- Apart from the results is any football reporting actually correct?
- Ludicrous schedules, anti-Arsenal media, invented tales, declining eyesight
So we have been debating Arteta’s alleged lack of rotation (see It is absolute nonsense to say Arteta does not rotate“) and what do we find? A commentary in the Telegraph changes its approach utterly following Untold’s stats, suggesting that Trossard suffers because Arteta rotates too much.
Ah well, it is good to know that Untold with its interest in what is actually happening rather than the anti-Arsenal inventions that the media publish, can still have a little influence on journos.
The article in question praises Leandro Trossard for scoring “all manner of goals in his 15 months as an Arsenal player, from back-post tap-ins to precise curlers” and notes in the headline that “Data that shows Leandro Trossard is one of the Premier League’s most lethal finishers.”
But (and this is the eye-catching bit) “The Belgian is not a guaranteed starter under Mikel Arteta,” presumably because, well, not to put too fine a point on it Arteta likes to rotate.
And this despite Trossard being the sort of player “every team needs”, one “who can turn half-chances into goals with some regularity.”
Thus within a matter of days we have moved from “Mikel Arteta does not rotate and exhausted Arsenal are paying price” in the Telegraph to “The Belgian is not a guaranteed starter” despite his ability to score, IN THE SAME NEWSPAPER.
And this is interesting not just because it is so utterly contradictory and helps point out the nonsense of newspapers every day, but because “Trossard is averaging a goal every 136 minutes for Arsenal. That is, by some distance, the best ratio of any player in Mikel Arteta’s squad (second is Bukayo Saka, with a goal every 196 minutes. Excluding penalties, Saka falls to a goal every 271 minutes).”
So yes, Arteta still emerges with question marks over his tactics, but while last week it was his failure to rotate making the players exhausted, this week it is over-rotation meaning that Arsenal’s top striker on a goals per minute basis, doesn’t get enough games.
And just in case you would like to know here is the list for Arsenal’s top five scorers, re-presented from data within the Telegraph article. And just to make it quite clear, this data comes from the newspaper that FOUR DAYS AGO ran the headline “Mikel Arteta does not rotate and exhausted Arsenal are paying price.”
*The data below excludes penalties
| Player | Minutes played | Goals | Minutes per goal |
| Leandro Trossard | 1,901 | 14 | 136 |
| Bukayo Saka | 3,522 | 13 | 271 |
| Kai Havertz | 3394 | 9 | 977 |
| Martin Odegaard | 3599 | 9 | 400 |
| Gabril Martinelli | 2472 | 8 | 309 |
But according to the Telegraph, “No Arsenal player has better shooting accuracy than Trossard’s 57 per cent, and his shot conversion rate (24 per cent) is the best in the squad. ” And yet because of his rotation policy (which until last week simply did not exist and was Arteta’s main failing) he doesn’t get to play in every game.
And yet “Prior to Sunday’s matches, only seven players in the division had scored at a faster rate in all competitions this season, and three of those (Liverpool’s Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah, and Brighton’s Joao Pedro) have played in the Europa League, rather than the Champions League.”
In fact Trossard has the fourth highest minutes per goal ratio in the league. What a shame then that he plays for a manager who rotates so much AND a manager who simply won’t rotate, and is thus destroying the chances of the club winning the league.
In fact, Trossard’s goals-per-minute ratio in all competitions is shown in the Telegraph article to be “almost identical to Chelsea’s Cole Palmer, who is the joint-top scorer in the Premier League and is given the responsibility of taking penalties for his side. All of Trossard’s goals, by contrast, have come from open play.”
The Telegraph goes on, “In other teams and other systems, Trossard would be the sort of player that a manager would build his attack around. At Arsenal, this will probably never be the case.”
Because of player rotation. Except, just four days before in the self same paper… we were clearly informed that…
“A lack of rotation is, once again, a potentially crucial factor. For so much of his Arsenal tenure, Arteta has trusted only a small group of key players. In previous years, it led to those same players featuring in almost every minute of every game.”
