I don't understand why you feel the need to advise others on how they post on here, when you've tried to brush Zinchenko's failings under the carpet in your first post after the game.
I have said this on record more than a dozen times that his defending is poor but what I have also said on record a dozen times is why Arteta signed him, why he preferred him to Tierney and why he has added something different to Arsenal which proved to be one of the driving forces behind the title challenge last season.
The signings of Jesus, Zinchenko and the return of Saliba were the main catalysts for Arsenal fighting for 4th place in 21/22 to fighting for the title in 22/23.
Zinchenko is very important to the way Arsenal builds attack from the back and keep possession. Zinchenko makes Arsenal difficult to defend against because his positional play is very versatile and always keeps the right back guessing.
But his defensive frailties is what prompted Arsenal to sign Timber who has a similar attacking profile but is quicker and stronger in defense.
Zinchenko wouldn’t have been a starting LB if Timber was fit so I don’t understand why Arsenal fans have such a problem with him starting. With Timber out for the season and Tomi injured as he always is, who should play LB? Roberto Carlos or Paulo Maldini?
I didn't address Martinelli because I was making a short summary so I wasn't going to micro analyse every player.
You didn’t address Martinelli because you are not willing to accept that he is not the player you and most Arsenal fans think he is or can become in the future and you don’t want to accept that he is a weak link in this Arsenal team because of his lack of intelligence and awareness.
The funny thing is you had a lot more to say about him than Zinchenko even though the Ukrainian was by far the worst player in the game, which is exactly what an agenda looks like. But this is nothing new from you.
That is because Zinchenko, Havertz and Raya are easy targets for Arsenal fans and the scapegoat every time Arsenal don’t win while no one has the courage to criticize the untouchables like Martinelli mainly because of the emotional investment and how he is viewed as one of Arsenal’s own.
You've always been doing this on PP. You did this to Younis Khan when he was our best batsman, at the time. You have a lot of bad things to say about our better players because you have no respectable standards.
Being the best batsman for Pakistan doesn’t mean you overrate him. Younis was a great player of spin but he was average against pace and there was no point in being in denial.
This is evident by how you go about raving about players like Imam and Zinchenko. You deserve this reality check because you were going all bhangra after tagging me when it was announced that Zinchenko was awarded MOTM against relegation prospect, Burnley. Please have some shame.
I don’t “rave” about Imam and Zinchenko. My only problem is when people want to chuck XYZ out of the team without naming alternatives.
It is funny when people who advocate for a rubbish player like Masood who is the worst top order batsman in history of Pakistan criticize Imam.
Imam is far from a great player but he always was and always will be much better than Masood.
A Masood fan accusing others of supporting mediocrity is the biggest joke I have ever seen.
As far Zinchenko is concerned, I have already explained above.
Coming to Martinelli, he didn't play well. It's perhaps time to give him some rest and let Trossard start the next few games.
Now we are talking. You are
finally on the right track. Martinelli should never start ahead of Trossard because Trossard is light years ahead of Martinelli in terms of intelligence and game awareness, and you always want the more intelligent player to play more minutes.
Let's see how he does but what I will say is his track record of starting games pales in comparison to his impact when he comes off the bench. The Brazilian has a much better record when starting games.
The sample size of Martinelli coming from the bench is too small to make this conclusion that he is more impactful as a starter compared to as a substitute.
That is a dumb thing to deduce when Martinelli starts 99% of the matches. Martinelli has started 15 league matches this season with only appearance off the bench.
Last season he started 34 league matches and only came off the bench twice.
In EL, he started 5 matches with only two appearances off the bench.
So based on what sample are you deducing that he is more effective starting than coming off the bench?
Martinelli’s game is made for making an impact off the bench, he is the perfect player to come in the 70th min and have a go at tiring defenders is exactly the way he should be utilized.
He is just not intelligent enough to be a permanent starter and spend more than 25-30 mins of the bench.
A fresh Martinelli coming off the bench in the 70th minute after Arsenal have already ran the opposition ragged is the last thing a defense needs.
It's far too early to write him off. He's 22 and had a brilliant season during the last campaign.
No one is writing him off. The point is that he is not world class and never will be because there is nothing between his ears.
It is not about age. If you don’t have intelligence and game awareness at 22 you are unlikely to have it at 32 either. You either have it or you don’t.
Saka is also 22 but you can clearly see that he is far more clever than Martinelli and his game awareness is vastly superior. You can see it with the way he moves, the position he occupies on the pitch, the way he connects with his teammates.
