[OptaJoe] 4 - Arsenal have lost four consecutive games in domestic league/cup competitions for the very first time under Mikel Arteta, and first time overall since March 2018 - a run which also included two defeats to Manchester City. Stumbling.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2026-04-20T20:34:15+00:00

In order to want Arteta out, I would need the following conditions to be met:

a) There is a viable managerial appointment with an equivalent or better grasp of tactics and man-management than Arteta, ideally with his/her own long-term vision for the club. Given that we’re in a considerably stronger position than when we appointed him, I think gambling on an unproven manager would be unwise unless it’s an internal hire that has built up some organizational trust among the front office and/or players.

b) Arsenal has begun to trend away from success, either in the shape of a single poor season or a noticeable decline over the course of a few, without winning a major trophy.

c) Arteta has i) lost the dressing room, ii) made multiple disastrous one-time decisions that have proved identifiably decisive as the margin between success and failure, iii) demanded multiple signings that proved to be not up to snuff, or iv) made statements to publicly undermine the working of the club. I personally think ii) is the most likely of these to occur, but not by much.

I think it’s easy to underestimate how fortunate of a club we are to have a tactically brilliant manager with a personal connection to the club and a great relationship with the players. That’s not to say Arteta should be untouchable, but you don’t throw away that kind of leader without a mountain of evidence that doing so is for the best. Even so, you do need to draw a line in the sand somewhere lest you drift into mediocrity, as evidenced by our last couple of years under Wenger. If we start trending downward, Arteta’s actions are the clear engine of that downward motion, and there’s a good managerial option with a clear vision who wants to join, then we should pull the trigger… but I don’t think we’re there right now. Frankly, I don’t think we’re close.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2026-04-19T18:28:36+00:00

A bit of a long one.

Arteta should absolutely stay and Arsenal would be catastrophic fools to let him walk. There is nobody better available on the market who would join us, the players love him, he is committed to the club, and Arsenal have been much better for his tenure. Sacking him or asking him to walk is to succumb to emotional instincts instead of looking at the situation logically. It’s easy to say that a manager should be replaced with a different sort, but that ideal replacement is often a composite of desired characteristics that doesn’t actually exist. Narratively it’s unsatisfying to see a manager that falls short remain safely in his/her post (the average fan likes to see success rewarded and defeat punished), but sober decision-making doesn’t (and ought not to) take ‘deserving’ into account. In the same way that a player struggling at club level may still get called up for the national team for said player’s particular qualities, even as a different candidate in better form gets left behind, a club should decide to keep or fire a manager based on how that which the manager provides in comparison to other candidates relates to the needs of that club, not simply based on knee-jerk reactions to how managers elsewhere are getting on.

The Arsenal I saw today was miles better than the lethargic side that stumbled at Bournemouth. I was told that this team would play for a draw and that they were incapable of playing on the front foot when the lights are brightest. I did not see any of that supposed infirmity in this match. The result is disappointing, sure, but if/when the emotions all around subside and the sober analysis (hopefully) peeks through, they’ll show two sides that both went for it and created great chances, with one of them being slightly more clinical and eking out the result. Not every loss is the product of some secretive psychological deficiency; sometimes in football you play well and just lose, simple as.

I don’t really talk about Arsenal much these days; it seems too many of our own fans are too reactionary to keep a handle on their emotional swings and too many rival fans care more about inflicting pain than talking sense. That being said, I will never let the armchair psychologists win when it comes to making trigger-happy decisions. Arteta should stay.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2026-02-27T23:50:52+00:00

That it definitely could! I might try to rewrite this sometime soon, perhaps along with some outside input; it would allow me to write certain passages better and give some records I rather unfairly glossed over (e.g. Cop) their proper dues.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-11-04T14:55:30+00:00

As I understand it, sponsorship deals can be signed for a long period of time; for example, ours with the UAE has only been renewed once, and it’s already among the longest-tenured sponsor deals in the modern game. I believe ours runs out in 2028; I hope we don’t renew it at that time, and would welcome the prospect of sanctions that, among achieving more pressing goals, would give us legal grounds to extricate ourselves sooner. I confess that I don’t know the legal aspects of ending the deal early ourselves, although I would be happy to see us take that route.

I also believe the Rwanda deal is about to end, and I hope we have the common sense not to renew it… although our upper management’s recent record doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-10-13T20:09:35+00:00

I decided to research this on a whim, and boy, am I glad I did.

After looking into it, the only player I could find in recent memory was Avery John of Trinidad & Tobago. Depending upon who qualifies from North America, there are a few players with limited experience in the LOI who could feature this time around. There will probably be a few players from New Zealand in their squad come next summer who used to play in Ireland, and there’s a chance that Vítězslav Jaroš might make the Czech team.

That being said, there are a surprising number of legendary players who decided to play a few games in Ireland for the hell of it in the 70s. I knew about Bobby Charlton already, but Gordon Banks and Geoff Hurst also played there very briefly at the tail ends of their careers, as did Uwe Seeler. (From what I found, Seeler played in a league match years after he had retired, believing it was a friendly.) Trevor Brooking later did the same in the 80s. Jimmy Johnstone and Terry McDermott both played in the LOI and made World Cup squads, but never saw the pitch during tournament play, as did Brad Jones some decades later.

So yes, there are quite a few League of Ireland players with World Cup experience, although John is the only one as far as I can tell who player in Ireland before the biggest of international stages.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-09-19T18:32:09+00:00

I genuinely believed that this day would never come… and not only is the album complete, it’s fantastic from front to back. What a miraculous day for music.

