The glorious march to CL qualification

[Lemonade Money]

Dunno how accurate his predictions have been in previous seasons but (despite the turgid PL performances of late) we’re still projected to hold onto 3rd... which would be quite some achievement, considering the lack of transfers and having to play home games at a soulless tourist trap for 3/4 of this campaign...

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From https://twitter.com/omarchaudhuri/

Two points between 1st and 2nd, and two points between 3rd and 6th? Looks like Sky have got their dream final day of the season.

 

[Legohamster]

I didn’t say anything about us! We were poor, we’ve got 1 point in 4 games or something, we are in terrible form.

None of the above has anything at all to do with whether this Arsenal side is better than any of the Wenger teams.

By the way Eriksen on his own 6 yards, Sissoko from 10 yards in the centre of the goal, were equally as good as anything Arsenal created. The pen was a joke decision, a gift from the ref and justice was done in that incident, the only annoying thing is it wasted 2 or 3 minutes at the end of the match where we couldn’t go on the attack again.

“Had the better of us” indicates it was about us as well.

Lacazette missed two sitters and they had us under complete control knowing they could let us have the ball and we wouldn’t harm them, whilst the counter would hurt us.

 

[SPURSBOY]

Had the better of us, are you serious? That was about the worst Arsenal side I’d seen since the Ricoh era. Leicester had the better of us, Wolves had the better of us, Arsenal really didn’t!

I agree the worst Arsenal side in ages , but says more about us, normally a pen goes in and we lose that game and 4 out of 4

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

“Had the better of us” indicates it was about us as well.

Lacazette missed two sitters and they had us under complete control knowing they could let us have the ball and we wouldn’t harm them, whilst the counter would hurt us.

Complete control huh? Ok, I’m not wasting anymore time on this then! Needless to say I disagree with you!

 

[Mosquito_Coasting]

People will hate this but Emery is doing a really good job. They have the worst set of players in the top six obviously and an unbalanced squad. Also he changes his tactics regularly. At the start of the season they were pressing high and getting results, now they are sitting deep and getting results. A manager who can switch between those two styles is gifted. Poch certainly has never organised us cohesively to sit back and hit teams on the break. I wouldn't swap managers of course but Arsenal are underrated this season.

 

[StephenH]

They (Arsenal) are still sloppy IMHO.
But I'm a paid-up card-carrying pessimist.
I said 5th for us at the beginning of the season

 

[parklane1]

Problem in my eyes is that players at spurs now and in the past have accepted that they don't have to win anything at spurs.
The better ones will always get a move to a bigger club and get their medals there.

My fear as well.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

People will hate this but Emery is doing a really good job. They have the worst set of players in the top six obviously and an unbalanced squad. Also he changes his tactics regularly. At the start of the season they were pressing high and getting results, now they are sitting deep and getting results. A manager who can switch between those two styles is gifted. Poch certainly has never organised us cohesively to sit back and hit teams on the break. I wouldn't swap managers of course but Arsenal are underrated this season.

I’m surprised he hasn’t gone to a really big club ... maybe he will go to madrid next

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

People will hate this but Emery is doing a really good job. They have the worst set of players in the top six obviously and an unbalanced squad. Also he changes his tactics regularly. At the start of the season they were pressing high and getting results, now they are sitting deep and getting results. A manager who can switch between those two styles is gifted. Poch certainly has never organised us cohesively to sit back and hit teams on the break. I wouldn't swap managers of course but Arsenal are underrated this season.

I think he is doing ok. Not sure "really good" for me.

I think anyone coming in to replace a manager in situ for 25 years is on a hiding to nothing. So to have them there or thereabouts and not imploding is really quite an achievement.

That said, the team? Flaky as all hell. Very much like Arsenal of years past, when things go well they play well, otherwise they are gutless and prone to collapse.

They have been decidedly meh all season really barring a couple of runs.

His buys have been more miss than hit. And arguably he isnt getting the best out of the squad/better players at all.

 

[Finney Is Back]

I think he is doing ok. Not sure "really good" for me.

I think anyone coming in to replace a manager in situ for 25 years is on a hiding to nothing. So to have them there or thereabouts and not imploding is really quite an achievement.

That said, the team? Flaky as all hell. Very much like Arsenal of years past, when things go well they play well, otherwise they are gutless and prone to collapse.

