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A great character to have around both squads. He actually showed up for a game on the women’s side as well recently iirc. Hope he keeps kicking on and sticks it with us as the cornerstone over many years.
Myles is a weird one. I watch him in games and he does so much right and yet he seems to be held to a much higher standard than any other midfielder at the club. Take Sunderland for example, he made a couple bad passes trying to push the team forward while everything else was right. I’ve seen both Rice and Ødegaard make far more bad passes in a game. Even Saka, Madueke, Gabriel and Saliba and yet when it’s Miles…
One of my original criticisms of Arteta is that he struggles with rotation and I think I lacked understanding at the time. The end answer was correct but the reasoning was wrong. I thought he just had favourites. But I think it’s that he has a vision or how he wants a team to play and certain players don’t fit that cleanly. At the same time though, I actually think those are the players that elevate our game and provide the platform for what he wants to play and I think MLS is one of those.
Arteta like safe, probing football and we have a number vertical players now, which will attempt more risky line breaking passes, it’s their instinct. Miles is one of them, but Miles is also great in possession, intelligent on the ball and knows when to lay it off for a simple pass. Bruno looks to pass forwards too. But for these passes to really flourish, we need to play Madueke and Gyökeres, players that are happy to run straight at goal and shoot, rather than probe around the box.
Or, yknow, Martinelli…
Pretty much agree fully with this besides the spelling of Myles, though I think the high standards on him is probably a good thing. All the other players you’ve mentioned have already developed to be near or at their peaks, at least in terms of mentality. Myles is still young, we cannot afford for him to think “good enough” is okay, so Arteta puts the pressure on more.
But also definitely there’s a part of it which is that Arteta has too much of that Barca / Pep gene and wants to play more controlling and horizontal than suits the squad / the demands of certain teams like Brighton and PSG. Albeit there’s definitely a selection bias from me here given those are the two main games we’ve lost in a bad way recently.
Also, I wonder if Ben White’s drop off has to do with it. Timber is great but he’s no Benny Blanco overlapping Saka. And obviously Saka’s injuries have made a difference too.
