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A post-season assessment of Arteta - a good season not a great season Arteta has silenced all the critics, has he? Not exactly, he hasn’t silenced himself, Edu, Josh Kroenke, and many of the players and staff at the Arsenal. He has definitely silenced the fans, some of whom, unbelievably, were shouting Arteta out on social media when we hit a bad patch in the middle of the season. But if you listen to Arteta, Odegaard, Declan Rice and others you know they are not quite happy because they want better. Winning the league and the Champions League is the priority from now on. Fulham, not the Spuds, cost us the league One draw turned into a win would have made us champions, with Fulham early on an obvious culprit. 26th August 2023 will be burned into their minds. It emphasises that for every game they have to be ready to fight. The other draws were against established top sides. We had five losses and five draws with Fulham our big punishers. We lost five points against them. We could have been celebrating at the Emirates on the last day knowing City were confined to the dustbin. They, not the Spuds, cost us the league, although they also got a draw against us, but you do expect to drop some points to the top end of the table. Can he get his transfers right? Regular readers will know that I have also criticised Arteta throughout my time here but I have always supported him. I criticised his struggles with big names here and I will come back to that later but he has come through that test so far. I would be nervous if he got an Mbappe or a Neymar but he certainly handled the Declan Rice and Havertz situation really well. One plus for Arteta. But it must continue with our new signings due this summer. Kai Havertz scores again - Arteta got him right I also criticised his team falling apart for the last ten games here but he managed 25 points which is a respectable score and much better than his previous best. We had a lot of tough matches to negotiate and we got an excellent point from City away, but probably were a little vulnerable against Villa after defeat by Bayern. Two pluses for Arteta. Again it must continue, though. A manager is judged solely on their recent results. Is he able to rotate? He did achieve a remarkable level of consistency and succeeded in getting a record number of Arsenal wins and a score of points that would have won most Premier Leagues so far. He took on a resurgent Liverpool and Spurs who were both top of the league for a period, and a dynamic Aston Villa, but left them well behind. Arteta - losses and draws to be turned into wins However, there is a question mark here as we had few injuries and he didn’t rotate the squad much, and often only made changes late in games. Saka, in particular, took a lot of punishment. He did have Martinelli who seemed to suffer from lack of game time but he could have given Saka a rest and switched Martinelli as he did against Everton. He caused a lot of problems in that game. But we can make that a minus, I feel. Guardiola rotated like crazy and won the league. We may not be so lucky with injuries next year. Let’s look again at man-management Where Arteta has excelled from day one was his appeal to work with the fans, to create a strong atmosphere at games home and away. I was at Old Trafford and at times we out sang the Mancs. The fans have been great and Arteta deserves all praise for the way he includes the fans in everything. A big plus to Arteta. Getting the fans singing has been Arteta's great achievement So I am going to return to player management as I said I would but first a little backwards look to talk about Aubameyang, which was Arteta’s strongest test of player management. Aubameyang obviously thought he was far more important than a rookie manager and Arteta struggled to deal with him, plus Ozil, Lacazette and Guendouzi also spring to mind. Aubameyang the arse But let’s take a look at Aubameyang as we still haven’t truly replaced him. Supposing he wasn’t such an arse but rather a serious professional, he could still be here. He went in February 2022 with 92 goals and there have been two more seasons since then. In those two and a half seasons if he scored 50 goals he would now have 142 goals for us, 3rd in the all time list and in front of Van Persie on 132. He would have had better players to provide assists and could have got even more making Ian Wright’s 179 a target. Messi and Ronaldo are still playing so so could he, say for another 2 years for us. He is 34 years old, quite a bit younger than those two. Two more seasons from now and Wright could have been relegated to 3rd. That's an arsehole you see, Pierre I don’t think there is anyone who doubts Aubameyang’s ability, he was superb at his best. If we had the best him for the past 2 years we could have made up the small amounts of points needed and we could now be double champions. Take a look in the mirror, Pierre Emerick, and you will see an arse who deprived himself