Over the course of the Spaniard’s time at the club and especially in his early days as Arsenal manager, one thing he kept bringing up in interviews and press conferences were the non-negotiables that every single player and backroom staff must adhere to.
Given the state we were in at the time, a club struggling to find it’s feet, talk less of being back in the mix with the elites at the time for major honours, then you can see why a ruthless approach to achieve discipline and consistency was needed.
Five years into his tenure and you can’t argue against his ruthlessness not having an impact on the way we are performing now. Instilling the culture and values the Arsenal of old were known for, were his primary objectives for choosing to go with a no nonsense approach to the Arsenal role which we’re reaping the fruits of now even if we’re yet to win anything major with him in charge.
This aspect of his job often leads to unsatisfactory reactions from the gooners, who often view some of his decisions as controversial and not being warranted with the biggest calls he’s made so far, instigating initial feelings of discontent from the Arsenal faithful.
Two of these calls in particular which stirred frustration from some sections of the fanbase at the time were the calls he made on Ozil and Aubameyang, the latter especially was such a huge call after he had impressed for us before his disciplinary issue.
With those two decisions it clearly laid a marker down for other members of the squad pertaining the need to have discipline, no matter how big of a player you are. No matter how some gooners did not like those calls at the time, it eventually proved to be the correct decisions.
Not only because there hasn’t been any disciplinary issue of that nature since then, but also because of how far we’ve come since that time.
More recently, we have witnessed Arteta continue his ruthless streak with our goalkeeping department. No one would have thought that we would he replacing Aaron Ramsdale after his immense contribution to the title chasing season of 2022/23, but that’s what we saw with the Spaniard bringing in David Raya on loan to eventually overtake the Englishman – which was a very unpopular decision at the time.
He has since gone on to prove us wrong once again with Raya winning the Golden glove in his first campaign with the Gunners, as well as taking his game to another level this season with some inspiring performances for club and country.
His willingness to be bold and make the difficult calls are part of the reasons why we’re back challenging for major honours again and gooners will be hoping that we finally have what it takes to make it over the line this season!
Thoughts gooners?
KENNETH BENJAMIN.
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I love our team, our style and our club but this is a bit of a puff piece.
Graham won trophies.
Winger won many trophies on a budget.
Emery got us to a European final and his squad won our most recent FA Cup, inspite of chaos in the boardroom and recruitment.
Arteta has massively devalued some players. Ruined other’s. Allowed Ramsey to leave for free instead of making him captain. Paid Ōzil to leave and spent more money than most other prem clubs. Don’t even get me started on the Hale Enders that have left.
I like and respect Arteta.
But what has he won? 8_5_5_2_2
Why the hype?
We should get rid of Arteta so that you can make some better recommendations to Edu / The Kroenke’s of the potential candidates to replace him at the moment.
Right? 🤞👍👌
Dougal, he’s won the FA Cup. As for Ramsey, he left on a free transfer under Emery, not Mikel. Hale Enders left under our previous manager, nothing new there.
Arteta is just what the doctor ordered at the time for Arsenal, Having said that we should all give what is due to Caesar.
Probably the only mistake made by the gaffer was how he handled the young Frenchman, having realized it was a massive blunder to play the German ahead of Saliba, he has since acquitted himself nicely
I do feel the Saliba situation was a culmination of different aspects at the time.
Saliba having lost him mother.
Only about 19/20 years old.
No experience in the EPL.
New country / league.
And also a bit of an attitude towards Arteta.
We all know that back then Arteta was trying to wrestle complete control. He was trying to dismantle this “Player power” attitude.
Wanted to show all the players that he was in charge and that his decision was final which Saliba tried to challenge to a certain extent. So Arteta flexed his muscles to send a message to Saliba: “I am the manager and I am in charge” sort of flexing.
That’s how I saw it and still see it to this day.
I really don’t see how one can compare Ozil and Aubemeyang, let alone the Ramsdale situation and then say it’s down to the ruthlessness of MA.
JA has covered the Ramsdale / Raya situation recently of course and far from being “ruthless” his “pledge” to play both his “No. 1 keepers” proved to be wide of the honesty mark. 5/10
Aubemeyang is a different case to the above and our golden boot striker left MA with no choice but to discipline him – I applaud MA for the way he handled the situation and we all saw him delivering his decision to a stunned changing room 10/10
What followed was a media nightmare, with the player jetting off to Spain, the club paying his salary and no replacement worth talking about – leaving the club a laughing stock. MA was badly let down by the club in my opinion. 4/10
Now onto, probably the most divisive situation since JUDAS RVP, the situation regarding Mesut Ozil.
I firmly believe (my opinion of course) that MA was given an ultimation by Mr Kronkie to dispense with Ozil, mainly because of the grotesque salary the owner agreed to earlier.
Prior to the coronavirus situation, Ozil had played in every PL game, including the unbeaten run just before the virus led PL lay off.
