by Scott Willis
I asked people to fill out their opinions on how they felt things were going at Arsenal earlier this week, now it is time to take a look at the results.
First let's take a look at the general feeling that people have for the team:
I don't have the data for it (thus why I started this) but I bet a month ago things would be vastly different. Currently two thirds of Arsenal fans who participated in this survey feel positive about Arsenal, breaking that down a little further 6% felt very positive about Arsenal currently. 10% of Arsenal fans had a negative view of the team but less than 1% had a very negative view. In general, I would feel comfortable saying that the early results and performances under Mikel Arteta have made people feel a lot better about the direction of the team.
The head Coach:
I am sure there are still holdouts who aren't sold on Arteta for some reason or another but those people didn't get included in the nearly 600 people who ended up taking this survey. Overall only 0.5% of respondents don't approve of the job that Arteta is doing. This is for sure the honeymoon stage and unless things go perfect it is unlikely that he will be able to have near unanimous support among fans.
Head Of Football
Arsenal's Head of Football, Raul Sanllehi does not share the same level of support as the head coach. If we looked at this following the summer transfer window maybe things would have been more favorable for him but the narrative that came out during the last months of the Unai Emery reign was that he was still a believer in him (going so far as looking to extend his contract in the summer) and it wasn't until almost all hope of top 4 was gone that he seemed to be convinced that a change was needed. From my own perspective, this plus still being uncertain about his transfer style of agent contacts has me on the fence about him. The fall from "Don Raul" has been pretty swift.
Director of Football:
Edu is the second newest member of the Arsenal management team but he has the least publicly defined role (besides looking great in a suit for official club duties) and that shows in these ratings. This will be an interesting one to watch as time goes on.
Arsenal's Attack:
This isn't a surprising result to me, Arsenal's talent is heavily concentrated in the attacking side of the ball and the early results from Arteta is that he is going to do things to unleash them. I do have some sympathy for the 3% who have negative feelings about Arsenal's attack because even though things look like they are going to be moving in the right direction, this team still feels below where we have seen Arsenal in the recent past.
Arsenal's Midfield:
I was a little surprised by this one. I am in general fairly positive about Arsenal's midfield and I think that the early results of Arteta show that their is talent there if it isn't misallocated and played out of position. Maybe the plurality of people are talking a wait and see approach to this. I do think that this will be an area that Arsenal will need to strengthen in the summer but there are talented players here.
Arsenal's Defense:
That the defense has the lowest ratings is not surprising. This is the biggest weakness in the current team and has been for a number of years, probably going back to when Mertesacker and Koscielny were in their primes. 17% of respondents had a very negative view on Arsenal's defense, so to get some easy gains going from a disaster at the back to just bad would be helpful. Some strengthening in January, even it was just a loan, would probably also be welcome according to Arsenal fans.
That's it for this week. Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. I will look to do another one of these in 2 weeks and then on a continuing basis to be able to track the trends. I might add some questions along recruitment and maybe a couple other things but i still want to keep this to a quick survey to encourage as many as people as possible to fill it out.