Pep to leave at the end of the season

Each to their own mate.

Like you say, football is entertainment - and if I were a season ticket holder at Arsenal, I know for a fact I wouldn’t be satisfied that the football I was paying all that money to see qualified as ‘entertainment’ in any logical, meaningful sense of the word.

Does it get results? This season it has, but there hasn’t been a lot to show for the previous six years, whilst Arteta worked his way towards finally settling on his title winning formula.

And I’m perfectly willing to accept when one of our rivals has a world class coach.

Klopp came across as an insufferable **** of a man - a raging, wildly unfettered ego gland, firing off arrogant, self-congratulatory tirades with scarcely a moment’s encouragement - but he was an exceptional coach, and his Liverpool team was hugely entertaining to watch. And if he hadn’t suffered the misfortune of being up against Pep’s City during his peak years, he’d have won a lot more trophies than he did.

So it’s not necessarily all about trophies. It’s as much about their approach to the game, the tactics they employ, and their capacity to innovate in the ideas they bring to their teams.

In my view, Arteta achieved very little of any note in six years before this season using ideas he’d learned under Pep, then decided he’d change tactics completely - and try to win by strangling the life out of the game, breaking up play constantly, abandoning any attempt to score from open play, and playing for set pieces, with the emphasis on focusing tactical fouls around the execution of those set pieces to improve their margins.

Pragmatic - I’d agree with that.

Cynical - absolutely.

Entertaining - not for me.

People talk about Allardyce and Pulis in reference to Arteta because the tactics he’s emphasised are essentially the same as theirs.

It may have been effective this year, but it’s hideous to watch - and it’s not an approach that’s built for the long term.

And even then, they came a whisker from losing it all to a pretty average City team by our own standards.

I’m not being tribal when I say I can’t see anything special in him as a coach. I’m happy to admit when we’re up against someone special, and this guy simply does not qualify into that category for me.
Excellent Summary
 
Sorry - misread as before the FA cup final. Even or more so, WHY would City back off with only 2 games to go? This was leaked before we knew Arse had won the Burnley game. The league was still potentially there for us after the FA cup final
As I said above, assuming they wanted to tell us before Sunday what do you suggest the optimum moment was?
 
He is ahead of Maresca for me. He has done an extraordinary job at Bournemouth.
I loved the pace of their play - it seemed that every player was looking for the chance to break, but still not at the expense of being wide open at the back.

I've always thought that a front 6 should be able to attack on their own merits, without full backs coming up just to step on each other's toes. It helped that we weren't looking to exploit any gaps they may have left, but they still looked pretty sound. Similar shots/shots on target to us the other night.

Our most lethal weapon would love to play for him, I'm sure.

Like you, I'd consider him before Maresca. How many starters does Maresca know really well, anyway?
 
As I said above, assuming they wanted to tell us before Sunday what do you suggest the optimum moment was?
Why couldn't they have allowed the manager to release it in their own time, like they have with, oh I don't know, every other legendary manager that's announced they're leaving?
 
Like most blues i was gutted hearing that he would leave this summer. Having come to terms of it becoming true, unless Pep mentors Maresca for the remaining season he has left i think it's best if he leaves soon so Maresca can become manager.

I can't see the point in Pep kicking stones down the road another season allowing Maresca to choose another club. I think us blues deserve to know what the fuck is going on either way.
 
Each to their own mate.

Like you say, football is entertainment - and if I were a season ticket holder at Arsenal, I know for a fact I wouldn’t be satisfied that the football I was paying all that money to see qualified as ‘entertainment’ in any logical, meaningful sense of the word.

Does it get results? This season it has, but there hasn’t been a lot to show for the previous six years, whilst Arteta worked his way towards finally settling on his title winning formula.

And I’m perfectly willing to accept when one of our rivals has a world class coach.

Klopp came across as an insufferable **** of a man - a raging, wildly unfettered ego gland, firing off arrogant, self-congratulatory tirades with scarcely a moment’s encouragement - but he was an exceptional coach, and his Liverpool team was hugely entertaining to watch. And if he hadn’t suffered the misfortune of being up against Pep’s City during his peak years, he’d have won a lot more trophies than he did.

