At Xmas when it was suggested that Ronaldo on a short-term deal would be a better option then Eddie Nketiah for Arsenal, it was dismissed as an idea that would harm our team spirit.
When Messi’s contract was expiring, he was accused of having a personality that wouldn’t be tolerated in our dressing room (not that he ever asked to move to England at any point).
With links of a move for Mbappe based on fantasy but nonetheless existing, a section of our fanbase feel that his attitude would undermine our progress made last season.
You may see a pattern emerging.
Where most followers of the sport respect these talents as the greatest to ever live, some Gooners have found a way to accept us never being in the market for the best in the world but making out it’s our choice.
If you were an alien and never watched the product and were basing your opinion on what I have read recently, you would assume that these three had committed crimes against the sport and that their egos had cost trophies.
In reality …. they may be divas; have certain demands and even act like they are bigger than the badge, but the idea this will prevent success is simply a myth.
Two have lifted a World Cup, one a Euros, one a Copa America
Two have won Leagues in various countries and are multiple Champions League winners.
Arsenal ‘s squad have won a ……. well they are apparently a nice bunch of lads who get along!
Last time I checked this was football and your talent and mentality should be prioritised over your likeability.
Now do I believe my peers truly think that our attack is better than any of them?
Do I think anyone with an ounce of knowledge believe any of those three could have done any worse than at West Ham, Forest, City and at home to Brighton and Saints?
Is there no proof to suggest none of those three get crippled by the fear of failure?
Does it matter who’s best friends with who if you are mentally weak?
Unless you’re in a school playground, only then will I ever understand the need to never admit when someone is better then what we have.
Yet one notion is true. Mikel Arteta would never approve of that type of transaction.
Having helped reduce the wage bill in the last few years he wouldn’t want to upset the team dynamics by having one player on wages the others are not close too.
Most of all, our manager is smart enough not to put himself in a position where he can be undermined.
The Spaniard clearly prefers to work with youth who he can train and teach his ethos to.
Look how many senior players he has loaned out, released or even paid to sit at home.
That rarely happened under Mr Wenger.
We can debate individual cases, but I have always maintained the Kroenke Family set a dangerous precedent by allowing someone in their first managerial job think it was standard to just wash your hand of assets.
As his employers, the job specification should have included getting the best out of the resources he has.
When you can make an 11 out of players one manager froze out, that’s not a coincidence.
It’s happening right now with Pepe.
I like Arteta and felt he did a great job last campaign, but it hurts me this reality that we will never have a world class player at our club because he might be cocky or arrogant.
It hurts even more that some fans have accepted that.
Haaland thinks a lot of himself, but Pep still brought him in.
Ibrahimovic refers to himself in the third person yet was playing for Man United in his late thirties!
Whisper it quietly……it’s because they are good at what they do.
Which got me thinking …… how different would our history have been under Arteta’s non-negotiable principles?
For all his plus points, Ian Wright rowed with fans outside Highbury’s window, was caught roller skating along the Marble Halls and once demanded a transfer request. Arteta would have sold him for that.
Mr Wenger dealt with a drinking culture by teaching Dietary and training methods.
I’m not sure Arteta would have that ‘arm around the shoulders’ approach.
He would have clashed with Lehmann 100 percent.
Anyone who’s read Sol Campbell’s book will know he’s a complex individual and one time went AWOL.
Arteta has released players for less.
Guendouzi was never forgiven for tearing down barriers and equipment at Brighton.
Fabregas was protected over Pizza-gate.
Would Arteta accept Vieira every summer flirting with a move away?
Then there’s Henry. Could be moody, poor body language, would verbally berate youngsters not as good as him.
Would he be too big a personality?
Don’t think a Lauren, Ljungberg, Bergkamp, etc were shy either.
I just named legends of the club.
Sometimes you turned the other cheek because of what they could do on the pitch.
It’s okay though, the current crop …. get along …. don’t win anything but ……. they get along.
No need to add World Class players ……wouldn’t want to upset a happy group who don’t win anything but as long as they are all …. getting along….
