What Mikel Arteta must now do at Arsenal to become legendary | OneFootball

Arsenal still dominate the agenda after their Premier League win but focus has already turned to what Mikel Arteta must do next.

We have some Palace Conference mails that will be along later; add your reaction to theeditor@football365.com

This Arsenal fan is glad it’s all over

Now that some of the dust has settled from the end of the season, I’d like to categorically say that was the most unbearable season I can remember. As an Arsenal fan, you may find that strange, but the surrounding noise made it very hard to enjoy a single moment. Football dialogue is nothing but antagonistic BS now. Every rival just winding other teams up. I couldn’t even enjoy Spurs’ travails because I didn’t want to jinx Arsenal’s run in by inviting bad karma by mocking them.

Now that the league monkey is off our backs, my hope for the summer is that we get rid some of the dead wood in our squad, I shan’t name names, they know they aren’t fit for purpose. I hope we spend some more time working together as a team, to create some more great partnerships. And I hope that we can play more open and expansive football. Arteta had insane pressure on him, and now that he has achieved what we’ve longed for 22 years, I hope he softens and plays some more attractive football like we did earlier in his tenure.

I was at the Emirates on both Tuesday and this weekend on Sunday. It was a cathartic outpouring. It was also beautiful. I have seen some people mention it, but for me, I saw every colour, creed, gender and everything in between. Rich or poor, didn’t matter, people were laughing, cheering, crying and hugging. Our sport gets a bad rep, but it is the most powerful force for good we have. In a world where are media is fixated on what divides us, it was inspiring to see one of the world’s greatest cities come out and party in the sun. John Matrix AFC

Arsenal now need to show something v PSG

While it was wonderful to see Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal go off script by landing the big one last week, it struck me that rather than 3 years of frustration being erased, 3 decades possibly were. Ever since Belletti fell to his knees in Paris in 2006, consigning the great Wenger years to the history books, under performance has the been The Gunners’ trademark. Flaky, fragile, flimsy, we all know the plot and Arteta seemed to know all the lines.

A real cynic might go as far to say that this underperformance was even an issue during the glory years. Three titles were interspersed with feeble title defences or late season collapses.What’s more, Arsenal were blowing it in the UCL long before Pep made it cool, no more so than in 2004, when domestic invincibility ended up being the biggest prize, when a treble was on the table. So, while last week’s plot twist was welcome, next Saturday is their chance to show everyone that the old Arsenal won’t be coming back. So no pressure eh? Bryan

The Real Manager of the Year

What Mikel Arteta has done cannot and should not be ever underestimated.

But Regis Le Bris really should have won Manager of The Season.

Qualifying for the Europa League, never mind the Conference, five points above Newcastle and doing the double over them? That’s different gravy. Graham Simons, Gooner, Norf London

Arsenal are not the first to beat Man City, guys

Hi Matt (loving every second of it) Wright – you do realise that another team has also beaten Man City to the Premier league title in the past ten years?

Think you’ve answered your own question as to why everyone hates Arsenal with your own fart-sniffing thoughts there.

Enjoy the feeling of winning a title, and take care of your own anxiety as we are definitely not anxious about Arsenal. Emily – Liverpool fan (you’re just catching up babes – we’re already there)

…Matt in Australia’s submission was fun. Is there something about expat football fans that makes them even more prone to hyperbole when they pitch up on the other side of the world? The Liverpool fan in LA who often writes in strikes me as being cut from the same cloth. It’s like they have to shout louder to make themselves heard among the noise surrounding NFL/NBA/AFL/insert indigenous sport here.

Anyway, back to Matt and his claims that Arsenal are some kind of existential threat to the equilibrium that rival fans apparently treasure. Pecking orders being disrupted, tall poppy syndrome etc. Reframing a title win that’s 2 days old as some seminal changing of the guard, signalling that there’s a new top dog in town. Woof woof.

You know who you sound exactly like mate? All the Liverpool fans who were crowing about the defence of their title being a fait accompli about 10 months ago. Desperately searching for some wider affirmation of superiority, when the simple fact that you won the league should be more than enough. A classic example of being drunk on schadenfreude.

You’re not wrong to suggest that fandom is tribal, or to identify City as the preferred alternative winner because their achievements are easy to dismiss with a wave of the magic 115 wand. That’s the least painful outcome for every other tribe. But Arsenal are not harbingers of some exquisite age of suffering for the rest of us.

