I'd like my money back please

First of all, the Europa League.

I was riding my bike while watching Arsenal go 1-0 behind to Rapid Vienna.  I stopped my workout because I was not really ready to do a long workout.  And then we scored a couple of goals after I stopped.  An omen?

Then I rode my bike again while paying 15 pounds (Arsenal v Leicester) to watch Lacazette miss an open goal from 2 yards right in the middle of goal.  And we lost 1-0 to an inevitable Vardy goal.  We should have signed the bugger and saved ourselves some grief.  And I was seriously considering stopping my workout when we looked like we could not score - except that Vardy scored very late, and by then my formula had too little time to work with=)

And yesterday, I paid another 15 to watch us get thumped by Aston Villa.  And this was on the very last weekend of this pay per view experiment.

One of the lowest points in recent years for sure but I am not sure where to rank it.  The 8-2 against United?  The 10-2 over 2 legs against Bayern?  Yeah but that's Bayern, and United.  This was Aston Villa.  Though they did thump Liverpool 7-2 in this crazy season.  And on the same weekend when Spurs did Man U 6-1.  So we got off lightly heh.  But on a more serious note...

And the knives are out for Arteta already.  It's almost like a microcosm of the Wenger era, compressed into 10 months.  He did himself no favours by winning the FA Cup, with some luck but he certainly got his share of the new manager bounce. In a knockout competition (or a one-off like the Community Shield), he has demonstrated impressive motivational and organisational powers.  Expectations shot up, even for me, though in the back of my mind I probably knew it was unrealistic.  We live in an era where people are impatient and ignore all the work that needs to be done in any worthwhile project.

But life's like that no?  We take the good things and the good times for granted, thinking they will never end.  And when we fail to recognise the warning signs and things start going sour, we want the good times to come back, now.

This impatience and more worryingly, anger is something we need to be more mindful of.  If it was just impatience, that's not so bad.  Social media has given people a platform to rant and vent and in previous times, the ability to let off steam was usually a good thing.  Get it off your chest, and in the context of football fans, probably have a drink with your mates and laugh it off.  But social media has a tendency to amplify such sentiments, and the countervailing opinions as well, and the back and forth just amps it up even further.  Instead of dissipating, it is all too easy to find trolls or like-minded opinions to keep the toxicity alive.

I hope the atmosphere will improve, because I like Arteta and hope he gets sufficient time and opportunity to get his ideas across.  He may have worked minor miracles with the team he inherited and let's not downplay that point.  The team is largely the same as the one Emery left.  They have over-achieved in the short time Arteta has been in charge.

Performance, or the assessment of it, is such a difficult topic.  It is easy to focus solely on the outcomes but that ignores the process, the journey involved.  We paint ridiculous narratives an expectations in our heads.  Klopp took a few years to get to where Liverpool are today.  Even Guardiola took a few years with almost unlimited resources.

Is player power to blame?  Is it a coincidence that Ozil, Willian and even Aubameyang declined after signing new deals?  The new contract slump - in stark contrast to a new manager bounce.  There's a lot of talk about formations, tactics and what not and while I think there is some merit to those arguments, none of them alone can explain our current situation.  Player power is good from the perspective of players of course.  But if capitalism has taught us anything, it is that there is a price to pay somewhere else.  Mega-contracts can motivate, but they can also de-motivate, cause envy and jealousy and any big club ought to be aware of this.

The other possibility is the sentiment I expressed earlier - that this was just Aston Villa and we were expected to win.  We never looked at the races and deserved what we got out of this game.  Nothing.

We are no longer a top 6 team but we still think we are.  And in any case, something has shifted in the power dynamic anyway with Liverpool, Man City and United all suffering shock heavy losses.  Even powerhouses in other leagues have stumbled. Bayern, Real Madrid, PSG...

Lastly, I think this is a lasting legacy of Wenger. We are a Goldilocks team that needs the conditions to be 'just right' to perform and win.  When things don't go our way, we throw up our hands and whine, but we hardly ever fight back.  It is quite infuriating.