Asked to sum up Arsenal’s season in one word, Mikel Arteta took a few moments to think before settling on “connection”.
It’s a great shout. All the more so given he was put on the spot with the cameras rolling at his final pre-game press conference of the campaign.
Thanks to the Spaniard’s vision and hard work, Arsenal have been a club reborn this season not only on the pitch but also on the terraces and behind the scenes.
“I think the team has connected, I think the club has connected,” he explained.
“The departments at the clubs have connected with each other in a really powerful way. The crowd has connected with the team, the club, the ownership and the rest of the world.
“And I think we have connected again with our DNA, who we are, our way of doing things, and we have to move forward.”
Just days before Arteta took over as head coach in December 2019, he sat next to Pep Guardiola on the Manchester City bench and watched the Blues dismantle the Gunners with embarrassing ease in front of an apathetic crowd. It was an evening that underlined the challenge awaiting him.
While it’s not been plain-sailing, the quality of his players’ performances and the atmosphere at home games have come on leaps and bounds since. But he’s still targeting more.
“It’s very close to the dream I had,” he said. “Two days before I sat down in the managerial position I was on the other bench, looking at that picture that I wasn’t really happy with.
“I had a very similar position in my head of some of the experiences we’ve had this year. Something important is missing – lifting the cup with everybody together. That’s what we have to try to do now.”
Arteta and his staff are already reviewing the season to identify areas for improvement.
In coming second, the Gunners arguably overperformed this year – something Edu has hinted at previously – but if we don’t keep progressing he knows we won’t stand a chance of catching City next year.
“We are reflecting on that [the season] and there are a lot of things that have been done really well across the club, across the first team, staff and around the players.
“But in this league, it is not enough, we have to look and dig in really deeply. What can we do better? What the players are going to need, what the club is going to need next season so we can provide the best possible chance for those players to get the best out of them for 10-and-a-half-months in a really exciting season.
“That is the thought process, and we have to go again and nail it.”
Looking ahead to a busy summer transfer window, he added: “We have to nail everything that we do and we have to seek excellence in everything that we touch and participate in, to have a big impact at the club.
“I think the competition is going to be even harder than this season. In my opinion, it’s been the hardest of the 22 years that I’ve been in this league.
“In order to do that, we have a really promising plan. We may have to reflect a little bit, take a step back, make sure this is the right one and go again with more determination and hunger in the tummies to do even better.”
Hunger in the tummies!
Gutting
I would sum up the season with just one word: “Choke.”
This is the most talented group of players that we’ve had since The Invincibles, and they should have won the title. They WERE good enough.
But these players are psychologically weak and, for the second season in a row, they collapsed over the final quarter of the season. They let themselves and the club down. They are chokers.
Arteta MUST do something to stop this from happening again next season. The most obvious thing to do is to bring in winners who know how to get over the line.
With friends like you, who needs enemies?
Attention seeking clown
Chill out mate.
FatGooner is Andrew’s burner account.
This would be the logical conclusion – but as someone who has been debating with fat gooner since the days or arsenal-land forum I’m pretty sure he’s legit – I don’t think he’s a plant or an attention seeker – he just sees the issues and speaks his mind.. These are admirable qualities – and despite not agreeing with 95% of his comments I have never given him a downvote (I’m not much of a voter either way to be fair – in my 20 years or so of commenting on arsenal I could probably count my downvotes on one… Read more »
Which is also the name of his sex-tape
Bollocks.
“Your dirty tricks, you make me sick,
I see through you, i see through you…”
I like this concept of Connected to sum up this year (on top of “delivering on our objective” + “promising for the future”)
Next season you’ll again be delighted to call the players “bottlers” when the lose the Champions League final after lifting the Premier League.
Seems Fats Fred’s on misery.
Next season you’ll again be delighted to call the players “bottlers” when the lose the Champions League final after lifting the Premier League.
Seems Fats feeds on misery.
