You can't just excuse Arbeloa's faults as 'inexperience'. He's been in football long enough to know how this works, and some of it is just basic common sense. He is publically calling out players and showing blatant favouritism after just 3 games, it is outstandingly immature and petulant - it's Igor Tudor levels of incompetence. As a new, inexperienced manager, he really needs to get the most out of the players he's got, and to do that you have to take them on the journey with you, not just shovel out a load of non-negotiable demands. He hasn't earned that right, he has to earn the respect of the players before being so publically castigating. As it stands Arebloa's managerial acheivements amount to sweet f.a., so he needs to be very careful about how he conducts himself. I'm not saying he can't give players a good roasting, but there is the right way to do it, and this isn't it. Fulham is not a big or strong enough club to withstand a disenfranchised dressing room.
Also, players shouldn't just be measured by how much they run around, regardless of the style you are trying to play. Look back to last season and you'll see ESR actually ran his socks off employing a pretty effective press. OK, he hasn't lived up to the fee or expectations, and he is a quiet rather than demonstrative player, but I think it's a fallacy that he just swans about and doesn't work hard.
But ultimately this is Tony Khan's fault, he should never have employed Arbeloa in the first place, because he's simply not a good enough manager for Fulham.
Some factual comments first: Arbaloa made the comment about the two Castilla lads in direct response to a question at the Presser about how he felt those two played. He didn't choose to only highlight their performance. The Tete comment is not supported other than "a guy who works with my sister's boyfriend, knows someone who met Tete on his Lime bike." I could also imagine his dropping him being more about acknowledging that after the upset of the failed transfer AA gave Kenny the weekend off to get his head together for next week. What grown men do on their social media is hard to judge in terms of what it really means, partly as some of them have other people managing it for them, partly as its social media for god's sake not casting of the runes.
However I do agree, Jack, that the old adage about saying the tough stuff to their faces not in the media, where he should defend his players to the max; I put that down to naivety and also as English is not his first language some nuance does get lost. He will need the full squad for the whole season as people get injured, