Mikel Arteta | Lego Pep watch
- Thread starter Samid
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Do you want a trophy for that? All you have is a covid asterisk title for that past 35 years.
What asterisk, they won by ten million points.
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That’s just petty Utd fans trying to console ourselves, they were like 20 points ahead before the lockdown.
Arsenal fans arguing the Communitu Shield is a trophy here. 
Because league winners invariably have at least one excellent goalscorer up front and excellent goalscorers tend to outperform xG.
Yes.
Okay, that was incredible mental fortitude to recover from repeatedly finishing a close 2nd to finally win a title and the CL. It was all Klopp. I can't think of another manager that would've been able to maintain focus like this after this many setbacks. I mean, look at Arteta. One close 2nd and he looks unable to repeat the performance.
But also, just one league title and a CL in your supposed glory period!
Okay, that was incredible mental fortitude to recover from repeatedly finishing a close 2nd to finally win a title and the CL. It was all Klopp. I can't think of another manager that would've been able to maintain focus like this after this many setbacks. I mean, look at Arteta. One close 2nd and he looks unable to repeat the performance.
But also, just one league title and a CL in your supposed glory period!
It’s an obvious truth though. Pep and Klopp are by far the best PL managers in the post-Fergie era. And arguably the best managers anywhere in Europe over that period of time. Which fecking sucks for fans of any other PL club. But that’s the reality we’re all up against. Unfortunately for United fans, we’re still struggling to get ahead of the managers/clubs in the next tier down, never mind those two.
Pressure will mount from the fans if the poor form continues and we don't buy anyone (or only buy another young left-footed defender) in January. But I think the Kroenkes are a different story. Arteta is a charismatic man and he's clearly sold them well on his vision, to get the unprecedented financial backing and the time he's already had. Even if we fail to get top four this season, although I absolutely think that should spell curtains in that scenario, I wouldn't bet my house on it actually happening.
None of our managers post Fergie have had us looking like actual title challengers. And Arteta does have an FA Cup to his name as well. Anyway, I'm not here to sing his praises - my main point was that they have clearly not been further away each year during his reign. This is the first season where they have clearly regressed.
Yes, finishing 8th twice in a row, and then missing out on top four was really bad. Those were good windows to get rid of him, but then he followed it up with a pretty strong season last year. But yes, if they finish outside the top four this year, I'd say it would be good to find another manager. The player material is a lot better than that, and with a lot of young players in the squad Arsenal will have a window to challenge again if they can improve on their weak areas.
I'm not sure, you may be right, but I still think it's a weird thing to call out.
Which again makes it even more daft they spent 160m on Rice and Havertz, if that was his goal - unless he's only just realised it
So what he’s saying might be true (if I interpreted the graphic correctly, I didn’t have sound on at the time), it’s just likely we don’t have a player that can help you achieve that?
It’s still a weird thing to say. Just say “we need to be more clinical” or “we have to take our chances”
Why not? If he's good enough, he'll at the very least get a chance. He obviously has to show something at Ipswich, that's the whole point of the loan. In the few youth games I watched him in, I didn't see anything particularly special or outstanding about him (it seems like he hasn't really cracked Ipswich's starting lineup yet) so maybe his calling is another loan then sold or maybe he'll surprise me and show a level I'm yet to see from him.
And neither have Arsenal, they had a period of 6 months where they looked really good but fell off massively in the final 3rd of the season once the World Cup was over.
Just like Arsenal, there’s always been a feeling we’d kick on ‘next season’, even as late as this summer. People on here were talking about us only being Harry Kane away from winning the league, pundits were saying the same thing.
Much like us, Arsenal have never really been in with a shout if winning the league and most of these takes people have are based in the moment of recent form and the hope that teams can somehow improve another 25% next season after spending over £100m.
He was a right tit in his post match interview with the BBC yesterday. Rightly called out.
You don't even think Arsenal were title challengers last season? The team that was 1st in the league with 6 games to go, and still within two points of 1st with 3 games to go. That's just delusional.
They never had or looked like they had what it takes to win the league and City being poorer than usual doesn’t mean Arsenal were world class all of a sudden. If City have their usual kind of season Arsenal aren’t even in with a shout of being in that position with 6 games to go. Liverpool have had better sides in recent years.
They can do it, just need to give 110%
The way the calendar was last year, the world cup in the middle, the fact City had games in hand for a long time and the 2 teams hadn't played each other til the second part of the season... This all makes the "Arsenal top of the table for X amount of weeks" a bit irrelevant.
