Pablo Mari “unlucky” at Arsenal

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It is all a little quiet in Arsenal World at the moment.

The winter break followed by the FA Cup 4th round means it has been an age since Arsenal last played a game.

For once I am grateful for mid-week football. If it was not for Thursday’s trip to Wolves, we would still have to wait another 11 days for our next Premier League fixture.

Arsenal were due to face Chelsea this weekend. But due to their participation in some international friendly tournament, we have no weekend game.

On that, does anyone really care about the World Club Cup (or whatever it is called)? For me, it goes into the same boat as the Community Sheild and European Super Cup. Just a glorified friendly.

Held it football hot beds such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, it is clearly an attempt by FIFA to cash in on the lucrative domestic game. But does anyone actually care about Chelsea playing some Saudi Arabian team no one has ever heard of?

Fact that the European teams join at the semi-final stage, potentially face teams from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, Tahiti and Abu Dhabi sums the competition up.

Tottenham had to beat better teams to win the Audi Cup!

It seems the only people that care about such trophies are the wierd little kids that like to boast how many trophies a player has won – and then add all the friendly tournament. Or in Chelsea’s case the “we could win 7 trophies this year” but 3 of them are friendly tournaments.

Anyway, I have digressed a little bit and risk coming across bitter as Arsenal do not have the opportunity to play in a competition that I do not give two fucks about.

The only Arsenal related news floating about is the comments from Pablo Mari yesterday.

Mari made a solid debut for Udinese at the weekend, showing the leadership skills we knew he had. After the game he spoke about leaving Arsenal and his relationship with Mikel Arteta.

“I haven’t had any luck at Arsenal but when I’ve been on the pitch, I think I’ve given a very good level. In the end, there comes a point where you have to make decisions”

“Arteta is one of the best managers I’ve come across. He helped me a lot to understand football better. It’s an idea very similar to Guardiola’s, but with it’s subtle differences.”

It is interesting to note his comments about Arteta. He is full of praise for his managerial ability. A stark contrast to what Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang said.

I do agree with Mari as well that he was a bit unlucky at Arsenal.

He joined on loan in January 2020 and looked a solid option, adding leadership to a shakey backline. That deal was made permanent in the summer.

That same summer the Gabriel deal materialised and Arsenal secured one of the best left sided centre backs in football.

When the deal for Mari was done, the club did not know the Gabriel deal would come up a few months later. We needed a left footed centre back for balance and Mari joined.

Gabriel’s Arsenal career was pretty much over the day Gabriel joined. The Brazilian has been one of the best defenders in the league.

With no European football this year, Mari’s appearances have been few and far between.

In the summer, William Saliba is likely to return to compete for a starting XI place. That would have pushed Mari further down the pecking order.

Mari is on loan at Udinese, but if he puts in some good performances a buyer will come in for him.

Anyone, that is all for today. Have a good Tuesday.

Keenos

Edu deserves more respect from Arsenal fans

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Over the weekend, Marc Overmars parted ways with Ajax.

This led to the usual suspects demanding Arsenal “Sack Edu, appoint Overmars”.

The sort of fans who were saying this are those that think everyone at Arsenal is useless. Everyone not at Arsenal is magnificent.

They spend their days abusing Mikel Arteta and Edu and celebrating the performances of Matteo Guendouzi and William Saliba.

Despite Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s well documented history of misdemeanors, they think it was wrong for the club to allow him to leave to Barcelona; These sort of fans would have criticised the club had an offer from the Spanish giants had been rejected.

The sort of fans where if the club goes right, they moan they should go left. And when they go left, they moan the club go right.

So filled with hatred towards the club they allegedly support, they were calling for Arsenal to appoint Overmars the second they read the news; failing to take a moment to understand why the Dutchman had suddenly left Ajax.

A 10 second search on Google would be all it would require to establish the reasoning for Overmars depature, so soon after signing a new deal at the club he had been at for 10 years.

In situations like this, I am reluctant to be overly critical until the full story has come out.

Is it wrong to send “inappropriate messages” if it is consentual?

Back end of last year we saw Australian cricket captain Tim Paine lose the captaincy and his place in the test team on the eve of the Ashes in a similar situation.

Paine’s crime was that he sent a naughty picture to a co-worker in 2017. He was having an affair with the co-worker.

Whilst some might point out that Paine and Overmars are married, is having an affair really a sackable offence?

And before any of you try and take the moral high ground, have a look at you own behaviour. Have you had an affair? Shared naughty pictures with a co-worker? Had a flirt on a works night out? We have all been there.

Whilst I have defended Overmars, it is more about not finding him guilty of something before it has been established whether he has done anything wrong.