of two league titles, of chasing Ian Wright’s record, and of becoming an Arsenal legend. You will see an arse who is playing for a mediocre French team who only won 13 of their 34 league games. And especially you will see an arse who, because of your huge ego, decided you would push a rookie manager rather than give your all as an ambitious professional. You lost and you are looking at a loser. Pity is that you made us all lose. None of us care about you now. We lose our young players? There is one area I am concerned about and that is the peripheral players, Possibly Martinelli, plus Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Nelson, Ramsdale, etc., and the young players bubbling through. To win, to me it seems that Arteta believes we need a strong, experienced squad. How can he keep all the players happy? Young players don’t remain young forever. They need to play before they get old. I suggested here that up to 15 players could go and how will that affect the culture? Steve Round went after disagreeing with Arteta about this very point and specifically Ramsdale. Arteta has worked hard to create a culture of togetherness but unsatisfied young players not getting games will make them unhappy. Could Martinelli go? A disaster This is his challenge, one that he didn’t have so much this year. We will probably have 3 or more new players to keep happy as well. We hope that he has learned. That recruitment will take into account temperament and that we don’t sign an arse like Aubameyang. We are all hoping for an improvement in August but Arteta is facing another new challenge, one of expectation. Can he deliver? So far, he has always found a way. Long may that continue! Ramsdale vs Raya Ramsdale- should be number one? Ps. I have been reading a lot of statistics that say they prove that Raya is better than Ramsdale. How about these for the opposite? We came second last year 5 points behind City. And second again this year 2 points behind City. They had Haaland and De Bruyne out a bit this season. We had a team more mature by being a year older. We had Rice and Havertz, a big improvement. We had few injuries. Last year when Saliba went we lost points. So Ramsdale got us second with a weaker team. And points were easier to get this season as the bottom teams got very few. Raya - truly top class? There is one area where Ramsdale is clearly better and that is shot-stopping. He can pull off an amazing save. He is bigger and stronger than Raya which makes him harder to bully. He rises up the fans better than Raya which gives us a 12th player. And he is always smiling when he is playing. That makes me happier. He will probably go and it will be a mistake. I reckon, despite the stats, Raya is just short of being a true top goalkeeper and I really hope we don’t find that out next year. I hope I am wrong.

Is Emiliano Martinez a clown or not? Should he still be wearing those colours? Emiliano Martinez has become a bit of a hate figure recently. His over-the-top antics at the World Cup have not endeared him to many fans worldwide. It was seen as disrespectful. I agree. However, he didn’t ruin a player’s career with a dangerous tackle or physically attack anyone. I suspect that Argentinians love him as he was probably the biggest reason that Lionel Messi crowned his career with the greatest prize of all. The penalty takers only have to take one, Martinez had to face all of them and he did so twice against Netherlands and France. He triumphed both times. Messi must want to have his babies. Yes, we know you love Martinez, Leo I believe he is a top keeper, though. He is the guardian of the world champions. He has done extremely well at Aston Villa and I will take a look at his record shortly. He also helped enormously in giving us our only real trophy in recent years, the FA Cup. But we let him go and in truth, successive managers have underrated him. I would choose him over Bernd Leno, Peter Cech (the version that we had, he was never the same after the bad head injury given to him by Stephen Hunt), Lucas Fabianski, Wojciech Szczesny and David Ospina who were all first choice in his time. I think a lot of Gooners would agree with me. Life could have been so much different for Arsene Wenger if he had given him his chance. He could still be there, leading us now and celebrating our World Cup winner. Wenger still at Arsenal? How so? Well, if I am right and he is better than all the names I have mentioned then that would have translated into points for us. In Leno’s last season 2020/21 we needed 7 more points to leapfrog Chelsea for the Champions league. The year before that 2019/20, we needed 11 extra points to overtake Chelsea again. In 2018/19 we needed only 2 to jump above the Spuds. In 2017/18 we needed 13 points to climb above Liverpool. In 2016/17 we needed 2 points to throw the Spuds below us. In 2015/16 we needed 11 points to kill the Leicester dream but we were a comfortable second and in Champions league. In Martinez’s first year in the first team