Ten mostly unreasonable reasons for Arsenal to sack Mikel Arteta

Will Ford
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta
Are we nearing the end for Arteta at Arsenal?

A penalty shootout defeat to Manchester United followed a first-leg loss to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup and Mikel Arteta is suddenly under pressure at Arsenal.

A minority of Gooners have had enough of the guy who’s hauled them out of the Champions League Qualification Is Good Enough malaise to see them challenge for the Premier League title for two years on the bounce.

Arsenal would be mad to sack Arteta, but perhaps slightly less mad now than a couple of months ago, when we could only come up with five reasons to send him packing; all of them unreasonable.

We’ve managed to come up with 10 mostly unreasonable reasons this time.

 

Trophy drought
Arteta is in some ways a victim of his early trophy success. He staked his claim as A Winner early doors with victory over Chelsea in the FA Cup in his first season in charge, but hasn’t won a sausage since despite the clear uptick in the number of quality footballers at his disposal.

Rob Holding and David Luiz played at centre-back that day, while Dani Ceballos provided the creativity in midfield, feeding Nicolas Pepe on the right wing. There was a clear Imagine What He Could Do With His Players vibe to the post-gong discourse, and while Arteta’s side have improved individually and collectively to a significant degree since, failing to win trophies has become a problem.

Up until now it’s felt as though Arsenal fans have willingly waved those qualms away, with challenging for the Premier League an appropriate caveat, but what now looks likely to be a fourth season on the bounce without a major trophy will raise concerns that Arteta has become a ‘specialist in failure’ like Arsene Wenger during his eight-year barren spell, without the two Premier League titles and three FA Cups to grant him that period of dormancy.

F365 THROWBACK: 16 Conclusions on that FA Cup final win

 

Saka-Odegaard reliance
This could easily be re-packaged as Football Team Misses Best Players and you need only look at Manchester City without Rodri, imagine a Cole Palmer-less Chelsea or work out that Liverpool would be 25 points worse off and in 15th place in the table (yes, we know this is bollocks) without Mohamed Salah’s goal contributions this season to flip-flop from slamming Arteta for failing to come up with foolproof solutions to Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka’s absences to thinking he’s actually done a fine job of coping without them.

 

The Un-Arsenal Way
It’s not Stoke-esque in the sense that they’re actively avoiding playing football in a bid for set-pieces, but the style is a far cry from the Wenger years and even the early days under Arteta.

There’s been a clear pivot away from signing technically gifted footballers to targeting big bruisers who can also control and pass a football. There is simply no way that Arteta would consider signing a Fabio Vieira or a Oleksandr Zinchenko now, with the focus on physicality evident through them chasing Mikel Merino in the summer rather than Martin Zubimendi, despite the latter offering something Arsenal need in midfield rather than being a less effective version of Declan Rice.

The aesthetic has suffered. Odegaard provides pretty much all of the Arsenal flair these days; we can’t remember the last time Saka – brilliant though he is – was described as looking as though he’s Playing In The Park With His Mates, with the entertainment he provides a welcome by-product of his machine-like approach to creating and scoring goals.

 

Time-wasting
Nine yellow cards for time-wasting (two more than second-worst offenders Bournemouth) is a lot and those peddling bias and agendas took a punch in the mouth after Opta revealed that the Gunners spend nearly 10 seconds longer than any other team to take a corner, while only Nottingham Forest (32.1 seconds) and Aston Villa (32.0) take longer to restart play than Arteta’s side (30.7).

It’s not a massive deal and the frustration over their corner-taking is offset by them scoring from them quite a lot of the time. But it does grate as we previously associated Arsenal with being a side that wants to keep the game flowing and taking quick free-kicks to catch opposition teams cold.

They used to be the irritated party in stop-start affairs rather than the main protagonists.

READ MORE: Ten Arsenal moves for Mikel Arteta’s perfect January transfer window

 

Defensive obsession
We’re now in Arteta’s 11th transfer window as Arsenal boss and he’s signed just five forwards; you might assume from that statistic that he’s had a quintet of free-scoring world-beaters on his hands. Gabriel Jesus, Leandro Trossard and Kai Havertz have been good but not brilliant; Marquinhos and Raheem Sterling have done nothing.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if Arsenal had a) multiple talented forwards who have emerged from the academy to remove the need to dip into the market, or b) not signed seven full-backs, five centre-backs, five defensive midfielders and five goalkeepers in that same period.

Arteta would claim many of them were necessary, but we would counter that by pointing out that a fully fit Arsenal squad would probably see both Riccardo Calafiori and Mikel Merino sitting on the bench, watching Arsenal’s forwards struggle, when their £70m fee combined may well have been enough for Alexander Isak or Nico Williams in the summer.

 

No goalscorer
The most boring and predictable of all the criticisms levelled at Arteta and Arsenal, bound to rear its head in the wake of defeat to Manchester United as Kai Havertz missed a number of presentable chances, after Arteta’s supposed dream No.9 Alexander Isak scored against them in midweek.

It now doesn’t seem to matter what’s happened during the game before a specific example of when A Proper Goalscorer may have done better with a chance; it will always lead us back to Arsenal being That Player away from winning something big.

The stats don’t back that up – only Wolves (+10.1) and Brentford (+6.1) – have a better Goals Minus Expected Goals score than Arsenal (+4.1) this season, and the speed with which everyone put Jesus’ six goals and six goals out of their minds in their bid to stick to the narrative was extraordinary.

We do though concede that it’s weird to have not signed a new striker having been in the market for one for the last four windows.

READ: Mbeumo to join Williams at Arsenal, Man City to sign three in perfect January window for title race

 

The alternatives
The grass might just be greener. Probably not, but there is definitely a manager – almost certainly more than one – who could be doing a better job than Arteta.

The odds are in Arteta’s favour, with the likelihood of appointing one of those specific managers still feeling slim, though links with Simone Inzaghi, despite likely being spurious, are enough to make one picture what a post-Arteta Arsenal might look like, as does the fine work Andoni Iraola is doing at Bournemouth.

 

Arne Slot
The Dutchman has been a disaster for Arteta in two ways: he’s shown that a top team can lose a great manager who was by all accounts doing an excellent job at the point of departure and get better; he’s taken up the Premier League mantle from Manchester City, which by all rights was Arteta’s to grab hold of after two close-but-no-cigar seasons.

 

Pickpockets, lemons and lightbulbs
Nothing makes Arteta more ripe for the sack than his commitment to cringeworthy motivational tactics.

A lightbulb as a prop to promote “electricity” between the players and the fans, in a speech where Arteta eruditely pointed out “it would be f***ing dark without this guy”, Thomas Edison. Lemons whose “juice is our team magic” as Arteta took one from a player who said he had squeezed out all the juice only for his manager to illustrate “you can always squeeze more”. Hiring a pickpocket to steal from his own players – including one who had fought off a baseball-bat wielding thief in real life – to teach them a lesson about “the importance of being ready and alert”.

It’s all very weird, a bit funny and a big red flag for 90% of the population who dread corporate away days when a team leader opens a seminar with a smile and a promise that they will make the experience as interactive as possible.

 

He’s reached his ceiling
Arsenal’s 89 points last season would have been enough to win the title in five of the previous ten seasons. If it weren’t for arguably the greatest team under arguably the greatest manager in Premier League history they would have won last season and the season before.

But Liverpool are on course for 92 points this term and with Manchester City regathering themselves and Chelsea building for future dominance, the bar may now remain at the height Pep Guardiola has pushed it, which Arsenal have failed to reach thus far under Arteta and look set to fall way beneath in the current campaign. Maybe he just doesn’t have what it takes for that final push.