Exactly - do more with less.
Admittedly in the context of Fantasy Premier League, I said at the start of the season that Arsenal could have issues. Odegaard and Martinelli pulled rabbits out of hats every week scoring worldies and massively outperforming xG. Those attempts now aren't finding the net.
Last Season
Odegaard 15 goals from 9.75xG
Martinelli 15 goals from 9.15xG
Saka 14 goals from 11.49xG
This season so far:
Odegaard 4 goals from 4xG
Martinelli 2 goals from 2.9xG
Saka 6 goals from 6.85xG
By contrast only 1 player for United is outperforming their xG this season, McTominay. Rashford outperformed xG last season somewhat unsurprisingly. Liverpool mids are all outperforming xG this season bar Diaz.
Last Season
Odegaard 15 goals from 9.75xG
Martinelli 15 goals from 9.15xG
Saka 14 goals from 11.49xG
This season so far:
Odegaard 4 goals from 4xG
Martinelli 2 goals from 2.9xG
Saka 6 goals from 6.85xG
By contrast only 1 player for United is outperforming their xG this season, McTominay. Rashford outperformed xG last season somewhat unsurprisingly. Liverpool mids are all outperforming xG this season bar Diaz.
He didn’t mention weeks. Arsenal had 74 points after 31 games while City had 73 after 31 games.
Fact is Arsenal were top with 7 games to go so saying Arsenal never looked like winning the league sounds delusional.
So is saying Arsenal were good only for half a season. Arsenals pts average between games 19-29 was 2.2 which gives you 84 pts over a season. Teams have won the title in the past with that form.
Yeah it's mostly because he just isn't good enough to break through. Chelsea's recent attitude to youth is, without getting into a lengthy debate about where is a more promising environment for a young player, at least not radically different from ours - and from what I've seen of Hutchison he's not a bad player but simply one of many top 6 academy graduates who'll end up finding their level at the lower PL-upper Championship tier. I'd be surprised if he showed enough to even get the chances to change that trajectory and become a key member of the FTS for Chelsea. That's why the move seemed, in a certain way, like a sideways step. Should've just ripped off the bandaid and gone straight to Middlesborough or something.
The point I was making re the calendar is that it was particularly distorted and it wasn't possible to analyse match weeks in the same way as other seasons
Well, you beat what's in front of you. Sometimes you can win the league with 85 points, other times it's 95 or more. Last year was closer to the former, and it looks like it could be similar this year. There was a couple of times in the last part of the season, where Arsenal got late comeback wins (Bournemouth and Villa if I remember right), where I thought those could be huge points towards the end. I haven't called Arsenal of last year "world class", and they were clearly not as good as the Liverpool sides that have finished 2nd with 90+ points. They still challenged for the title, though.
I think he's a good manager, just not S tier/A tier that a club needs to win major titles.
Arsenals total points would have won the league twice in the last 23 years. Safe to say, many things have to go wrong for their rivals for them to have won the league. I will never understand this insane clamour to be the new Arsenal or celebrate what this Arsenal have ‘achieved’ in recent years. They’re miles off a title winning team and they don’t have the right manager to win a title anyway.
Same can be said about the need to discredit their season. They did really well in the league compared to the expectations going, and played some nice football along the way with a quite young team. No harm in admitting that.
I don't think I'm expressing a desire to be the new Arsenal or celebrating their achievement by simply saying that they challenged for the title last season. To me, you are challenging for the title if you are in with a decent chance to win it with a handful of games left - they certainly did that. But yes, they have failed to build on that and are now quite far from being able to win the title.
Spent £70M on GK when they already had Emi Martinez.
If our current keepers aren't good enough, Martinez isn't either.
They’re both perfectly fine. As was Martinez.
Yeh I agree, not the level Pep or Klopp are at. But he still very young and inexperienced compared to most managers. He's been the perfect manager for us at this time. He came in when we were a mid-table side and now has us competing at the highest level again. Whether or not this is his ceiling or we need to get someone more elite in remains to be seen. But I think the over-reaction from people (Arsenal fans in particular on social media) after this poor run of form is over the top.
Folk hate us enough as it is, imagine we still had the king of shithousery as well!
Who cares. That's not the point.
The point is that we won't win another league until Pep and Klopp either leave, get obsolete like Mou or we find the next best manager of next generation. And that's not ETH for us, and it's not Arteta for Arsenal.
Them getting that many points was as much down to how poor the standard of league was in those years as it was down to how well they played.