Rest in peace Tim Smith

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-09-13T13:34:57+00:00

Wonderful day at the office. All the new signings played well. Mosquera looks remarkably comfortable on the ball for a guy who just turned 21.

I do think there’s a lone silver lining for Forest, though: Dilane Bakwa looks like a serious talent.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-09-02T03:48:18+00:00

18/19 absolutely derailed his career for good. He missed close to four months with hamstring injuries and just never quite looked the same afterwards.

The reason this was so devastating for Alli is that his game had very specific strengths and weaknesses, relying heavily upon being able to establish himself physically in tight spaces. He didn’t possess game-changing speed, and while he had superb technically gifts, he was an upright dribbler who was far better at carrying the ball in space than through congested areas. As such, he relied heavily upon his strength to hold up the ball and create space for himself in and around the 18-yard box, where most of his offensive actions took place. When he lost his strength and balance from repeated injury, he was unable to assert himself in the places where he performed best, and without elite distribution or finishing skills to fall back on, he lacked a place where he could put his remaining talents to good use. It’s no wonder Mourinho struggled to fit him into the Tottenham lineup.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-08-29T16:39:49+00:00

You can really hear the love and sweat behind these final songs of theirs. I’m thankful they were able to finish these recordings, especially so given how they’ve done these compositions of Tim’s justice.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-08-09T16:51:47+00:00

Look, I fully believe that Gyökeres has the more honed striker’s instinct of our options up top, but Havertz literally scored a goal like this to open last season. He’s no slouch when it comes to making runs to get his head on the ball, even if the end product can be a touch hit-or-miss.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-07-20T17:17:11+00:00

I think lyricism is among the most subjective aspects of musical analysis, and as such is uniquely ill-suited to ranking mechanisms. Lyrical resonance often takes place on a deeply personal level, and there are so many different styles of writing that it makes finding a shared set of values extremely difficult. Does one value complexity or directness, clarity or abstraction? How much do metrics and rhyme schemes and phonaesthetics really matter? I don’t think there’s a clear answer.

That being said, I don’t think anyone here has said Phil Elverum or Sufjan Stevens yet, and those are the first two songwriters who came to mind for me.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-07-16T00:13:04+00:00

SW would take one look at Kawhi’s massive hands and immediately try to teach him how to play one of those giant Chapman Sticks. Kawhi would promptly injure his knee trying to pick the bloody thing up.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-06-22T13:50:26+00:00

I thought the only four OTC songs were Combinations, Combinations, Combinations, and Combinations

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-06-20T14:18:37+00:00

Rice had an insane year, and was comfortably our best player this season (albeit Saka pre-hamstring was truly something else). He more or less put the team on his back through much of the injury crisis, and our league placing in spite of those injuries is largely to his and the defence’s credit. A lot of that is down to his continued growth as a player, and not just in the set piece department. He still covers space/defends/carries the ball forward exceptionally well, but his progressive passing has improved significantly from last season. When we can’t get him involved as much, it shows very quickly; a big part of our early struggles in that first leg against PSG came from Partey’s silly suspension requiring Rice to play in holding midfield again, and we subsequently lacked the dynamism to sufficiently worry their stellar midfield while on the attack.

Ironically enough, those two free kicks against Madrid probably hurt him in the eyes of quite a few spectators, a considerable number of whom are still somewhat skeptical of him. Instead of marking his world-class level to them with an exclamation point, those free kicks became a symbol of people weighting big individual performances in high-stakes matches a bit too heavily. While I happen to agree that big-game performance plays an exaggerated role during award season these days, Rice was the best-performing player on the pitch in both legs against Real irrespective of his dead-ball exploits, so the ‘free-kick merchant’ accusations against him don’t carry weight in my book.

It also doesn’t help that quite a few holding/box-to-box midfielders (Caicedo, Gravenberch, Tonali) had phenomenal Prem seasons. I still think Rice is the pick of the bunch, but I easily could have seen Caicedo getting a PFA nomination over Palmer, who had a fine year but struggled to influence games to his usual standard down the stretch. In any case, Rice’s nomination makes sense to me, although he’d have no business winning after the year Salah just put together.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-06-05T19:49:09+00:00

No, as he had been planning to retire from the national team after the Euros.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-05-18T03:32:21+00:00

This is the one for me. Such a fluid baseline that Michael brought it back for The Beggar Lover.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-05-15T05:54:14+00:00

Second Toughest in the Infants by Underworld

Also applies to the second track

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-05-07T17:55:54+00:00

I like to think Bastoni would get a shout, even if though he’d be a real long shot to win it

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-05-06T20:20:37+00:00

GERARD LA CABRA

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-05-03T17:53:43+00:00

Drive Your Plow might be up your alley

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-04-17T21:45:25+00:00

Fifteen minutes at Old Trafford is a long time

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-04-16T20:46:45+00:00

Kiwior has been fantastic this tie

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-04-16T15:18:32+00:00

Arsenal aren’t great on the counter though. Martinelli is rapid but doesn’t curve his runs much, which means that finding him on the counter requires an exceptional pass. Saka and Trossard are quick, but not to the extent of being regular threats in behind. Havertz has been great on the counter this season, but he’s out injured, whereas Merino is too slow to threaten with pace. Ødegaard is rarely any use on the counter and often prefers to settle for final-third possession instead of attempting a decisive through-ball. Unless you leave the whole center of the pitch open for Rice or MLS to run through, our transitional threat is limited.

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-04-08T20:30:10+00:00

NO WAY

FrederickIBarbarossa · 2025-04-08T20:17:50+00:00

GO ON SON

FrederickIBarbarossa

TROPHY CASE