Sometimes it is just fashionable to put the boot in on Arsenal even when everything is going incredibly well. What’s fun about the Gunners being the outright favourites when the easy way to draw the attention of buoyant supporters is to drag them back down to Earth with a thwack?
Arsenal won their fifth Premier League game in a row with a comfortable 2-0 victory over Leicester. A run that ended Wolves’ slim top-four hopes with back-to-back defeats to Arsenal and that witnessed to further improvement of the young stars of the squad.
Yet, this has not stopped some from trying to squeeze themselves in between the positives. Instead, looking only at the diminishing negatives to try and undermine Mikel Arteta’s significant progress this season.
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Speaking on TalkSport, Adrian Durham claimed, “They [Arsenal] haven’t actually done anything.” He admitted if Arteta was to go on to elevate Arsenal back into title challenges and compete in the Champions League, “All bets are off.”
However, what followed was a list of factors to diminish the progression made by the club this season. Factors which, in this case, more than half of which were not even true.
“This season there’s no Europe. They didn’t take the domestic cup competitions seriously,” he said.
A line to make you spit your tea out as Arsenal reached the semi-final of the league cup to be knocked out by eventual winners Liverpool. Of whom they managed to get a clean sheet from at Anfield, something last achieved by Bayern Munich.
“They’ve basically had no injuries whatsoever,” Durham lined up next. He continued, “But basically Arsenal have had zero injuries this season. They’ve been incredibly fortunate on that front.”
In the north London derby, Granit Xhaka suffered a medial collateral ligament injury which meant he missed more than two months and nine matches. Takehiro Tomiyasu has missed six matches with back-to-back calf problems and is unlikely to be fit for this week’s two fixtures against Liverpool and Aston Villa.
Arsenal lost Thomas Partey, Nicolas Pepe and Mohamed Elneny to the African Cup of Nations and Mikel Arteta had to act on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s disciplinary breaches which eventually saw him depart. An exit that has seen the Spaniard turn the club positively around to become a better goalscoring side.
Durham then targets Arteta’s transfer and squad decisions saying, “They’ve allowed him to waste loads of money. They’ve allowed him to shovel loads of money into a fire by refusing to manage [Mesut] Ozil and Aubameyang.
Firstly, there’s hypocrisy to Durham’s words as in June 2020 at the height of the Ozil-Arteta fracture. He said that a tweet put out by Ozil was designed to undermine the manager and that the saga needed to be ended.
“Mesut Ozil is disrupting Mikel Arteta there. He’s making life difficult for him. He’s done it with other managers in the past, he’s now doing it with Arteta, and it just can’t go on. They’re paying £350,000 a week to a player to a player that isn’t even with having on the bench in a massive game,” he said.
Adding, “We talked about strategy, didn’t we, with Arsenal recently? That the strategy is all wrong and it needs to be readdressed and refocused.”
Arteta has overhauled the Arsenal squad. Has drastically changed the strategy in the transfer market. Has been ruthless with a squad lacking accountability for so many years before his arrival. But remember, according to this very same commentator “They [Arsenal] haven’t actually done anything.” This is clearly factually untrue.
Don’t fall into the trap of allowing this to aggravate you as it has me. Let this wash over you and appreciate the positives of a club reborn this season. Allow this to remind you of the good work that has been done. Instead of listening to the desperate attempts by those that wish to see the Gunners fail or in some cases just Mikel Arteta.