They have been decidedly meh all season really barring a couple of runs.

His buys have been more miss than hit. And arguably he isnt getting the best out of the squad/better players at all.

I think he has done well. They were quite a distant 6th last season and this season they have a good shout at finishing in the top 4. That isn't to be sniffed at.

 

[StephenH]

C+ for this years Arsenal so far!

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

I think he has done well. They were quite a distant 6th last season and this season they have a good shout at finishing in the top 4. That isn't to be sniffed at.

Not being sniffy, just not buying the hype either.

I think he has done a good job to get them where they are, but lets be honest - if Utd and Chelsea were playing as they should Arsenal would be a distant 6th right now...

 

[P.D.]

People will hate this but Emery is doing a really good job. They have the worst set of players in the top six obviously and an unbalanced squad. Also he changes his tactics regularly. At the start of the season they were pressing high and getting results, now they are sitting deep and getting results. A manager who can switch between those two styles is gifted. Poch certainly has never organised us cohesively to sit back and hit teams on the break. I wouldn't swap managers of course but Arsenal are underrated this season.

He's had lots of criticism about not sorting the defence etc but some of the new midfielders look decent signings and no doubt he's a good manager, history shows that. Over the next 2/3 years I expect them to improve quite a bit.

 

[We are Tottenham]

If you register you get 2 or 3 articles per month for free, genuinely use it just to read the odd Spurs clickbait!

Copy and paste, as opppsed to cut and paste


Spurs look like they are going to finish fifth in a three-horse race. That is the latest joke doing the rounds after the implosion of the north London club. They lost to Southampton on Saturday and the barbs were inevitable. Typical Spurs, bunch of bottlers. You get the picture.

This characterisation is, of course, a little unfair in the specific instance given that Tottenham Hotspur are operating on a smaller budget than their competitors and have not signed a player all season. But what about the more general point about clubs having particular characteristics, or tendencies, whether good or bad? Can we legitimately talk about this club’s DNA or that club’s temperament?


The problem with this concept is relatively easy to state: the people who populate a club change through time. Spurs today, for example, haven’t got a single player or member of coaching staff who was involved with the first team ten years ago, let alone farther back. Hell, they are even playing in a different stadium.

One can understand how a player or a team can be flaky, but how can this apply to a club, effectively an abstract legal entity, albeit one of great emotional significance? How can the physical components of a club, from their people to their buildings, change and yet certain indefinable qualities remain in place? When stated like this, it feels as if we should ditch this way of talking, once and for all.

Before doing so, however, consider a study on Silicon Valley by James Baron and Michael Hannan, two professors at Stanford business school. They looked at more than 200 technology start-ups and conducted interviews with leaders. “We assembled the most comprehensive database to date on the histories, structures, and HR practices of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley,” the professors wrote.


One key finding was that the various founders almost had distinctive blueprints for their companies. Some companies launched with a “star” vision. A founder would say things like: “We recruit top talent, pay them top wages and give them the resources they need to do their job.” Others were “product” companies, which emphasised technology. “It was a skunk-works meteorology and the binding energy was high.” Still others were “commitment” companies. “Founders created a family-like feeling and an intense emotional bond that would inspire superior effort.”

Unsurprisingly, these visions were associated with different initial recruitment and HR strategies and exerted a huge influence on company culture in the early years. What shocked the researchers, however, was that the founding visions continued to exert influence years later, even after the founder had left, and the staff had changed.


“Origins matter . . . a company’s early organisation-building activities might preordain its destiny . . . enduring values served as guideposts for strategy and operations over time.” The researchers termed this “path dependency”.

Hold that thought while considering Manchester United. If you look closely, you will notice that Gary Neville, on his Twitter feed, carries a banner picture of the Busby babes. Other players often post pictures on social media of the history of the club, not least on each anniversary of Munich. David Beckham has spoken of how Sir Alex Ferguson would pepper his team talks with references to the club’s history. “It felt like we were part of a storyline,” Beckham has said.

Beckham, of course, grew up supporting United, as did Neville, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs so perhaps it is unsurprising that they are familiar with the club’s traditions. Over the past few days, however, you may have been struck by how often people such as Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel and others have articulated the United DNA, not least the values of youth, audacity and attacking football.