Dan Smith
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Interesting thoughts Dan
At this stage in his career I’d be surprised if Arteta would want a superstar on his midst that wasn’t of his own making. If his trajectory continues upwards then he is in a more powerful position to take on the stellar players as he will have already achieved‘greatness’ in his chosen career
Based on Mbappe’s interviews, I think he’s quite humble despite all his achievements
Arteta just benched the unproductive attackers like Ozil and Aubameyang. If Mbappe was an Arsenal player, I think Arteta would keep him in the starting line-up as long as he keeps producing goals and assists
OT: Partey’s deal with a Saudi Arabian club seems off, so Romano said Arsenal would likely let Liverpool sign Lavia
GAI, he benched Tierney, Martinelli and ESR – were they unproductive at the time?
By the way, Ozil wasn’t unproductive until the corona outbreak, as he has played in all of the twelve previous PL games when we were unbeaten.
Arteta didn’t put Tierney in his starting lineup because he didn’t use a conventional LB
Martinelli/ Smith-Rowe were injured and now Smith-Rowe has to convince Arteta after recovering from a long-term injury
Ozil didn’t produce many goals/ assists nor did he do high-press before he got benched
I think there’s a difference between mbappe, neymar, Ronaldo and possibly Messi compared with Bergkamp, Lauren and Ljungberg – none of the latter three believed they were bigger than the club, and to my knowledge, none of them tried to exert some level of undue control. I don’t even think ibrahimovic went that far.
Some clubs may have been able to make it work with these players (others couldn’t btw), but i don’t want arsenal to go down that road. There’s other ways to be successful.
Yes. All of them never believed they were bigger than the club. Something that can’t be said of Mbappe.
@Dan, I am interested to see how will Mbape fare in a club where he will be told what to do and all his demands ignored as they surely will. Will he flatter the tail and have a successful career or starting drama and end up like Neymar?
I bet he scores more goal then any of our attackers
I don’t know why fans are willing to encourage / tolerate bad manners and behaviour from primadonna players.
People are prepared to tolerate players causing mayhem at a club as long as that player has some sort of celebrity status. Many will go as far as begging / bending the knee to shown how grateful, honoured, privileged and lucky they feel to have them at the club etc..
No wonder these players have egos as big as our universe. We as fans keep encouraging such behaviour. Players will keep misbehaving because they know they will get away with it due to sycophantic fans willing to swallow it all..
You ask yourself. Why does a player have to be abnoxious just because they are a superstar? Can’t they have some humility in the first places?
😊
It’s strange. I don’t follow spanish football closely enough, but my understanding is that the real Madrid fans never showed C Ronaldo the love you’d expect of someone who’s broken so many records for them and been crucial to so many ecl wins – and he resented then for it.
At the same time, he has so many diehard fans who think the sun shines out of his backside (same as Ozil, it seems), so I guess that’s where the encouragement comes from?
It gets to a point that some of them (neymar, Ronaldo, Messi and mbappe in particular) are so good, and the club can’t afford to lose them, that they really can’t impose any level of meaningful control over their behaviour.
I actually think we’ve already seen that at arsenal, even before Ozil, because we were so afraid of losing our potential great talents under wenger, some of them stopped working so hard (denilson for sure, and possibly Walcott), and some of them simply grew inflated egos that outweighed their actual talent (bendtner for sure, adebayor, though he could back it up to a large extent, and Alex song, who was one of my favourite players years ago and could definitely produce on the pitch was apparently obsessed with money)
Agree, Davi and HH. Unlike Dennis Bergkamp, Mbappe has not shown that he can make the players around him better.
I’ve personally never heard any Arsenal fan say they wouldn’t take Messi, but the likes of Ronaldo, Mbappe, Neymar etc, I have seen a lot of negative comments, and I think it’s easy to understand why.
One of the biggest issues MA inherited was player power. Something that was clearly playing a major role in our failings on the pitch.
MA and others have done wonders to get rid of that toxic element, which included having the balls to stick by his principles by getting rid of your captain and star striker mid season, because MA wasn’t willing to compromise on those said principles.
It was maybe a decision that somewhat divided opinion, but no one can deny that MA did it because he was thinking of the dressing room first, and that we’ve blossomed as a team now that there’s better harmony and discipline.
No one’s saying a top player wouldn’t add something to the team, but you really risk throwing away 4 years of hard work creating a culture based on hard work, discipline, and respect by signing certain big names.
There’s positive arrogance that Henry had on the pitch, but then there’s petulance which Ozil had, and what Ronaldo, Neymar and Mbappe have, and that’s why a large portion of their respective club fans dislike them.