People keep talking about his last season and he did score a decent amount of goals, but the fact that he scored only 15 goals with his pace and with the way Arsenal played and created chances for him shows exactly why he is not an intelligent player.
People keep saying that well, he scored more than most of the other LWs in Europe but the point is that those other LWs weren’t playing for Arsenal and getting into the positions that Martinelli was.
An intelligent winger with Martinelli’s pace playing for Arsenal last season would be producing Salah and Mane (Liverpool) type numbers.
Martinelli with his 15 goals and 5 assists across competitions last season was actually an underachievement.
I would be more worried about Mitoma because he's faded away this season, yet you think he's better than Martinelli despite the fact that he's 4 years older and therefore well ahead when it comes to his development.
I’m not worried about what players are doing at other clubs. Mitoma is not playing for Arteta and he is not playing for Arsenal. He is not coached by Arteta and he is not linking up with Arsenal players.
Mitoma playing for Arsenal would not be the Mitoma currently playing for Brighton because De Zerbi is not Arteta and they don’t have Saka, Odegaard and Jesus.
I just know that Mitoma getting coached by Arteta and feeding on the tactical insight Arteta provides to his players and linking up with players like Saka, Odegaard and Jesus would be a far more effective and consistent player than Martinelli because he has the intelligence and the game awareness to be on the same wavelength as these players. Martinelli doesn’t.
It was a penalty. Basically a basketball move from Odegaard.
It wasn’t a penalty. I have already explained the rule. If you think it was a penalty than you are making up your own rules.
You can question the ruling in the first place but as long as it is there, such incidents will not and should not be classified as handball.
It was very fortunate for Arsenal because you would expect a team of Liverpool's quality to score those 19 times out of 20.
If Arsenal missed a chance like that I would be tearing my hair out.
Again, poor decision-making and poor execution is not good fortune. The only bad luck in football is getting a bad decision from the referee. Everything else is down to your decision-making and execution in the moment.
These small moments can make a big difference in the long-term. If Arsenal beat Liverpool by 2 points to win the league, Liverpool fans should look back at this moment and the rue the missed opportunity and it will not be bad luck. It will be bad play.
Havertz has been in the PL for 3 seasons. If he was a new to the PL or a youngster playing first team football for the first time, I would've given him time. He has a long way to go before he can justify his £70m price tag and his wage of £300k+ per week.
Havertz can be in the PL for 10 seasons but anyone who joins Arsenal or any new club for that matter starts with a clean slate unless he has worked with that manager or the exact same set of players before.
Havertz joined a new team with a new coach with a new environment and a new culture. Therefore, he should have been given at least half a season to prove his worth and impatient and ignorant fans were not willing to do that and they have to face this embarrassment as Havertz continues to prove them wrong and goes from strength to strength.
As far as not justifying his price tag and salary is concerned, this new narrative is nothing but a shift in goalposts because people don’t want to admit that Havertz has started to prove them wrong.
First the narrative was that he is awful and will never contribute anything to the team. That narrative went up in fumes and now the narrative is that oh well, he had a good month but he still hasn’t proved that he is worth the money.
If he continues to go from strength to strength, the narratives will keep on changing and people will try to find a way to downplay him because they won’t have the courage to admit that they were wrong about him.
You say all this but you don't have a shred of credibility. The truth of the matter is you didn't really believe in him which is quite easy to prove.
Firstly, if we look back at post #277. You said, "
If he doesn’t he doesn’t. Not the end of the world. He won’t be the first or the last player to fail. He will be sold and life will move on". This is just another way of saying "if he fails it doesn't matter". If you had any confidence in is abilities you would never have said this
.
Secondly, I've offered you a bet on Havertz. I said if he proves me wrong and does well this season, I'll happily stop posting on this thread for the 24/25 season but if the reverse is true you would do the same. After his late winner against Brentford, you were getting carried away and you couldn't resist having a dig at me, so I offered the same bet, but on this occasion, I was happy to discount his performances prior to this game to give you a head start, you still didn't take up my offer. Why? Because you didn't believe in him.
I believed that Havertz will come good at Arsenal and you can go back my posts when Arsenal signed him while ignorant and impatient fans like yourself were throwing tantrums. Those posts are on record.
The reason why I believed he will come good at Arsenal is not because I didn’t think he was very poor at Chelsea over the last 12 months. Of course he was, but, Arteta went out of his way to sign him not because of the player he had become at Chelsea but the player he could become at Arsenal and the player that we saw at Leverkusen that made big clubs around Europe take note of his profile.
