Mikel Arteta (Soon to be Mr. Manager)

I definitely understand what you mean, you could probably put down 50% of my staunch Wengerism to the fact that he would drop quotes like “I like a famous line from a great philosopher who said, ‘The only way to deal with death is to transform everything that precedes it into art,’” in press conferences, and as a football playing student who was interested in the intellectual side of things as well as the sport, playing with people who weren’t at all interested in the former and who would think you were mispronouncing a part of the female anatomy if you mentioned Kant, I identified hugely with him (for the rest of the Maxi_Gooner style tribute, see…ah, nevermind, it’s a waste of all of our time).

The difference I see is that Guardiola is clearly being used by the separatists. There’s nothing really cool about that for me, especially when the use goes to malicious causes. I don’t think you can ever say Wenger has been used by any particular political movement, the worst he’s done is make his own kind of football politics and put it to the detriment of club, but at least that negative effects are just confined to the arbitrary world of football, and even then, his overall ideas are benevolent/positive for football itself, if impractical/ill-formed/applied, and anyways, his overall effect on Arsenal is probably positive despite the incredibly negative effects over the last 5 years at least and perhaps more.

I also don’t like his showmanship. It goes hand in hand with the incredible passion that makes him such a brilliant manager and so good at transmitting his ideas to footballers and having them successfully carry them out, so it’s partly forgivable, but in the idealistic sense I prefer the class of Wenger, even if he has even lost a bit of that with the years. Indeed, when the Wenger-Guardiola debate came up on the old forum, and I was still a staunch Wengerist, my argument was basically, “I’m not sure I can really think of a reason why Wenger is better, but I prefer his class and trust in the intelligence he shows with his words.”

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Yeah I agree completely with this. I was actually thinking about Wenger as soon as I posted and thought that I could have easily included him along with Pep and the others I mentioned. Wenger is still fascinating to listen to, less so when talking about Arsenal actually haha. He shows his true intellect when speaking about other things in football and outside of it.

Guardiola is a bit more partisan I guess. The Barça-Madrid rivalry definitely doesn’t help the internal dispute and probably sharpened his political beliefs.

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Just saying here but Pep had 2 players booked for simulation last night. Dont suppose he mentioned it with him and his moral crusade and all that to save world football.

  1. Messi and Xavi were already world class with Iniesta on the verge of World Class. They improved yes and he got the system to work around them. A 19yo Messi who was world class already was always likely to improve even if he may have only been a wide forward or CAM instead of a false 9. You forgot they also had Etoo and our best ever player with an absolute embarassment of riches throughout their team.

  2. Cesc should have been one of the most expensive players in world football but for the tapping up. As 35m was big money for the time anyway. Ibrahimovic was one of the biggest deals in history. He could splash big money on one of the best ever Spanish strikers in Villa from a rival and stick him on the wing. Alexis was big money too. Alves cost 30m in '08, that’s near world record territory for a defender, but yes ‘not allot’ only twice the likes of Arsenal’s transfer record back then. They could also put one of our best players in Hleb as a back up. So yes Barce spent some of the most in world football during these years transforming their team.

  3. To pretend managing CL winners Bayern who hovered up all of Germany’s talent wasn’t an easy job is laughable.

  4. At Barce/Bayern he took over clubs who’d won the CL in the 2 years prior to winning it. At City he took over easily the best squad in the league that probably would of won the title in 15/16 if the owners didn’t announce the current manager was toast, which saw the players stop playing for him imo.

Overall his systems at all 3 clubs have generally dominated the opposition. He’s created a better performing team than Mancini and Pelegrini but they won titles with this City team too and Guardiola has spent 380 million in 2 seasons. The domination is superior though so credit where it’s due.

All of that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be labelled ‘tactically naive’ if he played the same tactics with lesser players as we saw various times last season, the Leicester game in particularly stood out in that respect.

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Why would you assume he can’t manage tactically a lesser team? He has done nothing but be tactically brilliant, better than his peers… I think given the evidence one should perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt here and just say he is just really, really good.

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Look, it’s simple.

When he worked with the academy at Barca and got promoted and had a club produced first team he was doing it wrong.

When he stuck by past it players like Clichy, Sagna, Zabaleta and Kolarov and tried to play football he was doing it wrong.

When he replaced those players with younger players that can run like Danilo and Walker he was doing it wrong.

He’s never done anything right. Everything good that’s ever happened to a club he worked for was just luck or money. Anyone can do what he does.

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My dad (a lifetime vivid Arsenal supporter) and me used to have this thing for years (Arteta’s tenure at Arsenal) where he’d now and then go “Arteta has a wig tho” and I was like nah I don’t think so, in pictures you can see his hair line, and my dad’s like “but remember that game vs xxx, when it was raining and he was on the pitch for 90 mins and his hair looks exactly the same while everyone else looked like wet dogs” and I’d be like “well there are hair products nowdays that bla bla” and he’d be like… hm… yeah I don’t know.

Then two months later he’d be like “pretty sure he has a wig tho, did you see when he headed that ball in slow mo?” I think to this day he still thinks he does :rofl:

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And herein lies the issue. People are completely forgetting the fact that whilst Messi was a mercurial talent, and one of the best wingers in the world his transformation under Pep was because Pep saw he was capable of so much more than what Rijkaard had seen or the national team managers. I’m not crediting Pep for making Messi, I’m crediting him for taking him to a level we have never seen from another football player. That was Pep’s vision.

