It’s fine to to win and be annoyed

Morning all.

It’s the start of a new week, and now that the dust has settled a little bit after Saturday evening, I thought it was interesting to hear Mikel Arteta talk about the plans between then and the Everton game – also an 8pm Saturday evening kick-off.

He said:

What we have to do now is reset, give them two days that they can decompress a little bit and then we have a long week that we can prepare.

I think we could probably all do with a couple of days to decompress after that game. Some of us don’t have any choice but to relive it, and obviously we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you later, but I did look that performance and think the players could absolutely use a couple of days off to hit the reset button. Not so much physically, because it’s hardly a lot of time to rest, but certainly mentally. Have some family time, walk the dogs, walk the dogs some more, but not so much that you overload yourself, eat some nice food, and just relax a bit.

You could see by the reaction from certain players post-game that they did not enjoy that at all against Wolves. I watched Declan Rice during the game go absolutely mad at players around him as the opposition started to find passes through lines that should not have been open at that stage of the game. It wasn’t long after that they scored, and despite the late winner, I don’t think his mood had improved much by the end of the game. The way he stormed off the pitch and down the tunnel was atypical, but understandable.

I have no issue with players demanding more from each other, and being a bit pissed off in the moment if they don’t feel like they get it. These are the highest possible stakes in Premier League terms, and we came very close to throwing two points away in a way that nobody would have been able to excuse afterwards. Rice wasn’t happy, Arteta wasn’t happy, and I don’t think I spoke to anyone afterwards who enjoyed the performance itself.

It’s quite interesting, because last weekend when we lost against Villa with the final kick, I wrote about how scoring a late goal is up there with the best feelings in football. I still believe that, but the context of this particular game dulled that sensation. Was it fantastic? Yes. Were there big celebrations? Absolutely. Everyone around me went mad, but it didn’t give you that Cloud-9 feeling for very long, if that makes sense.

So, I think that will be part of the ongoing discourse. Obviously the most important thing is that we won, and we remain top of the table. A very nice place to be. But I think if Declan Rice can be pissed off, and Mikel Arteta can be pissed off, and other players can be honest about the quality, or lack of, in the Wolves performance, then as fans I think it’s absolutely fine for us to feel the same way. It doesn’t need to be sugar-coated. We can appreciate where we are, and understand not every game or performance can be 10/10, but reasonable criticism is not about being entitled. Then it’s about improvement.

I think we can all see there are some reasons as to why things aren’t as fluid as they should be right now, but this was an Arsenal team, and an Arsenal bench, that ought to have been able to produce better against Wolves. We didn’t, we won, and that’s a good place to put things right from, but if anyone expects the players or the manager to be 100% satisfied, then they haven’t been paying attention. We joke about the ‘foggin estandards’, but it’s rooted in absolute seriousness.

Arsenal want to win the Premier League, but Arteta knows, the players know, and we know, that we won’t win it if we play like that too often. You can’t improve if you don’t acknowledge that it wasn’t good enough, and then try and understand why it happened so you can make it better.

Arteta also went on to say after the game:

When we don’t train, there are things that slowly deteriorate and certain habits start to deteriorate because you don’t train them and use that opportunity to do so, give it will everybody a boost because we know that the Christmas period is often seen as season-defining and we want to be on top of it.

So, hopefully this is a week to kind of reinforce the foundations again, if that’s the right way to put it. To work on those habits, to rebuild a bit of confidence to the collective and to certain individuals who look like they need an injection of that in a pretty big way. Let’s see how it goes.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there. Decompress a bit before recording with James (). We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. The pod should be out around noon.

For now, have a good one.

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