Tactical blunders, bad communication and key players regressing - Mikel Arteta has failed...

[ASFN Admin]

It is time for hard truths. Arsenal’s season is over. They are on course for their worst league finish since 1995. Next season will be their first without European football in 25 years. The gap to England’s leading clubs is enormous and is expanding with each campaign, while the owners' standing among supporters - never high - is at an all-time low. Yet for all the vitriol poured on Stan Kroenke, it is Mikel Arteta who now finds himself under more pressure than at any other point in his short coaching career. In December, after four successive home defeats, Arteta thrust out his chest and told his critics he was ready to take their “bullets”. After overseeing Arsenal’s limp defeat by Unai Emery’s Villarreal in Thursday’s Europa League semi-final, he will know another round is on the way. Already the questions are piling up. Where do Arsenal go from here? Why has it all gone so wrong this season? Can Arteta pick up his players, and is he even the right man to do so? On Thursday night, a visibly crushed Arteta was offering few answers. “It’s not about talking,” he said. “It’s about showing it on the pitch.” For much of the Spaniard’s reign, he has been hindered by circumstances that have been outside of his control. The pandemic, the turnover of executives above him, the terrible squad-building decisions made by his predecessors, the injuries and absences of key figures, the many individual errors committed by his players. With each passing week, though, more and more responsibility falls upon his shoulders. Partly through necessity and partly through choice, he picked these two legs against Villarreal to experiment with his line-up. The “false nine” approach backfired in Spain, as did his attempts to deploy an entirely new midfield shape at the Emirates.

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