Arsenal Vs Burnley: Mikel Arteta discovering limitations

Mikel Arteta has had an impact on the Arsenal team. Improvements are being made. But as Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Burnley illustrates, he is discovering the limitations of the personnel.

There is only so much a manager can do. This is even more pertinent when that manager has been in charge for less than two months, has not had any money to spend, and inherited a confused and lost team midway through a season. But new Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta has had an impact on his team.

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While victories have been difficult to come by and a complete 90-minute performance is still missing, the underlying processes of the team have improved markedly. The pressing has more energy and organisation, the passing is crisper and quicker, there is a greater commitment and application from the players.

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However, while all of these positive developments illustrate Arteta’s strong coaching input and suggest that the future will be bright under his stewardship, the results have been frustrating. Blown leads, a lack of creativity and goals, a seemingly unending number of draws, the improvements that Arteta has made have not quite taken full effect just yet.

Speaking in his post-match press conference after Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Burnley, Arteta recognised the inconsistencies of his team:

"“We need more consistency <…> we were fantastic in some moments, but were so sloppy and put ourselves in big trouble with a lot of unnecessary situations that we have to improve, because that gives the opponent an opportunity where there is a real scenario for nothing to happen. We need to improve that a lot.”"

The point is quite clear: there is only so much that a coach can do with the current collection of players at the club. Now, that is not to say that Arsenal’s squad is particularly poor. It isn’t. But Arteta has not been able to mould into his image. No one would with just weeks to work with a new squad, weeks that have been stocked full of matches, limiting the practice time.

At several positions in the team, Arteta is finding that his hands are tied. Alexandre Lacazette is not scoring, Mesut Ozil is not creating, Bukayo Saka is not a left-back, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and David Luiz have been suspended. Arteta is dealing with a squad that is not ready to compete with the elite teams in the league.

He has put the players into much more advantageous positions than either Freddie Ljungberg or Unai Emery was able to. There is clear progress to the style with which Arsenal are playing and the individual situations that players are consistently finding themselves in. But at some point, you need the players to produce, and that is where Arteta is stalling.

There is only so much a manager can do. Arteta is doing all he can to change Arsenal’s fortunes, and he is having an impact. But he is now discovering the limitations of the personnel.