Ozil was never to appear again in our famous red one white shirt, was dropped from the PL first team squad and, eventually, from the squad altogether.
Unlike Aubameyang, he never broke any of the club and MA’s rules, never brought the club into disrespect and remained fit and ready for action, as he trained everyday while this was going on.
Some fans said that MA couldn’t handle big names, some said he had his hands tied behind his back, but whatever it was, the club ended up paying Ozil to sit out his contract, paying him for sitting at home, I would hardly call that ruthless!! 4/10
Having given my opinion on the above, I’m sure there will be others who see all three incidents differently and that’s only to be expected.
I love the way MA has installed such a tight group of players, who, it seems, would walk through a brick wall to support him.
I don’t believe he could have achieved this with Ozil and Aubemeyang in the squad, so there is always two sides to every coin.
Finally, I would just like to give my thoughts on what Ozil (remember the most divisive figure since RVP?) achieved as a player and who, quite literally, the club gave away.
Innesta recently retired and was acclaimed as a legend in the game.
Let’s compare the stats, with Innesta’s stats first :
Plyd 1016 Goals 107 Assists 191
Ozil:
Plyd 737 Goals 137 Assists 258
I also believe the latter, because of his popularity in the world of football, sold many more shirts 😂😂😂
“I don’t believe he could have achieved this with Ozil and Aubemeyang in the squad, so there is always two sides to every coin.”
I think this is they key point and the reason it’s called ruthless. I don’t think arteta disliked ozil – quite the opposite actually – but I think he was willing to go along with his pushout because he knew it would make the team better. Despite those incredible stats, at best ozil was great one year, poor the next, and rarely up to snuff in the big games – for arsenal, at least.
Apart from auba’s indiscretions, he played poorly for a very long time before arteta pulled the trigger, which suggests to me he would have put up with some of it if auba was still playing as well as he used to. Imo the bad behaviour was the excuse to get rid of him, but the reason it was done was because he simply wasn’t playing well enough in arteta’s system.
I don’t think any of this was personal for arteta tbh.
I agree that nothing was personal with ANY player MA has let go Davi.
As I said, my opinion is that he was told what the owner wanted with regards to Ozil.
With Aubemeyang, it was down to the player’s attitude versus the manager’s requirements.
As for the keeper situation, MA has, occasionally, said things that have later come back to haunt him – CL in three seasons, pledging to play both keepers etc.
Some of it may have been lost in translation or even due to his relative “newness” as a manager, but it WAS said!!
Those stats of Ozil are incredible, it’s such a shame that, for whatever reason(s) his time at our club divided the fan base and tainted what, by any standards, was an incredibly talented player of his time.
Thanks for you reply Davi and I’m sure MA will continue to manage our club the way he wants, with no more interference from above.
I agree with a lot of what you say. Regarding Ozil, on the “bald” stats, he was better than Iniesta but given the choice I suspect almost every top coach would have plumped for the latter because he was (along with his mate Xavi) the ultimate “team player”, something I don’t think Ozil could have been described as.
There’s surely little doubt that Ozil eventually proved to be a very divisive figure at Arsenal. He started well, but relations soured (not least between him and other players) when the club was panicked into awarding him that record wage deal, reported (back in 2018) at a staggering £350,000 a week in order to prevent him leaving after Sanchez had gone to Man Utd. To put that into perspective, Havertz is our top earner at £280,000 in 2024. Later, his apparent refusal to agree to a pay cut because of Covid didn’t help matters.
Eventually, Arsenal was obliged to come to a very disadvantageous deal with Fenerbahce simply because Ozil didn’t want to go anywhere else. Unfortunately, Arsenal was reported as still paying 90% of his wages when he was playing for them.
Overall, I think Arsenal would have been better off without him.
Coaches have to be very ruthless sometimes. You could argue that it was one reason, among others, why Ferguson often got the better of Wenger, trophy-wise, in their great rivalry.
Ferguson was very ruthless indeed, even changing his most successful teams in order to keep everyone on their toes. Wenger tended to stick with the same players for longer, almost no matter what in some cases. He was still successful of course, but you can’t help thinking that a little more “steel” would have brought even more success.
After the apathetic malaise that the previous had allowed to fester in and around the club, I was ready for an Arteta “Less emotions and more rationality” type personality to come in burn everything down and build from scratch.
Arteta’s ruthlessness / cut throat approach is what made me give him a lot of leeway from the 2020/21 season. His authoritarian, non bullcrapping attitude towards the cesspool that had become of our club..
Poor player mentality and attitude had to be eradicated. No more pampering of some characters in the squad. Every single player had to start earning their wages and place in the team or be forced out and take their bad attitudes with them away from our club.
Each and every decision wasn’t going to be popular (I myself weren’t happy about some decisions he made at the time) but it had to be done if we wanted Arsenal to return to being taken seriously as a club.