A quick look at the mailbox over the past week would show that their title win has long since been denigrated because it was built on an over-reliance on set-pieces, boring patterns of play etc. It’s the exact same coping mechanism that’s been used to deal with City hoovering up trophies, just shifted a few degrees to retrain its focus. And nothing you say will puncture that logic.

So is the win really that consequential or hard to move past? Maybe it is for you, as you hug your Gunnersaurus plush in an echo chamber in Sydney or Melbourne or wherever. And maybe to Spurs fans, whose proximity to the mass ejaculation of the past week will have made it impossible to escape. But that’s not enough to declare Arsenal an object of anxiety for the rest of us, we’re a ways off that. For the moment, they’re just a novel break from the norm of the past 20+ years.

Maybe we revisit this in 12 months’ time with Arsenal having retained the league in dominant fashion. Maybe not. But right now, surely you’re better off enjoying your club’s success than speculating that you’ll have a permanent wellspring of salty tears to drink from going forward? Just a thought. Keith Reilly

How was that Liverpool season?

TL;DR – Harry has opinions, some are more inclined than others to care about that.

So, here we are – another end of May and off to an International tournament, isn’t it? Hmmm? Seasons over, jumpers have been picked up and we’re all heading home from the park before it gets dark? you know, isn’t it? Hmmm? All the “abracadabra, reach out and grab ya” has been concluded and rush goalie has gone home for his tea. Marvellous.

But what a weird season it’s been… for Liverpool.

Firstly, it seems like both a decade ago, yet also only yesterday, that I was suggesting Liverpool’s early imperious form wasn’t sustainable (I know, I was far from the only one – but I did personally take a barrage for the suggestion) and that Liverpool had the looks of a swinging batsman (cricket swing, not keys and fruit bowls) who’d played themselves in quickly on a difficult pitch, giving away chances, so they’d be unlikely to knock up a century if they didn’t heed a bit of caution. I called it a bit lucky, then got reminded of the great Arnold Palmer quote by some fair commenters, “I have a tip that can take 5 strokes off of anyone’s game… it’s called an eraser” No… wait, not that one, this one: “It’s a funny thing. The more I practice, the luckier I get.”

“Not being funny, Harry, I did chuckle at the thought of him getting a barometer out” was Gronks paraphrased retort when I called the Szoboszlai (sp?) free kick in the Arsenal game a goal that relies on as much the air pressure as it does the skill of the baller – and then the big Dom only went and wazzed another bunderthastard against City, which shut me up a little bit, but my point stood that you can’t rely on worldie free kicks to win football matches even if Szoboszlai is more likely than me to hit the onion bag from 30 yards past an opposition team.

… and where exactly are Liverpool now?! Oh – in the Champions League with a season of no great real success or failure (or – a perfectly cromulent 2010’s Wenger season if you will) – guaranteed in the grand scheme of things a far better season than Spurs, Newcastle, or Chelsea in terms of last year’s Champions League attendees but definitely not a season for the ages. They’ve lost too many games, no disputing, but literally half of those were lost before November in a cataclysmic run of 7-games’ form which they managed to move from Defcon 1 to Defcon 3 or 4 for the rest of the season. So it’s very hard to know just how much of this was “Slot needs to go” and how much of it was “actually retaining a title in the modern era is pretty dramatically difficult unless you’re Fergie, Pep, or Mourinho”, for which there is no shame in Slot not being those three.

And – in old money, by my count a team has “failed” to retain the title 76 times out of 126. Factoring that’s less than 20 teams who’ve retained the title since literally Queen Victoria was the reigning monarch (accounting for three-peats), it do be quite rare.

Talking of money – I’m not going to talk about moneys. Every Premier League club spends an inordinate amount of it – it’s like comparing different heights of giraffes – they all tall! They all eat hay! They all look silly getting up and down from sleeping… wait, I might have laboured this metaphor.

Look, I am always so mixed with Liverpool – there is a genuine feeling that of late they’ve slightly flattered to deceive in their recent return to success because the Klopp era was effectively the Andy Murray, to Pep’s Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer but then Andy Murray has not, and probably never will, get the flowers he deserves for year on year getting up and going at them enough that he took a handful of pots – as we see with the utterly inane “asterisk season” talk of Liverpool 19/20 – Yet they are a bountiful club at the top of the tree again, with more titles and European Cups than most English teams will ever dream of and probably back on their perch for the very foreseeable future (unless BOOM, Carrick, glory glory many celebrations in NQ’s village in 2027 of course), and they’ve won a literal league title in the last 12 months. One bad, nay, mediocre season does not a minnow make.

