May 21st – Arsenal Alliteration

It’s been a week without Arsene. And the passing of time will only make it harder. In the interim it is full on speculation as to who’s the next manager. What criteria should be applied?

It would seem it’s an alphabetic search. Arteta or Allegri. Not very imaginative. No wonder Viera feels like his conversation was perfunctory. He should have changed his name to Aviera. Then he’d be a shoe-in.

After all these months (if not years) of planning, the great and powerful at AFC management have come to the conclusion that Arteta is the best available manager on the planet earth. Aside, that is, from the fact he’s not actually a manager (or coach).

I don’t want Allegri or Enrique. I’d like Nagelsmann or Jardim. But both seem to suffer from having real managerial experience and having names too far down the alphabet.

Not that Arteta can’t be successful. But it’s a very high risk strategy. I hope Arsene is staying close by. I just don’t understand AFCs thinking. They are placing an untried and untested assistant coach in one of the prime seats in Europe. There will be tremendous pressure from the first pre-season game. Arteta could exceed all expectations but is this the right risk to take?

There is no comparable I can think of. Zidane (not to compare us to RM) ran their B- Team (in league 2) for a year. Guardiola ran the Barca B team for a year. Pochatinho ran Espanyol and Southampton. Wenger had 12 years in management from AFC. If you’re going to select Arteta why not start with Ancelotti? He has right at the start of the alphabet and has the experience of the premier league. Have Arteta take a year to get acclimatized – have him run the U23 team. Have him prepare to be a coach.

I fear some of these moves are about the new structure at AFC wanting to control the management of the team. They don’t want to appointment a strong established manager. They don’t want someone who will expect to have control over transfers and player identification. They – Gazidis, Sven and the other one – want to be able to control the coach. Have the coach report in to them. Gazidis has had 10 years of being the puppy dog to Wenger. Now he wants to be the CEO – finally. He looks up the road at Daniel Levy and wants that type of power. He forgets though that until they found Pochettino they had been through 9 managers this century.

It’s not clear this pending appointment is in the best interests of Arsenal. It’s going to be in the best interests of Gazidis. And maybe Sven. And maybe it could work out. But if and when it does not we are fucked. We could become a cross between ManU post Fergie and Sp*rs pre Pochettino.

This decision is obviously critical. We have the basis of a competitive team. But we can’t afford to roll the dice with a new manager who’s completely untested. There has to be a more risk-averse choice out there.

Another thing about poor Arteta. If you appoint him you basically formally by-pass the entire Invincible generation. Why would Bould stay to report to someone ½ he’s age and 1/10th of his experience. What happens to Overmars, Bergkamp, Viera, Bould, Dixon and Henry? They never get a look in. Because if and when Arteta fails then the club will go full on Simeone. That is just ½ a step short of being Darth Vader. We would swing from one extreme of the beautiful game to the other end of the functionary, dull but point accumulating approach of these dreary masters of the game.

The legacy AW left us was one to be cherished and improved upon. It was not to be frittered away on the off chance that a young, intelligent but unproven tactician could take the club to the next level. We needed a considered, incremental, experienced manager who could add that missing piece of steel – or, rather, return the steel that the early Wenger years possessed.

Again, it all makes we worry about the brain-trust at Arsenal. They have surely been planning their moves for the longest time. But here we are two weeks in and we still have no manager. The World Cup starts in 3 weeks – no signings will be made then – and not many even before then. This is valuable time that is being wasted. They should have already made the appointment by now so that the new manager has the maximum time to acclimatize. Unless, of course, that appointment is Arteta.

-LB7

 

 

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