So it’s not necessarily all about trophies. It’s as much about their approach to the game, the tactics they employ, and their capacity to innovate in the ideas they bring to their teams.

In my view, Arteta achieved very little of any note in six years before this season using ideas he’d learned under Pep, then decided he’d change tactics completely - and try to win by strangling the life out of the game, breaking up play constantly, abandoning any attempt to score from open play, and playing for set pieces, with the emphasis on focusing tactical fouls around the execution of those set pieces to improve their margins.

Pragmatic - I’d agree with that.

Cynical - absolutely.

Entertaining - not for me.

People talk about Allardyce and Pulis in reference to Arteta because the tactics he’s emphasised are essentially the same as theirs.

It may have been effective this year, but it’s hideous to watch - and it’s not an approach that’s built for the long term.

And even then, they came a whisker from losing it all to a pretty average City team by our own standards.

I’m not being tribal when I say I can’t see anything special in him as a coach. I’m happy to admit when we’re up against someone special, and this guy simply does not qualify into that category for me.
Couldn't put better myself
 
the reaction of many on here to transfer rumours and reports is to believe them only when there is official confirmation. I don't want Pep to go, i don't know if he is going or staying. I won't believe either until there is an official club statement.

And considering it's almost 72 hours since the "news /leak" broke it is bizarre that nothing has come out yet, really weird
 
I loved the pace of their play - it seemed that every player was looking for the chance to break, but still not at the expense of being wide open at the back.

I've always thought that a front 6 should be able to attack on their own merits, without full backs coming up just to step on each other's toes. It helped that we weren't looking to exploit any gaps they may have left, but they still looked pretty sound. Similar shots/shots on target to us the other night.

Our most lethal weapon would love to play for him, I'm sure.

Like you, I'd consider him before Maresca. How many starters does Maresca know really well, anyway?
To be fair they had acres of space to play in given our positioning and formation, and the fact we were totally fucked. Great manager yes but most teams will go toe to toe with Bournemouth, it's not the same as what we face every week.
 
Why couldn't they have allowed the manager to release it in their own time, like they have with, oh I don't know, every other legendary manager that's announced they're leaving?
99% of managers are sacked and the press tell us long before the official announcement!
 
As I said above, assuming they wanted to tell us before Sunday what do you suggest the optimum moment was?
Why would I assume they wanted to tell us before Sunday? The title was still on at the point the news broke. Had it still been on going into Sunday I wouldn't have wanted anyone distracted from trying to win it
 
99% of managers are sacked and the press tell us long before the official announcement!
Pep hasn't been sacked though, so comparing him to someone who has got the sack doesn't make sense. Klopp got to announce his departure in a cosy conference room being interviewed by a member of club staff. United announced SAF on the Wednesday before the final home game of the season. Wenger got to announce the terms of his own departure well on advance (even with it being widely speculated about). Why did we get the treatment we got with the constant questions and then the leak before one of the biggest games of the season when they didn't get their own way?
 
Pep hasn't been sacked though, so comparing him to someone who has got the sack doesn't make sense. Klopp got to announce his departure in a cosy conference room being interviewed by a member of club staff. United announced SAF on the Wednesday before the final home game of the season. Wenger got to announce the terms of his own departure well on advance (even with it being widely speculated about). Why did we get the treatment we got with the constant questions and then the leak before one of the biggest games of the season when they didn't get their own way?

Great point.
 