Of course you can still win with a squad of individuals rather than a cohesive team unit, but I think where we are right now in our evolution, we’re better off avoiding the monster egos.
What is wonder in ripping off contracts?
??
“Aubameyang we don’t want you but we can’t sell you because of your wages. How about you go play and benefit another club while we subsidy your wages?”
“Sokratis we don’t want you but we cant sell you how about we pay you the remainder of your contract so you leave now?”
“Guendouzi and Mav we don’t want you but we can’t sell you how about you go on loan, prove yourself and then we will sell you for cheap?”
“Mustafi and Mesut we don’t want you but can’t sell you how about we pay the remainder of your contract so you leave now?”
What is wonders in that? I understand doing wonders to mean doing something exceptional and out of ordinary. So what is wonders in giving the club such huge loss?
And let me tell you if anyone has done wonders it is the owner who accepted to write off such loss.
I don’t think we sold guendouzi for super cheap, but mavropanos, I’ll never understand – that was a mistake.
The others we couldn’t sell because we gave them inflated contracts they couldn’t match elsewhere, because they weren’t good enough (or weren’t paying well enough) to justify those contracts and apparently no one else is as stupid as we are. We could have done better, at least with some of them, I’m sure, but the mistake was giving out such large contracts in the first place. I’m still not sure we’ve learned our lesson…
(Weren’t *playing* well enough)
As per your last sentence, one of the bad things under Wenger which haven’t changed.
👍
HH
It was impossible to get transfer fees for those players, but the wonders I refer to is the huge positive changes MA has made in general. And in regards to those players, at least MA had the skill, knowledge and balls to bomb so many of them out asap who had stinking the place up for years!
He’s almost got a 100% success rate of getting rid and those players continuing to do nothing or get even worse.
I don’t disagree that Arteta has and still building something wonderful but there is zero skill in canceling contracts. They could have given that power to Emery and we would’ve won the league and CL by now.
HH
I am still surprised why everyone is still fixated on not selling and cancelling contracts.
The final says lays with the owners who authorise this.
Yes a waste of money but accounting purposes they write off the debt so it shows zero balance when it suites the club or a loss which puts them in a healthier position as now to bring more in players.
I have said it so many times on here the world of football is not the norm and gone mad but its not our money and if they are willing to write of debt of millions then who are we to argue. Crazy
AB, but I do believe that the only club who have awarded a player a new contract at, reportedly, £300,000 plus a week and then, six months later, freeze said player out and then let him go on loan, while continuing to pay his salary is… The Arsenal.
That isn’t good business and, as HH says, anyone could do that with the owners backing.
Nothing skillful whatsoever… especially if you were party to the new contract as well!!
ken👍Great way to run a business, buy “assets” dear, sell cheap.
😂😂👍👍
I don’t believe they really care all that much about the contracts as much as they are making out. These are just things people are bringing up to find fault.
To suggest that it is a simple matter to cancel contracts is ridiculous.
Up lol
Irrespective of what some Gooners may think to the contrary to my believes. Which I think Arteta shouldn’t ignore to trash it away.
Is; I will like it if he considers keeping Auston Trusty, Maquinos and Folarin Balogun in his 25 man Arsenal’s team squad for next season’s summer campaign at least and keeps them. And also gives the trio sufficient games playing time as starters and substitutes off the bench to prove their mettle for the team. Which I believe will not be disappointing but appointing for us Arsenal. Because they are top quality Arsenal players worthy to be kept but not sold to finance Mbappe possible signing. Whose signing by Arsenal this summer if done I am not against but wholeheartedly in support of it.
Arsenal can do a Chelsea transfer window spent of in Arsenal’s case £500m transfer outlay spending this summer if they add Mbappe to th their new signings. And normalized their overspent next summer by selling off some Gunners to overcome FFP.
We not looking bad at all but just missed a penalty.
I read this morning that Mbappe is not interested in the Saudi deal, and Balogun’s asking price for Inter is 50m., which would help with the finances. I would love to see a player like Mbappe playing at Arsenal. Someone like that could be the title-winning piece that’s missing at the moment.
Glad it’s not mbappe but someone like him….
I very much doubt Arteta would sign a player that gives up running when the ball isn’t passed to him, which Mbappe did last season in a game for PSG. If he would’ve carried on running he would’ve had a tap in. He also threw a hissy fit when subbed off.