squad 2014/15 we would have needed 13 points to sicken Chelsea at the top but again comfortably in Champions league in 3rd. Leno - not as good as Martinez A few extra points would have got extra Champions league places and extra money which may have bought us better players and even more points. Wenger would probably still be there now as he would not have been deemed to have failed. It seems he had a blind spot about Martinez as did all the managers who came after him. History has proved them wrong as he has several trophies to his name including the biggest one. An expensive blind spot Johnny Giles famously said that manager Don Revie’s blind spot about picking goalkeeper Gary Sprake over David Harvey cost the superb Leeds team of the 60’s and 70’s many trophies. We all could see Giles was right as Sprake was very prone to errors but somehow Revie couldn’t see it. Gary Sprake - cost Leeds lots of trophies? The difference between a keeper and an outfield player is significant. If you have a top player out for Arsenal, say Partey or Saka, and you bring in Jorginho or Reiss Nelson, against most of the teams in the Premiership, they are at least as good. Elneny, Vieira, Smith Rowe etc., would walk into most Premiership teams. My point being that Arsenal should, and most likely would beat most teams even with their second choice. That is not so true about a keeper. A keeper who makes a mistake against a team who parks the bus, hoping for a breakaway and luck, could lose a match for Arsenal as I believe Leno did sometimes as he allowed himself to be bullied. A better keeper, a Ramsdale or a Martinez, would, I am convinced, have given us extra points. Martinez’s record is outstanding So, what is Martinez’s record? It is good. In the 23 matches he played for Arsenal in 2019/20, his only sustained run, he kept 9 clean sheets. For Aston Villa it is 2020/21 38 games and 15 clean sheets, very impressive for a team in the bottom half of the table. He got player of the year at Villa. In 2021/22 he played 37 times and had 11 clean sheets , extremely good for a team who were close to being relegation candidates and finished 14th. For Argentina he has 7 clean sheets out of 26 matches. The boy was far better than his managers at Arsenal believed. It is as simple as that. Ramsdale - 12 clean sheets so far this season And Leno? In a much better Arsenal side than Villa in 2020/21 he had 16 clean sheets out of 50 games. The previous year 8 clean sheets out of 33. His first year 2018/19 he had 10 clean sheets out of 38. Martinez should have been given the number one spot he deserved. Now I reckon most of us are happy with Ramsdale. He has already got 12 clean sheets this season out of 28 matches. But we have to accept that, in world rankings, Martinez has to be rated above him. His record for Argentina, with his Aston Villa player of the season thrown in: FIFA World Cup: 2022 Copa América: 2021 CONMEBOL–UEFA Cup of Champions: 2022 Individual The Best FIFA Goalkeeper: 2022 FIFA World Cup Golden Glove: 2022 Aston Villa Player of the Season: 2020–21 Copa América Golden Glove: 2021 Copa América Team of the Tournament: 2021 We made a mistake It has to be acknowledged that we let a top player go for £20m and possibly bought a lesser player for £30m. However, he still may turn out to be the best choice. I certainly hope so. I would like to see Gnabry now in our colours Blind spots in not recognising your best players can cost points. Arteta got that wrong as Leno was not as good as Martinez. Wenger, Emery and Ljungberg also made this mistake about Martinez. Wenger also failed to recognise Gnabry’s abilities but I think that was partly due to Gnabry’s attitude. Once he buckled down to serious work at Bayern Munich he proved himself. Wenger didn’t let too many go that he regretted, in fairness. I hope Arteta is the same. We seem to have a lot of talented youngsters coming through, we need to keep the best of them and to do that, we have to play them or risk them going. Arteta will be extremely tested as a manager in the coming seasons, but one thing he cannot afford to do is not realise who our best players are. I have faith that the Martinez situation has been a learning one that Arteta has quietly understood. The keeper position is the most crucial one in the team, in my opinion. I feel and hope we have got it right in Ramsdale. But let's get back to Martinez: I hear his ambition is to be the world's best goalkeeper and he is a long way towards that in winning the World Cup and FIFA Best goalkeeper. I suspect in the summer the big boys will come calling, the giants of European football. He could still have many more years to go and his penchant for saving penalties will have them salivating. He could do it, you know? Many Arsenal players such as Martinelli (who is Brazilian and they have big rivalry with Argentina) say Martinez was always a gentleman and very helpful to everyone. And hey, after ten bleak years at Arsenal, he finally scored for us. Thank you very much, Emi!