We had a conversation about this that I thought was up thread, but must have been in one of the weekly game threads instead. At the end of last season after missing the Champions League, he said he was done with Arsenal until they fired Arteta.
Fair enough. Arteta is proving a lot of people wrong, myself included - and fair play to the board for sticking with the process.
I, for one, am truly surprised to see how well things are working, especially so soon. Having the young kids in the lineup so soon seems to have paid huge dividends. There's a chance that Arsenal could have a young core together for four or five years... if they can play together and increase their passing accuracy and efficiency there's a real chance they'll be able to contend with City and other top teams.
The shame of the Gabriel miss was really that the buildup to it would have made it an all time great overall goal. So many one touch passes…
In the games that we used to talk about as measuring stick games for this team, against Chelsea, ManU, Liverpool, and Spurs, they're 3-1. They also looked in control in all of those games, even the ManU game that they lost on counters that were against the general flow. This is a very good team. They dominate the ball, move the ball forward quickly, and are completely relentless in attack. But it's all built off an incredibly solid defense. Saliba just locks down anybody and anything in his area. I don't know how a guy that big can be that fast and agile. Adding him to Gabriel in the middle and moving White out to fullback has made that defense rock solid while still being able to chip in offensively. You have Tomiyasu when you need to lock down a player on the other team's right wing, or Zinchenko when you want to focus on ball movement and make the LB primarily an extra midfielder. I don't think Tierney really fits any more, but he's a great option to have. It sounds like the team is going to keep spending in January, with a potential title chase on their hands. They could use another RW to compete with Saka and rest him, and another midfielder. It's obvious they know both of those things before coming into this year and just couldn't get what they wanted done, so I'm sure they're going to look at those positions again. Hopefully Emile Smith Rowe can finish the year out healthy and provide some more depth as well. And extending Martinelli, Saliba, and Saka will be huge for the future of the team. Outlasting Man City at the top of the table is going to be a tough feat, they're probably the best team on the planet, maybe top two at worst, but things happen so you never know.
The one good thing is that Arsenal have a very young team which should hopefully help with recovery.. at least Norway didn't make it and Ramsdale will most likely be a backup. Quite a few of the other players looks as though they'll play quite a bit.
The one takeaway from today.. arsenal are now the feared team that top sides bunker against.. extremely cynical play by Newcastle.. arsenal just couldn’t find that break with 14-18 players in the box
Agree, Zinchenko was great. Having him in there really makes a difference in terms of midfield control. And having ESR or Vieira rather than a dead-legged Xhaka in a couple of those dangerous situations would definitely have helped. Martinelli also looked off the pace all match, maybe needing a rest. Newcastle seemed to try to channel us toward the left side, Zinny did his job, but the players ahead of him just weren't sharp enough.
I also made a comment about it being hard to rate Tielemens because the teams he's been playing on have underperformed by so much this year, and I unfortunately had never really keyed in on him until after there was so much expressed interest from Arsenal on him last summer.
He's definitely not the young exciting player that can develop with the rest of the young stars, but all in between salary and fee you're looking at about 40m total, and that's not bad to provide security for a team that has a good lead in the race for the league.
