{"id":9318,"date":"2021-12-28T16:19:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-28T15:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1543037"},"modified":"2021-12-28T16:35:12","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T15:35:12","slug":"lee-dixon-on-arsenal-progress-mikel-artetas-strengths-and-weaknesses-and-predictions-for-2021-22","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/lee-dixon-on-arsenal-progress-mikel-artetas-strengths-and-weaknesses-and-predictions-for-2021-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee Dixon on Arsenal progress, Mikel Arteta\u2019s strengths and weaknesses and predictions for 2021\/22"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Michael Potts\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 28 December 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

Lee Dixon has tipped Arsenal to cement their place in the Premier League top four as the potentially season-defining Christmas period of matches goes full steam ahead.<\/p>\n

Dixon \u2013 who was due to be on punditry duty for Arsenal\u2019s postponed clash with Wolves for Amazon Prime Video \u2013 ran the rule over his former team at the halfway stage of the season in an exclusive chat with RadioTimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He believes credit must go to the club for backing Mikel Arteta\u2019s vision of a young, hungry, developing squad, and he also supports the project Arteta is implementing at the Emirates, though he admits there will be bumps along the road to glory.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s been very up and down, not only performance-wise but expectations-wise, perception-wise, from what people perceive the team should be doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you said at the start of the season, before a ball was kicked, on Boxing Day they\u2019re going to be halfway through the in fourth, you would obviously, definitely take that because that\u2019s an improvement. That\u2019s showing we\u2019ve moved to a slightly higher level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe football of late, and the development of the team, has been very, very good. My old school thoughts on the club is that \u2018fourth is a disaster, we should either be first or second\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we have to modify our expectations ourselves as pundits, as being a fan of a club and an ex-player. You\u2019ve got lots of different viewpoints on where the club should be but I\u2019m a little bit more pragmatic when I look at it. I\u2019d give it a 7.5\/10.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a real challenge on now for fourth place. They\u2019ve earned that right to fight for that spot. I\u2019m excited about that because the fact that we\u2019re challenging for fourth spot is huge improvement from last year.\u201d<\/p>
Arteta has come under intense scrutiny on a number of occasions throughout his fledgling Arsenal reign, particularly at the start of the season after the club lost their opening three matches of the campaign.<\/p>\n
However, the Spanish boss has steered the ship into calmer waters thanks to a crew of enthusiastic youngsters pitching in with bristling performances.<\/p>\n
When asked which stars in particular have caught his eye, Dixon believes the youthful team unit itself has been the driving force in recent success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to pinpoint one of them because I think the ability and the togetherness of the group is probably the key to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast season, we were looking at Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka basically carrying the team a lot of the time. The team has developed into spreading the load a bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmith Rowe is not in the team at the moment, he\u2019s sort of flitting in and out and I think that\u2019s a good thing because it enables Arteta to give them a bit of a rest and he couldn\u2019t have rested him really last season because they were everything to the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where the development is pretty obvious because we\u2019re now looking at different areas of the pitch. We\u2019re now focusing on members of the back four, [Takehiro] Tomiyasu and how they\u2019re linking up, the partnership between Gabriel and Ben White.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also think Martin Odegaard, he wasn\u2019t disappointing, he just didn\u2019t really set the place alight when last season, but he\u2019s come in now and he seems a lot more settled. We\u2019ve seen a lot more creative stuff from him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the fact that Arteta is not afraid of throwing the kids out there with structure but I think we\u2019ve all been a little bit surprised that he\u2019s not changed the style of play against certain other teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you try to coach a set of youngsters a certain way, hammering in playing out from the back and doing the right thing and all this lot, they haven\u2019t got the experience to be able to change it up, and then know when to change it up on the pitch. They haven\u2019t got that experience, that back catalogue of being under pressure and knowing they need to just do this for 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes they just keep trying to play through that against the better teams, but sometimes just need to stop the rot and actually do some defending as a block.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Arteta\u2019s first job. He\u2019s going to get some of those things wrong so I\u2019m not going to criticise him for bad coaching, I\u2019m not a coach, he\u2019s a far better coach and a judge than than I am. But as he goes through his coaching career, he\u2019s going to learn all the stuff that Pep [Guardiola] and [Jurgen] Klopp know now, because they\u2019ve made the mistakes before.<\/p>\n
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