Arsenal has had a turbulent campaign in Mikel Arteta’s first full season at the helm.
The Gunners named him their latest manager in 2019 after an underwhelming time under the management of Unai Emery.
He is being tasked with rebuilding the club and taking it back to the top of English football.
The Spaniard won the FA Cup and Community Shield last year and was backed in the last two transfer windows.
His team started this campaign well, but they faltered soon after the start and have been dealing with mid-table mediocrity for much of it.
They are, however, enjoying a resurgence towards this end of the campaign and have won their last four league games and are unbeaten in five competitive matches.
A look at a Premier League table for this second half of the season alone, calculated by Sun Sports shows that Arsenal hasn’t done badly this year.
The results show that Arsenal has been the second-best team in England, behind Manchester City for 2021 results alone.
The Gunners have played 23 matches this year and won 13 of them to amass 44 points.
Only Manchester City with 57 points has earned more.
While the Gunners could end this season without European football, these numbers should give them some hope of having a better campaign next season.
Not the thoughts I was having watching us as second best to a very average Palace side. Before our late two goals we had the grand total of ONE shot on target in 90 minutes.
Progress? Where?
Yet some gentlemen here think we played well. 6 shots, 3 on target, 3 goals, The Palace’s keeper litterally made no saves.
We are defensively better and we keep the ball longer but our creativity against half-decent teams (or top teams) is not good. We do not create enough in terms of number and quality.
A win is still a win
it is not an easy league….every game is tough
Utd and Chelsea won titles this way too
it doesnt mean we have to win games by having 90% possession, 30 shots, 10 goals and etc….
@John Ibrahim
Spot on! We used to dominate under Wenger, and play the best football in town, yet went 9 years straight without winning anything, and 14 years straight not challenging for the league.
Right now it’s about results, so it’s a positive second half of the second, and something to build on going into next season.
I don’t think we really dominated games since Alex Song left – he was the last I can remember who could regularly boss a midfield. After that, a lot of teams discovered it was most efficient just to let us have possession and counter attack because we weren’t all that dangerous when allowed to pass the ball around. Chelsea mastered it, but a lot of smaller teams as well.
@john Ibrahim, This is about the quality and quantity of our chance creation, nothing more. The teams you mentioned still created more chances than we do against even against the weaker teams.. the Mourinho style doesn’t work anymore, reason why he was sacked; left at that, spurs even created lots of chances under him more than Arsenal.
I just don’t see Arteta taking Arsenal anywhere near the top, as Phil said above one shot on target against a very average Palace team right up until the 90th minute, barely laid a glove on another average team in Villarreal, beat at home by Olympiacos, scraped past Benfica in the dying moments, drew at home with slavia prague and not to mention a host of awful home games to Villa, Wolves, Everton, Liverpool, and Burnley. I could probably only pick a handful of good games we had this season and one of them was the opener away to Fulham.. truth be told Arteta is very fortunate his employers don’t give a toss about the club or else he would have had his marching orders long ago.
Precisely!
Blah blah blah
Add Wenger’s record before x-mas with Arteta’s record after x-mas and what do you have?
That’s right, not jack $h*tE!
Aaron, you’re first three words do exactly describe this kind of argumentation. Thank you. These Farteta defenders will have to eat their own XXX about X-mas.
yes, they just trying to save face and dont want to admit they are wrong.
well lets see what progress thete is next year. i wonder what new excuses there will be.
if we invest then we will be told players need time to adjust.
if we dont invest then that will be an excuse.
Then var will be blamed and the ref.
Wikla blame owner or even the conference league if we qualify.
it wi never be Artetas fault.
i think these fans support Arteta and noy Arsenal.
Unfortunately the season is 38 games. Be consistent for that period and I’ll be happy.
I don’t even care if we lose games if we look like we are playing well with direction. We have about as much direction on the pitch as a needless compass.
Emery went 20 games unbeaten first half of season, the second half was a totally different story. He got sacked, the season is from August to May. We have lost 7 league games first half under Arteta and 6 second half, mild improvement, if thats what some want us to say. The form recently has improved when we have absolutely nothing to play for at the tail end of the season, even then, we haven’t looked great and against palace we looked shocking. Our style is awful and we wont go anywhere playing that type of football our manager persists with. He has made numerous mistakes, changes the team formation and individuals every game, he hasnt a clue what he is doing and we are the lowest in the league with the lowest points haul for over a quarter of a century, so who are we trying to kid!
Kids.
Where’s my comment and why is it under review ?
It’s called censorship, Kev. You’re probably far to openhearted.