Considering we are unaware of the full circumstance, to call for Edu to be sacked and Overmars appointed is jumping the gun. It also shows a lack of repsect for Edu.

Edu joined Arsenal in the summer of 2019, but did not take over full control of transfer proceedings until a year later follwing Raul Sanllehi’s departure in August 2020.

The Brazilian took over a squad filled with underperforming, overpaid hasbeens. The likes of Mesut Ozil, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi.

His first task was to try and slim down the squad. But it proved problematic as very few other clubs wanted to take on these underperforming stars and their huge wages.

Edu has since overseen the departures of Ozil, Mustafi, Sokratis, Sead Kolašinac and Calum Chambers. Willian and David Luiz have also departed, although any credit for them has to be offset by the fact that Edu was part of bringing them in (Willian) and extending their contract (Luiz).

Edu also found a buyer for Aubemayang following his drop off in form and discipline issues.

The squad needed to be thinned out, and Edu has done that.

Some might moan that Edu has thinned it out too much. Left us to short in certain positions. But what he has also not done is waste a load of money bringing in someone he or Arteta does not really want.

In January, he could have gone out and spent £75million on a striker, or £30million on a central midfielder. But if these were not players part of his long term plans, it would have been a waste of money.

It would have been easy to pay the Alexander Isak release clause. Sign him for £75million just for the sake of bringing him in. But was he worth that? And is he the man we actually want?

Edu oversees the recruitment proces. And what he is very good at is listening to the expers around him, and taking advice from all sources.

The boots on the ground scouts, the video analysts, the statistical analysts. He is not reliant on a little black book of agents connects.

His way of working has seen him oversee Gabriel, Benjamin White, Martin Odergaard, Aaron Ramsdale and Takehiro Tomiyasu. The five players are now amongster the first names on the team sheet.

He has also added Nuno Tavares and Albert Sambi Lokonga. Two players who have looked solid acquisitions.

Edu’s dealings have not been perfect – but nobody has a transfer record of 100% hits. But at the moment he has more in the “hit” colomn than the “miss” colomn.

So is it about time Arsenal fans respected what Edu is doing a bit more?

He has thinned out the squad, getting rid of those overpaid underpeformers. And has replaced them with younger, hungrier players.

Edu deserves better than for people calling for him to be sacked at every opportunity.

Keenos

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Aubameyang fall from grace was “history repeating itself”

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“He (Auba) has a hand in about 50 percent of our goals but at some point certain behaviour is no longer tolerable.”

That is what Dortmund Director of Football said about Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in January 2018.

When Arsenal signed the Gabon international, his talent was not in question. His attitude was.

Everything pointed to a player that was professional on the pitch and training ground, but he let himself down with tardiness and absenteeism.

Dortmund keeper Robert Burki summed up Aubameyang’s after the goal scorer was left out of the team for “disciplinary issues”.

Burki said: “The rules apply to every player regardless of how many goals he scores or prevents. The rules have to be followed and I think he knows that. [His suspension] was a logical decision.

“All this is not because of his performances in training. He always gives his best in training.

“We need him, that once again became evident today. It would be pitiful if he was to miss more games due to such idiotic behaviour.”

Aubameyang had missed a compulsory team meal to discuss common goals and code of conduct. His excuse was that he had “forgot”.

And this was not the first time Aubameyang had missed a meeting, training or turned up late.

In an interview around the same time, Zorc stated “it is not the first misdemeanour of this sort.”

The incident of missing the meeting happened around the same time Arsenal were pursuing him. But there had been problems circulating for years.

In November 2017 he was temporarily suspended in November, with Zorc revealing that punctuality problems had led to the action. Bild reported that the striker had been repeatedly late for training, including turning up 20 minutes late for final preparations ahead of the trip to Stuttgart.

The striker was also suspended in November 2016 when he missed a 1-0 win over Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League for an unapproved trip to Milan against then-coach Thomas Tuchel’s wishes.

We have all worked with someone like Auba. Someone who works hard and is talented at what they do, but continue to let themselves down with unapproved days off and lateness. Eventually, no matter they are performing, their behaviour begins to affect the rest of your team.

Some will ask why Arsenal signed Aubameyang on the first place.

92 goals and 30 assists in 163 appearances is why we signed him. Without him we probably wouldn’t have won the FA Cup in 2020.

The mistake, in hindsight, was handing him a new contract.

He was already clearly on the wain and problems were mounting up behind the scenes when we handed him the big deal.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Aubameyang hits the ground running with Barcelona.

There is still life in his old legs and the move could revitalise him in the same way his transfer from Dortmund to Arsenal did.

But then it will probably not be long until the rumours re-surface of missing training sessions and unauthorised trips abroad.

A leopard can’t change its spots.

Keenos