A tactically sophisticated manager and thinker like Arteta going out of his way to sign Havertz means only one thing: he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with him and it was going to be a long-term thing.
Arteta saw what the impatient and ignorant fans like yourself couldn’t and we are seeing it now. Regarding what I said in the quote that you posted, I still stand by it because you need to understand the context.
A lot of quality players don’t work out at some clubs even if they are working with quality managers. Sometimes, it is not the right match just like Tuchel and Havertz weren’t a great match even though Tuchel is a fantastic coach.
Under Tuchel, Havertz had a few good moments and was even part of a CL winning squad, but during the two years they spent together, Tuchel was largely unsuccessful in getting the best out of him.
It is normal for transfers to fail and it is not always because the player is bad or the manager is bad or both. I can give you so many examples of quality players and quality coaches failing to succeed together.
Could Havertz at Arsenal under Arteta fail? Yes of course. Could it still go south? Yes of course, but that doesn’t Havertz is not good enough and Arteta is not good enough. This why you should always give the player and the manager a chance before writing a player off.
Arsenal fans wrote Havertz off before giving him a chance and now they are fending for excuses.
No respectable Arsenal fan hypes up Havertz and Zinchenko whilst goes about disrespecting Martinelli. Even AFTV idiots don't stoop this low
Martinelli has been at Arsenal for 4 years and he is still the headless chicken that he always has been. I don’t need to give him more time and see more of him or see him intake more of Arteta’s coaching to accept that he will never have the intelligence and the game awareness to be a starter at Arsenal.
I have already explained the Zinchenko situation numerous times in this post already.
As far as Havertz is concerned, I’m excited to see how far he can go under Arteta and if I could show 3 years of patience with Martinelli, I can definitely show half of that patience with Havertz.
I am humble. All I am asking for is patience from Arsenal fans because the manager who took Arsenal from fighting to stay in the top half to fighting for the title will also get Arsenal over the line.
It is impossible not to be impressed and excited by what Arteta has done and continues to do when you look at the trajectory of the club in his tenure and where the club was in December 2019 and where it is in December 2023.
Furthermore, when you look at the tough decisions that he took, for example, banishing captain Aubameyang who was still in his prime and the best player of the club. Such decisions take a lot of courage and guts and it was an indication that Arteta is no ordinary manager.
The only people who need humbling are those who wrote him off - and still write him off - for being a clueless fraud, for being nothing more than Pep’s assistant, for not being able to manage big games etc.
These are the fools who need humbling along with those who arrogantly wrote Havertz off before he had kicked a ball for Arsenal.
I'm behind Arteta but he does need to win the title for Arsenal at the very least.
And he will. What makes you think that a manager who revived Arsenal from the depths of mediocrity with a lazy culture and toxic fan base will not eventually deliver the title?
It will be one of the biggest shocks ever if Arteta ends his Arsenal tenure without winning at least one league title considering where the club was when he took over and where the club is today.
Rather than getting carried away all the time, it's best to be objective about him and also talk about where he could improve or what he could have done better.
Every manager makes mistakes and can improve at certain things. Is Arteta perfect? No. Has Arteta made mistakes?
Will Arteta make mistakes in the future? Of course, like every other manager.
Is Arteta a top manager and the right choice for Arsenal at this point? Absolutely yes and that is all that counts.
One major concern I have about him is how he's handled our goalkeepers because he's messed things up for Arsenal in this area of the pitch. He let Martinez go, who is superior to both Raya and Ramsdale. Raya in goal could cost Arsenal the league this season.
Martinez didn’t have the stomach to fight for his place. He didn’t want competition.
He expected to be declared number 1 after one good run in 8 years at the club. That wasn’t going to happen and it is not how Arteta operates.
Arteta, like other top managers, takes complete control of the dressing room and is not a democrat. You can’t demand him to make you number 1 and expect it to happen.
Martinez should have kept his head down and stayed at the club and competed with Leno. Eventually, he would have displaced him and would be Arsenal’s number 1 now and fighting for the PL title and playing in the CL instead of playing for a mediocre club like Aston Villa whose best achievement will be finishing 4th.
Martinez is wasting his peak years of club football by playing for Aston Villa while he could have spent his peak at Arsenal had he shown a little more patience and now get too big for his boots after finally doing something useful for the club and making his presence felt for the first time in 8 years.
- celebrating a point like Arsenal won league.
NEFOOTBALL
