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Mikel Arteta is already up against it?
I find it quite funny that Mikel Arteta’s pair of eighth placed finished are often given without much context. I don’t think he’s void of criticism by any stretch, but I’ve got a few issues with Ian King’s piece today.
His first finish, where he replaced a sacked Unai Emery around Christmas time, did result in finishing eighth. But we’d been bad up to that point, and we showed signs of improvement after, including winning the FA Cup and beating some damn good sides to do so. The second season – his first full one as a manager – began not too long after winning that cup thanks to the pandemic.
Now, granted, every manager had to deal with that. But for Arteta embarking on his first proper season as a manager, it must’ve been a weird one and not what he’d hoped for, planning wise, when he took charge the previous December. The cup win was in August and the new season began a month later – not an ideal first pre-season in charge.
The plan last season was to get back into Europe after those poor finishes, and we did it – comfortably. This year hopefully there’ll be more progress, but in neutrals eyes (and it must be remembered King is a Spurs fan), Arteta is already up against it.
He’s spending big money but he had to – the quality of the squad was nowhere near the level it needed to be for top four. Even just recently we nearly did it with Cedric, Tavares, Elneny and Lacazette playing far more football than they probably should’ve for a side with those aspirations.
King is right when he says: “Neither Spurs or Manchester United seem likely to be as bad as they were at points last season, while many expect Newcastle United to be considerably more competitive.” But Arsenal are more than capable on improving on 13 losses themselves, and with a World Cup chucked into the middle of things, who knows how that’ll impact sides whose national team’s hopes are pinned on their star players like Kane or Ronaldo.
Look, Arsenal do need to get back into the Champions League and I’m not saying that they don’t. But people are acting as if Arteta’s “not going to have any excuses” if Arsenal aren’t good. Problem with that is a) they might be, we don’t really know yet given there’s…
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