BEVERLY HILLS, December 20, (THEWILL) – English Premier League side Arsenal has for a long time been considered one of the Big Six sides in the top flight of English football. For 16 consecutive seasons under its longest serving manager, Frenchman Arsene Wenger, the Gunners qualified in the top four bracket and played in the UEFA Champions League with the best teams from Europe.
Yet, all that pedigree appears to be history. Today, the club is not just wallowing in 15th place, with the possibility of sinking to 16th based on games to be played on Sunday, it also seems unable to keep a clean sheet as it concedes own goals at a frightening pace. The club is also increasingly getting indisciplined as a tally of red cards keep coming, it is as well finding goals difficult to come by and has started losing home and away fixtures to teams it previously took to the cleaners.
On Saturday, Arsenal slumped to an eighth straight defeat in a 2-1 loss to Everton where defender Rob Holding scored an own goal after team captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang did the same thing in Arsenal’s last loss to Burnley. Although, the club management publicly expressed full support for the coaching staff, manager Mikel Arteta must know that relegation is knocking.
In comments after the defeat to Everton, he admitted to reporters that he was fully aware that the precarious position of the team puts his job on the line. It is his first full managerial experience in charge and it is understandable that unlike moneybags at the Etihad and at Stamford Bridge, he has not been afforded the cash to attract big names to the club but excuses will not save his job.
“My energy and my focus is only on getting the team out of the situation. Maintaining the spirit in the team and the fight they showed every time on the pitch,” Arteta clarified on Saturday, “You can see that, you cannot deny that. Obviously we are against the results, there’s no question about that. It’s not good enough. It’s not acceptable for the standards of this football club and this is the challenge.”
The last time Arsenal won in the league was a slim 1-0 victory over Manchester United at the start of November. At the level Arsenal is supposed to be ranked, this output is extremely objectionable. As one of the EPL’s Big Six, it is reprehensible. In some more exacting clubs, Arteta would have been out of job weeks ago.
Yet, the manager believes his side’s results are not reflective of their performances. In his answers to queries from reporters, he justified this perspective using last weekend’s defeat to Burnley as an example of a good performance that was undone by misfortune.
“The opponents are not generating anything. We lost against Burnley without conceding a single shot on target as well. This is how a lot of teams win a lot of games in the Premier League. We are not going to generate 15 or 20 chances against blocks like that. It’s not realistic. When we have done as well we haven’t been accurate enough to finalise those actions.
“Yes, obviously it is a really complicated situation but I am very encouraged by what I see from the players for trying to continue what we are trying to do. We have to improve but we have been very unlucky to not pick up many many points.”
No one rules out luck from the results of football matches but if luck consistently turns against you, then you must be doing something wrong. Obviously, there are games Arsenal won due to a lucky turn. Their last win against Man U came from an unfortunate Paul Pogba tackle and Arsenal were lucky to get the penalty that won them the game.
Arteta will therefore do well to grind out victories in the subsequent games that will come hard and fast in the crowded holiday season beginning with a crunch EFL tie against his old employees Manchester City. If he does not, he will soon have nothing else to put the blame on. Not how many chances the opponent generated, not how many times his players were blocked, not the own goals, not the players’ commitment levels.
If he does not begin to win matches, irrespective of the current support of the management of the club, he will have no one else to blame but himself. And that will definitely cost him his job.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