And Xavi was not considered an elite player. That is completely untrue. Xavi was a Barcelona player in the mould of Pep himself but that kind of player had completely gone out of fashion at that point. That’s why Pep’s career ended so early and so young, because Football had moved on from the central midfielders in the mould of Xavi and moved towards a more dynamic and athletic midfielder.

Not that then Ballon D’or is an incredible accurate measure of a players quality, it does generally recognise who the most well regarded talents are and Xavi was not on the 2007 list in Rijkaards final season and was in the top 5 in 2008 in Pep’s first season. His impact and development under Pep is what turned Xavi into a household name. And the same goes for Iniesta too.

And you’ll definitely have to point me to the part of my post where I said managing Bayern wasn’t an easy job because I don’t believe I’ve ever said that. I said it wasn’t anywhere near as expensively assembled a squad as the City, United and Madrid squads.

The lengths that some people go to discredit Pep are laughable. I definitely think @Craigie post hit the nail on the head with this one.

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This single sentence renders it entirely pointless for anyone to try to talk down his achievements then

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Because he’s not tactically flexible and only plays attacking possession football with high defensive lines. He came up short last year before spending another 150m on his defence

So much wrong… lol. Moving on from this thread. Feels like religious debate at this point.

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Tbf this is a good time of year for religious debate imo.

[quote=“SRCJJ, post:309, topic:407, full:true”]
And herein lies the issue. People are completely forgetting the fact that whilst Messi was a mercurial talent, and one of the best wingers in the world his transformation under Pep was because Pep saw he was capable of so much more than what Rijkaard had seen or the national team managers. I’m not crediting Pep for making Messi, I’m crediting him for taking him to a level we have never seen from another football player. That was Pep’s vision.[/quote]

Messi was naturally going to get better after the age of 19 though, that’s the point your blissfully ignoring. Moving him in the centre does make him a focal point but CR7 performed at his level in that wide forward role and Messi could have done the same but better than CR7. It;s not like Messi hasn’t been the world’s best player when played deeper.

[quote=“SRCJJ, post:309, topic:407, full:true”]
And Xavi was not considered an elite player. That is completely untrue. Xavi was a Barcelona player in the mould of Pep himself but that kind of player had completely gone out of fashion at that point. [/quote]

Yes he was one of the world’s best players and won Spanish player of the year prior to Pep. Playmakers like Mendieta, Valeron, Deco, Riquelme were ‘out of fashion’ in La Liga in the early 00s? Don’t create a myth about Guardiola inventing technical Spanish football. If anything tica taca was a reaction to the football Valencia/Depor was playing after simply buying all their players didn’t work.

[quote=“SRCJJ, post:309, topic:407, full:true”]
That’s why Pep’s career ended so early and so young, because Football had moved on from the central midfielders in the mould of Xavi and moved towards a more dynamic and athletic midfielder.[/quote]

Pep’s career ended because Xavi displaced him at Barce and because he got done for Nandrolone doping. It didn’t end that early either. Xavi was better than Pep, always technically excellent and an assist king at an early age

[quote=“SRCJJ, post:309, topic:407, full:true”]
Not that then Ballon D’or is an incredible accurate measure of a players quality, it does generally recognise who the most well regarded talents are and Xavi was not on the 2007 list in Rijkaards final season and was in the top 5 in 2008 in Pep’s first season. His impact and development under Pep is what turned Xavi into a household name. And the same goes for Iniesta too.[/quote]

So I take it you rate Michael Owen above Henry then? It’s a shite measure. It’s usually given to those who excel in the big competitions and Xavi was injured for Barce’s 06 CL win wasn’t he? Rijkaard’s final season was a hang over season too.

There’s a difference between discrediting and correcting your mythical wankfest.

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Well we know Mancini, Pelegrini, Rijkaard and Heynckes all can at least

But they can’t lol

You are talking complete and utter shit.

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Why don’t you remind us how ‘midfielders like Xavi weren’t considered elite’ when Xavi, Mendieta, Valeron, Deco, Riquelme bossed Spanish midfields (and also Europe) you absolute no nothing.

Were they not in fashion?

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Because you’re not actually reading half of what I write and you’re addressing points I never made. I never created a myth about Pep inventing technical Spanish Football yet you’ve managed to find a way to slide it in there, in much the same way you seemed to find a way to say that I said managing Bayern was a difficult job when I never once said that.

Yet you talked absolute bollox about Xavi not being an elite player, he was, and that he was out of fashion because he wasn’t athletic, he wasn’t. He was one of the best midfielders in the world and all of Spains best teams utilised similar playmakers.

And yes the way you rave over Pep is as if he invented these pressing possession systems that stacked the midfield when in fact Depor/Valencia used them earlier to win La Liga. Guardiola arguably simply replicated them with better resources.

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Xavi was not an elite player. You’re the one perpetuating myths now. And you want to use Spanish player of the year as your measuring stick then I guess Vicente, Marcos Senna and Santi in his Recreativo days was an elite player then lol.

I honestly don’t know how you have the energy to keep going. I was pushing myself to get involved on several occasions today, writing a few sentences and then I’d be like ‘fuck it, these mofos are just going to recycle all over that shit’ and deleted it.

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