is an enabler; he reads the space well and knows exactly when to overload a zone to receive the pass and create threat from there. But he needs to receive that pass from someone, and that person was absent today. You can see for yourself just how utterly disconnected our front four was.

Arsenal pass map - OptaAnalyst

The sensible choice, given the available personnel, would have been to start Max Dowman (either on the right flank or as a number 10 alongside Havertz) and introduce Eze off the bench for his fit minutes. Yet, that choice was only obvious to someone who isn’t faint-hearted about throwing a teenager into the Premier League fray, to someone whose primary focus is how to break down the opposition, not how to defend against them. What is the earthly point of constantly backing the same senior players who supposedly don’t “take unnecessary risks” but are utterly toothless when it comes to carving out a chance?

The game unfolded at a pedestrian, snail’s pace and was riddled with schoolboy errors from our side—misplaced 10-metre passes, players giving up possession cheaply, and an inability to beat a man one-to-one. This was never going to be enough to worry a seasoned outfit like Bournemouth.

And, naturally, the seasoned side were the ones to break the deadlock. Madueke switched off and didn’t track his runner (that ‘trusted senior’ decision-making again), White wasn’t alive to the danger and didn’t adjust his position, our back line was sliced open with a single pass and the rest is history.

When opposition players enter the 18-yard box with such a clear run, sometimes nothing can be done to stop the ball from hitting the 7 meter wide goal.

Given the disconnect up front, it was obvious the only way to genuinely trouble Bournemouth was to ramp up the pace, the intensity, and the sheer aggression of our play. However, that proved to be a pipe dream. Martinelli was utterly dreadful; he couldn’t beat his man for love nor money (after that spectacular assist in midweek, no less). Madueke was shocking, not linking up with anyone and failing to even create chances via his own skills (which is usually his bread and butter).

Zubimendi was abysmal. At this stage of the season, I struggle to fathom what he actually brings to the table. Rice covers acres of grass and offers a massive physical presence in the engine room; his key job is stopping dangerous counters, and he’s pretty good at it. So what is Zubimendi contributing? No exquisite defensive shift, no line-breaking passes, no control of the tempo, no consistently beating the press, no 40-metre vertical passes (like the ones Norgaard delivers sometimes). The only moments I recall Zubimendi for are when he pops up in or around the box to score or chip in with a cheeky assist. That is simply not enough for a starting central midfielder, especially in a game where goal contributions don’t happen.

City targeted on Zubimendi with their high press and he had zero answers; Bournemouth wisely chose to replicate this tactic and it worked a treat. I’d rather see Norgaard instead of him or Rice paired with two attacking midfielders right now, as I’m genuinely struggling to see the Spaniard’s input.

With the attack failing to click, our threat—predictably—came from set pieces. In these situations, the team’s imposing average height is a clear advantage, so it’s no wonder and shame that we look to use it to our benefit. Havertz came agonisingly close to levelling the score, and there were a couple more dangerous moments, until in one of the box scrambles Gabriel hit Christie’s hand to earn us a penalty.

These moments are always tricky—on the one hand, we weren’t gaining any real disadvantage from the handball, but on the other, by the letter of the law, the defender is blocking the ball’s path. Oliver, the usual whipping boy for the Gunners faithful, pointed straight to the spot, and VAR had no grounds of overturning it.

This felt like a gift, as the penalty wasn’t awarded for stopping a clear-cut chance; it was just plain carelessness from a Bournemouth player. Havertz took the ball and my heart sank for a moment. I wanted to shout “why not Rice?” only to remember that we have Gyokeres on the pitch, exactly for this type of job.

Viktor did not disappoint. His ferocious strike was executed in the finest traditions of a penalty from Alan Shearer or Harry Kane, when the shot-stopper simply had no chance, even if they guessed the direction. Whatever flak I’ve given the Swede, his mental strength in such a critical moment is truly commendable. And it was truly critical - we were not getting a goal from open play and converting this chance was a matter of giving us chances of winning the game.

The score stood at 1-1, offering Arsenal and Arteta the chance to genuinely turn this into a victory in the second half. Our standout performer on the pitch was, surprisingly, Myles Lewis-Skelly (the source of most pre-game concerns). But hark back to what I told you about his mentality - the title is on the line and he was the one of the few to keep his calm under pressure and not fail at simple passes.

The logical call at the interval would have been to chuck on Dowman and Trossard right after the break, as our flanks were just dead. Arteta didn’t bite, however; he watched another 8 minutes of this cotton candy and made a triple substitution, bringing on Eze as well. I genuinely believed that this injection of creativity would allow them to take control of the ball and the game…

How wrong I was! We were treated to another half of the same. Trossard was a bit better at keeping the ball, Eze was a touch better at escaping their press, but it was still miles off the required standards. Dowman felt disconnected. To make matters worse, David Raya (one of the more stable elements of the first half) started to pull off heart-in-mouth moments. Twice he was mere centimetres away from handing the opposition a clear-cut chance in a situation that absolutely didn’t require it.

