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Don’t know to what extent if any Trump on trial is playing into current pollingTake no notice of polls unless there are huge swings. It was established a while ago that the result reflects the responses, the responders don't reflect the country.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/biden-vs-trump-2024-election-polls-biden-continues-surge-with-help-from-rfk-jr/ar-AA1nx0TY
Long term? Bench.
Hes done well, but hes not the answer upfront, we need someone far more lethal and incisive. In the big games, Bayern home and away, completely disappeared. We ll need a very deep squad next season with the new CL format etc so he ll be valuable but we are still missing a goalscorer.
And yet. There are still an element of Arsenal and non-Arsenal fans who question whether Arteta should keep his job.
Its tight at the top. Liverpool and Man City are two very good teams each with a very good manager. But Arteta at 42 years old is rolling with them. Yes all Arteta has won is the FA Cup, but like I said, he is 42, not 52. Arteta will win titles. Top manager.
And if we did sack Arteta, we would give ourselves a headache trying to replace him, and at the same time solve a problem at Chelsea or Man United. Because if Arteta were available. Chelsea and United wouldn't hesitate to bin Ten Ag /Poch Poch.
Something I find funny but I am slightly weird, people talk about the Dutch league like it's a second rate one to criticise Slot, yet our own Pep failed there with NEC and there are calls for him to step up..
I said Havertz would come good for Arsenal but I thought he’d do it as an 8. He seems rather to be a very useful utility player to have around and one capable of chipping in with goals from either midfield or as a 9. His fbref stats are funny. Brilliant attacking numbers for a midfielder but abysmal off the ball ones. Brilliant off the ball numbers for a forward but abysmal attacking numbers. Guessing that demonstrates how much he’s flipped between playing as an 8 and playing as a 9 (or false 9, I’m not sure how he plays that central forward role). North bank/ other Arsenal fans, how’s he done? What’s his longer term role going to be?
It does depend a lot on the nature of the tactics.
One of the interesting postmortems of Ten Hag at Manchester United was that his tactics are too open - playing a sole pivot, pushing his fullbacks up to overload, a brand of possession football relying on transitions and pressing, with a sweeper keeper keeping a high line at the back. It worked in the Eredivisie because the quality of opposition he would face were not physical, not athletic, not mobile enough to take advantage of the gaps that such a tactic leaves behind.
Ten Hag has brought that same tactical setup to Manchester United and the BPL and this has resulted in Manchester United conceding, on a per-game basis, the highest or close to joint highest number of shots on goal in the league. Teams in this league are fitter, more tactically savvy, and are far quicker to exploit the gaps left behind by fullbacks pushing up with a sole pivot as a creative destroyer type 6. It's far too open, and teams have figured it out and are exploiting it accordingly. This is Ten Hag being stubborn but Manchester United are one of if not the most porous team in the BPL as things stand.
The good thing for the Slotter is that he will have seen first-hand how such tactics translate, and he has a recent cautionary tale to guard against this.