Besides, for the average Premier League champion, 5th in the Premier League might feel disappointing but at Liverpool, 5th means more.

With love, Harold Ermolai Hooler

P.S: This incoherent rant was intended to cover City, United, Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal but regrettably I’m already testing the Editor’s patience so will ask the BTL besties to vote with their voices on if I give my two cents on anyone else and to who.

…Body language tells football fans everything long before managers and pundits admit it.

Watching Liverpool now compared to Klopp’s side is like swapping the Foo Fighters live at Wembley for elevator music.

Klopp’s Liverpool played like men possessed. They hunted in packs. Goals meant something. The crowd felt connected to the players because the players looked connected to each other. When someone scored, the entire team exploded towards them like they’d won a war together.

Now? A goal goes in and the scorer saunters off towards the corner flag while a couple of team-mates drift over offering the sort of weak hug you give a smelly great aunt at Christmas. One points to the sky. Another kisses his wrist tattoo. Someone else does a rehearsed social-media celebration before jogging back looking utterly emotionally detached.

Modern football summed up in ten seconds.

These lads are earning more in a week than most supporters will see in years. £200k-a-week footballers changing Rolls-Royces every three months, flying private, posting “focused” and “locked in” on Instagram, yet strolling around the pitch with all the urgency of blokes browsing garden furniture on a Bank Holiday Monday.

And fans notice it.

Liverpool under Klopp terrified teams emotionally as much as tactically. There was visible passion, aggression, desperation and accountability. If standards dropped, players screamed at each other. If someone scored, it genuinely mattered.

Now too many of them look like highly-paid contractors clocking in for a shift.

No intensity. No edge. No visible connection with supporters. Just endless jogging, pointing, shrugging and sterile football followed by celebrations that feel more like branding exercises than emotional moments.

People say body language means nothing. Football fans know differently. Supporters can forgive mistakes. They cannot forgive indifference.

And that is the biggest concern under Slot. The emotional heartbeat of this team looks gone. The camaraderie that made Klopp’s Liverpool feel unstoppable has faded into something flat, individualistic and strangely passionless.

Liverpool used to look like a family.

Now they look like colleagues.

How are Man City losers after double?

Whoa! that’s some mad take and mental gymnastics in the 25/26 PL Season Losers section.

So a team that completes a Domestic Cup double and finishes 2nd in the league end up considered losers.

Based on what exactly? On ‘Pep lacking the energy required to destroy the monster he helped create’ (after previously doing this twice before)

What’s he expected to do? Keep going another 10 years or wait till Arteta is sacked or moves on.

Or is it because many were ‘absolutely guilty of thinking the race was won with victory over Arsenal’ where you’re using a Dave Tickner 16 Conclusions as evidence?

I think Mediawatch might want a word. Scott, N. Yorks

Another reason for Bruno love

One thing not mentioned at all – as far I’ve seen anyway – in all the coverage of Bruno Fernandes winning player of the year and getting the 21 assists, is the fact that he played the first half of the season as a fairly deep-lying midfielder in a dysfunctional system that wasn’t working. Just 7 of his assists came prior to Amorim being sacked, during the first 20 games, of which he was injured for three (for like the first time ever).

He then produced 14 of his 21 assists in the 18 post-Amorim matches, which means he averaged an assist almost every game in the second half of the season. This, for me, makes his achievement even greater. It’s not inconceivable that, had Amorim gone a bit earlier, or had he not been injured, he might have had 24 or 25 assists, smashing the record to bits. If you extrapolate his post-Amorim form across a whole season, it comes out at 29 assists!

Unquestionably the player of the year for me, and the most creative in the Premier League by some distance. Matt, Sheffield

Finally, some genuine Scholes anger

After years of Paul Scholes embarrassing himself by pretending to be permanently furious on every podcast, YouTube channel etc he can find, it was genuinely enjoyable seeing him actually seething for real while Salford City got dismantled by Notts County.

Seeing him sat at Wembley scowling while the equally tedious Gary Neville bubbled with rage a couple of rows behind him was absolutely glorious.