So there we are. In the same newspaper just four days apart, “A lack of rotation” and so much rotation.
Of course one has to feel sorry for those Arsenal supporters who pick up the latest story and run with it, only to find that four days later it is totally contradicted. The media makes them look like total chumps.
But then, that is what the media aims to do: to make the supporters feel stupid, and make their writers and editors seem superior. The only questions remaining are why do newspapers do it and why do bloggers pick up these stories and re-run them?
FROM “ARTETA DOESN’T ROTATE” TO “HE ROTATES TOO MUCH” IN ONE WEEK
And this from the previous article is a perfect example of exactly that:
Al m a complete and utter hypocrite.
This is Al m said on the15 April 2024 at 9:09 AM
“Complete nonsense article frankly. Just an over the top reaction of a different kind to the tsar pathetic and utterly predictable capitulation as Arteta unnecessarily tinkered with his team”.
So, when Arteta does rotate, Al m calls it, ‘unnecessary tinkering’.
But in the next breath on 21 April 2024 at 5:15 PM he says ‘Lack of rotation is not a myth’.
So lets re cap:
On the one hand he thinks there is a lack of rotation but on the other hand when Arteta does rotate it is ‘unnecessary tinkering’.
As I said. Utter hypocrite.
The thing is, as I said a couple of weeks ago, before every match we all have I ideas as to what team we would start. During the match we would all have our own ideas as to who to take off or bring on. But the point is in a room of 100 people you would probably have at least 100 different ideas. That is the nature of the beast.
In an ideal World we would all know the best 11 and be able to start and finish every match with that best 11, but we all know it is not an ideal World. Players need resting, some more than others. Some make an impact from the bench, some do not. Some improve for continuous matches some go stale. Some can carry knocks, some can not.
And guess who knows all these things better than me, you, the media, and of course Al m. Yep Arteta and his coaching team.
But some people are so up themselves they think they know better. And what makes it worse is that they all know better, AFTER the match.
But of course if the team out there does score that crucial late winner, or hangs on to that slender lead, we don’t hear about what they were screaming at the manger do we. We don’t hear about the changes THEY would of made do we.
At Wolves we hung in there and eventually tied it up with a late second.
But I don’t doubt for one second certain ‘fans’ who shall remain nameless were screaming that this player or that player should of started. This player or that player should of come off. This player or that player should of come on.
And my God we would of all heard about it if we didn’t hang on. If Wolves had grabbed a late equaliser. They would of been on here telling us how our ‘Tsar’ got it all wrong. How he should of done this that and the other.
But, we did hang on. We did win. So we hear nothing. No, I would of done that and I would of been wrong, because of course these ‘hindsight’ managers are NEVER wrong.
When we win it’s what they would of done. When we lose they would of done something different.
Selective, hind sight managers. Journalists, pundits and fans that are all experts ‘after’ the event.
Me, I like to leave the management of the team to the experts. For some reason I actually believe they know better than me.
Completely agree Nitram. You know for most of the matches I don’t even bother to see who is starting. Because…. well I believe the manager will make the best choice. And whoever plays…. I will support them no matter what. Yes I do like some players more than others but that doesn’t mean they would perform better than the one that the manager picked.
Walter
“You know for most of the matches I don’t even bother to see who is starting. Because…. well I believe the manager will make the best choice”
Exactly. And perhaps, just perhaps he knows a little more than me?
But of course we all have our own ideas. Sometimes I think perhaps X should start and not Y. Or Y should come off and not X. But I’m not the manager. I don’t profess to know for one second what would be best. And just because we don’t win I certainly don’t start calling the manager a ‘Tsar’ just because he might not of done exactly what I would of done.
I mean, when that insult was thrown at Arteta we had just lost our first match of the year. You simply couldn’t make it up.
A common synonym for rotate is “spin”.
Now it all makes sense.