Bournemouth were simply the better side; they were consistently snuffing out our attacks in the middle third, and all our threat still came from set pieces. They, however, executed a perfectly traditional combination which involved “hold-up play” and a runner (who, Zubimendi, of course failed to track and stop) to enter into the box.

2-1 in the 70th minute and it was completely unclear where we were supposed to take resources from to turn this around. All our best players were on the pitch but they looked like they played only a few times together. Arteta threw in Jesus instead of Zubimendi (a laughable candidate, to be honest) and Gyokeres even had a chance to equalise at the death. He fluffed his shot, but I would still back him over others, given that he calmly converted a 1-on-1 earlier in the game that was ruled out due to an offside.

By the final whistle, it became clear that the foundational problem is not the personnel, the tactics, or the preparation for the opponent. The problem was squarely a mental one - it was a proper bottle job from the first to the last whistle. Most of the players simply couldn’t handle the pressure of such a crucial result in the title race. There was zero belief, no confidence, and certainly no intention to seize the game by the scruff of the neck.

And it all stems from the manager. You’ve got 15 players out there, all with different character, mental toughness, and ability to cope with pressure. But the manager sets the mental baseline for the team from which the variation starts. Our baseline given by Arteta is pretty low.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard Gunners fans moan about how tough it is to compete with Man City in a title race because they can effortlessly string together the required win run. That doesn’t happen by chance - it happens because Guardiola has instilled a pretty high mental baseline. Whenever the title was on the line, they were coming out with the aggression, with the entitlement, with the belief they are better than the opponent.

City’s strategy carried the risk that if they didn’t score in the first half, they usually conceded from a counter, but it rarely ended up in a point loss. Whenever City lost points, it was because the opponent managed to miraculously defend the box and convert the rare counter attacks into goals. Not when they are simply an equal or worse team on the pitch in the low-chance game.

The biggest marker of our complete mental disarray was that Gabriel came to play the last 10 minutes as a second striker and was one of the likeliest to score a goal. Gabriel is not the calmest player, but he demonstrated the intention to take the responsibility and the matter in his own hands. There were a couple more - MLS, Gyokeres with his penalty. I don’t have many complaints about Declan Rice - Bournemouth was not cutting through midfield, his corners were precise, his shots from outside of the box were the most dangerous. His main responsibility is not to string the attack together and there was no one to take this responsibility. But 4 players out of a dozen is simply not enough.

I detest reading or hearing opinions “we are close to going 12 points away in the league”. Every time we were close to going X points away - before Liverpool, Wolves or today - we fail to capitalise on it, because the manager doesn’t broadcast the confidence to do it, he can’t mentally condition his team to perform well.

The only times we’ve gained ground in this title race is when we played first. Now, if City wins tomorrow (which I don’t doubt after they have seen our failure), they win on Etihad and two of their postponed games (which is not going to be easy), the distance will shorten to 0 points and you don’t need to know who will have the huge moral advantage in that case. The chances that we don’t lose to them away after the defeat today at home and the defeat to City at a neutral ground are really low. Today was a half full bottle, on Etihad it has all chances to become completely full.

But even forget about Etihad, how with this type of football we take three points against Newcastle, Fulham and West Ham (who are in a relegation fight?). If we win the league this season, it will not be from a position of strength, it will be because the other teams also have significant flaws. But knowing how Guardiola can patch the flaws with the motivation scotch tape, I seriously doubt they will lose many points.

After we lost in the Carabao Cup final by offering almost nothing in the second half and our manager froze, I decided for myself that I would want Arteta to leave even if he delivers the Premier League for the first time in over 20 years in a struggling fashion. Today only strengthens my belief.

And not because I don’t like Arteta or the football we play. I don’t think a world class coach can freeze in the Cup final for twenty minutes. I simply don’t believe that when his team comes on the pitch with such mentality, he can deliver us a bag of trophies. Even if they manage to get to the Champions League final, due to a lucky sequence of opponents (that don’t have a world class attack on their hands), I simply can’t see us beating PSG or Bayern in the final. I can’t see this team turning the game around, unless we score a couple of set pieces.

I can’t see this low margin football, where the attack for months struggles to dominate opponents and the 16-year old becomes the biggest hope for solving creativity issues, can be a trait of a constantly successful team.

Maximum 2 goals scored in the last 10 Arsenal games - whoscored.com

I can’t see a manager that can’t inspire his team, that can’t galvanise the players, that can’t make them believe they have everything needed to take down Bournemouth in front of their home ground, a part of a title-winning machine.

But, maybe I am wrong and my long years of watching football are not helping me make the right conclusion, maybe the club ownership that has already printed out a new contract with a payrise understands football better..