What you said in this post is factual. It is nice to bring in a dog called “Win” but it is better to bring in winners. Players can be extremely talented and not be winners. Earlier this season when Mbappe suggested that him and his teammates should sleep and eat well to prepare for a game against Bayern, Neymar decided to go to a McDonald and participate in a poker competition at night to prove him a point. Did Neymar ever get close to winning a Ballon d’Or? I once heard Clichy talk about Henry. He said after achieving the… Read more »
Thanks, HC
A great indication of this team’s attitude are the recent performances against both Brighton and Forest: they gave up and couldn’t be bothered.
A proper PROFESSIONAL attitude would have been: “We are going to push City all the way until it’s mathematically impossible for us to win the title.”
Instead, they couldn’t give a damn after City won at Goodison Park. They stopped trying. Pathetic.
Until this attitude changes we’ll win nothing.
I think that there will be a plan… My opinion is that we’ll be quite ruthless – we’ll ship out xhaka and partey – and we’ll bring in rice, mount and caciedo. I’ve felt for some time that ESR will end up at no.8 – and there are rumours that he’s being trained for this – so it’s not inconceivable that xhaka one of our leaders will be sacrificed to make way, and partey for other reasons will also make way.. What this leaves us with is a hole in both quality and leadership – but I’d say the additions… Read more »
Valid points, but does adding Jesus, zinny and Jorginho not achieve what you’ve suggested?
“bring in winners”
Radical but it could work. Have you ever considered being a football manager?
How about we get some players from Real Madrid? They have won the CL so many times, and only lost 0-4 to Man C. It is so obvious that we need Benzema, Kroos, Carvahal.
Or maybe we can get some players that won stuff with Chelsea? That William guy was quite good. What could possibly go wrong with such an approach?
The only bit of sense in your rambling is the point that Arteta must do something to stop this happening again. The team has winners, what we didn’t have was a big enough pool of quality players to deal with injuries & tiredness. For most fixtures this season the same players were chosen game after game, there was little rotation to allow proper rest & recovery. This no doubt also contributed to the injuries to key players towards the end of the season. Compare & contrast our pool of first team players & the playing time given to each player… Read more »
Don’t bother trying to talk to him about quality squad depth and injuries.
He struggles to comprehend that the team with the greater number of top quality players in the squad is more liable to win the prize than the team with fewer quality players.
Plus, it removes his self imposed license to come on here and do nothing but fucking moan.
I know where you are coming from, but I think about what they took from last year’s losses and what they might take from this year’s and I feel nothing but excitement for the coming year
I do agree about the choking
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 😴
i respect your opinion fatgooner, we certainly should of won the games we were 0-2 ahead and the ones on paper against our easier opponents, rather than choked i think we ran out of steam which coincided with the loss of form from the players who were ripping it up all season, had it not been for the World cup i think we would be champions.. just saying.
We lost one of our starting centre backs and a second sun for the back line, both of who wre absolutely key to how we play and that had a massive impact on our ability to keep clean sheets but also on how we play and how we build. It completely shook the system stability on which we had become a dominant team and a team that could take risks.
Yes we should have performed better in recent weeks and still not thrown leads and good positions away but these are there fundamental reasons for our downfall.
Too sparse. Where’s Rambling Pete when you need him?
when we were the only team to beat Leicester home and away on their way to the title (or something like that) I thought ‘what an opportunity missed’ but now finishing second I think ‘what a project–I cannot wait for next season!!!’
And as for Leicester, they are hanging onto their Premiership status by their fingernails….
Karma.
I’d rather Everton go down, we have a horrible record at Goodison.
Yeah. Never mind us, if ‘The Celebration Police’ want to take anyone to task, it’s the Evertonian’s New Manager Bounce against us at Goodison.
You’d have thought they’d all just won the National lottery and Dyche had discovered a lifetime vaccine for every single flu and cold variant.
I’d love it if Everton join Southampton in the championship – I never feel confident when we play either of them
This is a sensible way to view things – for too long have I been an arsenal fan that is meh about the coming season – at the end of last season I was proper enthusiastic about the next season (despite the disappointment). I genuinely cannot wait for next season – sure city are dominant – but watching this team grow and seeing how our stadium behaves on match days is reason to look beyond inevitabilities and embrace potential