It is anecdotes such as this that, I think, help to explain the findings of Baron and Hannan, and lend at least some plausibility to the notion that clubs have enduring characteristics. The players may change and the staff may change, but the stories and myths, legacies and shared meanings, persist, often safeguarded by the fans. For all the talk of data in the world today, we make sense of ourselves through narrative. We are embedded in stories and, very often, take our cue from them.

Isn’t this why leaders often fight so hard to shape that story, albeit within the broader parameters laid down by history? Charles de Gaulle’s great achievement after the Second World War was to narrate the French national story through the arc of the heroic resistance movement rather than the Vichy collaborators. The American founding fathers created a narrative that persists to this day of American exceptionalism and a free people standing against the odds.

This is perhaps why Sir Matt Busby, Ferguson, Jock Stein, Johan Cruyff and others spent so much managerial force on defining and refining the mythology of their clubs. They realised that even young players, fresh out of school, yearn for a sense of how they fit into a story, and not only a club. They took seriously the idea that the way people negotiate meaning and values, and the way they interpret an institution’s history, has implications for the way they behave and perform in the here and now.


Of course, stories can impose costs as well as benefits. Most historians tend to agree that Britain’s desire to perpetuate the storyline of a global power has often led her into foreign policy blunders. It might not be too much of a stretch to suggest that some of the Brexit debate falls within these parameters too. Indeed you can probably think of football clubs that have reached for some unattainable sense of power or invincibility.

Yet perhaps the biggest danger is when the narrative of an organisation is defined not by insiders, but by outsiders.

My sense is that United have gained hugely from their history, and that the club’s greatest managers have leveraged it wisely. But I also wonder if the players and staff at Spurs find it difficult to ignore the pervasive insinuation of flakiness and mental frailty entirely. It can’t be easy.

What seems certain is that narrative matters, just as legacy matters, a point that the All Blacks, one of the most successful sports teams of all, would endorse. When the story is inspirational, and when it becomes a part of the way that people think and feel, it can exert an influence that transcends any person, building or manager.

What country hasn't, made foreign policy blunders..especially us in recent years !
Something a bit contradictory there..

 

[Benny_Lad]

Not being sniffy, just not buying the hype either.

I think he has done a good job to get them where they are, but lets be honest - if Utd and Chelsea were playing as they should Arsenal would be a distant 6th right now...

Around xmas I wouldn't have thought it possible that they would get anywhere near us and couldn't wait to have them back to Wembley. As it is they have improved a bit, we have regressed a bit and that has enabled them to close the gap. From what I have seen Emery is getting it right more often than not. He's happy to switch up players and styles, which is keeping the players fresh and there isn't a huge difference in quality between the teams that take the pitch for them.

They look a lot fresher than us and along with the rotation, are are probably benefiting from their lack of WC squad mins.

With their remaining fixtures it would take a big leap of faith to think they wont get as many points as us from now to the end of the season.

That said, with a couple of quality additions I think we'll kick on from them again next season.

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

I should add - where I think Emery has absolutely excelled is with Ozil. He has played that one perfectly IMO.

Im not writing him/them off. I just dont think they have done as well as some obviously do.

 

[harr1984]

Not being sniffy, just not buying the hype either.

I think he has done a good job to get them where they are, but lets be honest - if Utd and Chelsea were playing as they should Arsenal would be a distant 6th right now...

They're one point off us having played all the big teams - so I guess that would make us a distant 5th at best? He has done a very good job, you saw at Man Utd how hard transition can be from a manager who has been there for eternity, and he hasnt even got his own squad yet. Looks like they are getting Monchi as Director of Football too, they are going to be strong in future years.....

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

They're one point off us having played all the big teams - so I guess that would make us a distant 5th at best? He has done a very good job, you saw at Man Utd how hard transition can be from a manager who has been there for eternity, and he hasnt even got his own squad yet. Looks like they are getting Monchi as Director of Football too, they are going to be strong in future years.....

All things being equal we should be 4th/5th.

Ive already noted he has done a good job. Just not getting carried away with it. Particularly in regard to the praise heaped on how they play - its really not that good.

 

[Mosquito_Coasting]

I don't think they play well, I think they play cleverly. And that is to the credit of Emery.

 

[parklane1]

He has done well, so far.