That's not really how it works, though. Listen to the latest episode of Let Me Talk. Sam Lee explains how this has all come about. These stories about Pep leaving have been ready for weeks/months now, but City have been standing in the way so the legal departments at these various newspapers have advised their writers to hold off on publishing. After the FA Cup final it seems City backed off from a legal standpoint so the dam burst. Ollie Holt went first, then the likes of David Ornstein, Sam Lee, Jack Gaughan etc. had to hastily get everything together. They could have dropped the story before the Arsenal game to fuck us over, or the FA Cup final to fuck us over, or even the League Cup final. But they didn't because City have blocked the story from a legal point of view. After the FA Cup final City seemed to step aside so the button was pushed.
I doubt City have the power to block any Press Story from a Legal point of view short of some kind of injunction other than withholding future access etc -the implication is that the Press Legal departments doubted the veracity of the stories
 
Pep hasn't been sacked though, so comparing him to someone who has got the sack doesn't make sense. Klopp got to announce his departure in a cosy conference room being interviewed by a member of club staff. United announced SAF on the Wednesday before the final home game of the season. Wenger got to announce the terms of his own departure well on advance (even with it being widely speculated about). Why did we get the treatment we got with the constant questions and then the leak before one of the biggest games of the season when they didn't get their own way?
Ok so tell me an area of life where stories aren't leaked before an official announcement?
All the examples you have come up with were long before the actual departure, it's reasonable that in those instances nobody else actually knew. Pep and City (wisely IMO) have decided they weren't going to make an early announcement.
I'm not defending the press, but there job is to report news and make money from it there not going to hold back from that regardless of who it affects. If you think that in the cases you came up with they would have held back your extremely naive.
 
I completely disagree that the players didn’t know. If you watch the Bernardo and Guehi interviews after the FA Cup, their reactions aren’t remotely ‘what are you talking about?’ And they’d have seen the same Pep interviews we all did — it was obvious to a lot of us he was going, regardless of what he said publicly. So they can’t have been deeply affected by something they already knew. For me, the league was gone when we drew with Everton anyway. If someone really wanted to derail us, dropping the story before the FA Cup final would’ve made far more sense — they might’ve even got two for the price of one.

Assuming City does actually want to tell at some point before Sunday, what is the optimum time?
This evening?
 
Everybody would be a question mark after Pep. Other best coaches like Enrique, Kompany, Arteta are not available.

Emery, Iraola, all could be great and all could be a flop at the very highest level as pretty much Emery has been during his PSG or Arsenal tenures.
Before Vinnie went to Bayern, having seen Burnley relegated, would you have had him as a 'best coach'? I was amazed he was offered that gig, but it was obviously a great call from whoever made it.

Couldn't Iraola be at that stage right now?
 
Ok so tell me an area of life where stories aren't leaked before an official announcement?
All the examples you have come up with were long before the actual departure, it's reasonable that in those instances nobody else actually knew. Pep and City (wisely IMO) have decided they weren't going to make an early announcement.
I'm not defending the press, but there job is to report news and make money from it there not going to hold back from that regardless of who it affects. If you think that in the cases you came up with they would have held back your extremely naive.
That's just not how it works. The media hold back on reporting stuff they "know" all the time for all sorts of reasons. It also requires you to believe that they didn't "know" on those other occasions.

There's even a whole category of news called embargoed news where the release the media gets carries a bar across it saying "Don't publish before X date." The club has all sorts of cards it can play in this regard from future access to general goodwill.

I think the club runs generally a quite sophisticated media operation, so doubt that they would have dropped the ball this heavily.
 
Fantastic mate. I echo all of that.
Brought a tear. It's been a week, I've slept really badly since Monday, and keep welling up. I'm an FOc girl, I know about emotion and this is painful. I feel like I did when Colin The King passed, heavy and sad.

Pep has given us a wonderful decade, I'm grateful. I'll miss him like one of my own. I just want the closure now, wait fir next seasons fixtures ( so I can rant how they stitch us up with lousy long journeys away over the festive season), how we get tough fixtures around the time of the CL ko rounds, and just forget VArsanal were gifted that title. I need a break from footy, but I know I'll keep looking on BM every day for my fix, I certainly won't be watching anything on Sly Sports or buying any papers.

Let's give Bernie and Jonny BOY and his signing cagoule a right royal send off.

Nothing lasts forever, but by god it was good when we had it.

So many memories of Pep. One of my earliest when I knew we would win the PL was Kevs incredible goal at Chelsea, September 2017. That team was something else and we are so fortunate to have witnessed a decade of pure Pep. X
 

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