Odeagha and Rowe Smith having unfair share of play time. Martellini is burning to explode. This kid has hunger to score and team win. Pepe almost lost it but finally getting there. Both Martellini and Pepe are lone rangers and tend to hog the ball longer than it is desirable.. They should keep playing the wings/flanks no the less. The most difficult place to play is the top striking role. Whether it be Laca, Auba and unfortunate for Nketiah for them to play that role. No constructive pass gets through to them. They just keep the opposing team defense company and hope to steal the ball. Not that simple. The Manager should find a way out for that role to be effective and productive.
In all my years of fandom, I simply can’t remember another manager who continually adopted such negative tactics irrespective of the prevailing circumstances, minus the largely ineffectual Jose in more recent years…regardless of our particular strengths and weaknesses or those of the opposition, Arteta will invariably rollout the same primarily negative game-plan…of course, we’ve witnessed iterations of this strangely Arsenal-specific phenomenon under both Wenger and Emery, albeit vastly differing tactics, but there’s a distinct difference…the two aforementioned former managers had both experienced considerable success with a particular footballing philosophy, which invariably led to some tactical stubbornness when it came time to install their respective game-plans…now, of course, their oft-times confounding decisions ultimately contributed to both of their dismissals, but at least there was a plausible justification for their actions, whereas our current manager has no experiential reasoning whatsoever for his seemingly constant deployment of such mind-numbingly naïve and sacred tactics…if what we’ve witnessed so far is any indication of what’s to come, then there’s two things I’m quite sure of, we will continue to deliver a predictably boring brand of football and we will remain functionally irrelevant for the foreseeable future
scared not sacred
Sorry but lets not get too delusional.
Arteta is struggling. His results seem to be 50/50. You can’t predict a given match under him.
Slowly?? Any slower and we’ll be going backwards… oh wait….
Stats monsters at it again.
This stat says this and that stat says that, blah blah..
Our own eyes on that grand scheme of things tell us something else while Stats monsters tell us another thing.
I trust my eyes more than what computer generated out of context Stats tell me about any given football game.
Thank you very much..
Computers are far less emotional. Case in point: all the comments.
If you torture the data long enough, it will tell you what you want to hear.
Stats are nothing without accurate interpretation mate, which includes all the variables involved.
👍
Stats remind me of Religious holy books.
Any 5 people can interpret a given verse or chapter 5 different ways.
Stats can show that one team dominated a given game with 60% possession and losing 4-1. The Stats monsters will come out and assure you that there is no way that team deserves to lose. But once you deep into the actual stat on top of what your own eyes saw, you could conclude that that team did a lot of side ways, square, safe, back to the keeper / defender kind of passes all game without ever looked like scoring a single game.
Same with Shot on goal stats. Just a wayward never going in shot from 30 yards count. A routine weak shot straight at the keeper also counts as a shot on goal. A weak header over the top also counts etc..
Same with number of passes completed stat. Square passes in your own half between defenders, DM, Keeper etc all count as passes completed etc..
What am I saying? Stats out of context can argue either way.
😊
Goonster, Spot on! Not only do I not trust stats to give a true picture, BY THEMSELVES ALONE, but I do not trust the intellect of those who RELY on stats alone as total truth.
And there are a goodly number on this site who foolishly do so, as their regular posts show us only too clearly.
Essentially, it comes down to that individuals IQ and life intelligence OR lack of it.
Are we really playing negative football?
I think our problem all seasons has been lack of penetration which is mostly due to slow buildup in attack which is as a result of no proper cam I think.
As a rookie manager, I think this scenario is expected. I kudos he was able to find temporary solution to get back, though it was late, hopefully he has learn from his mistakes.
My rating for Arteta this season is 6/10 hopefully he improve by next season
Arteta has bias and attitude issues on some players. He does not field his team on merit,but out of favouritism.
That’s why we have never had a balanced team all season&his tactics are wanting.
This is unprofessional and we will always go backwards with Arteta as a manager.
‘Second best in the last half of the season’ is not a trophy …
But it does give some hope for the next season.
So did winning the FA Cup
Finishing in 4th place is also like winning a trophy.😊
Arteta should do an interview with Martin Bashir, fake documents that could really twist the stats in his favour!
Without wanting to be quite so negative I have to concur with most of the comments, we have not been good in those 23 games. The last two results would suggest we’re in good form: on the face of it, a narrow win over Chelsea and a comfortable win over palace, however anyone who watched would know that doesn’t tell the full story.
Over the last 23 games I think you have to conclude we’ve at least not been massively worse than our direct competition (don’t include City in that right now) – I think at least the defence is playing reasonably well which can be a good platform for next season but the CM and CF positions need some major surgery imo – if we can improve in those areas, I think it will make an enormous difference (how we do it is the question)
That was all a chance meeting with Smithy- Rowe.
Nothing to do with Arteta.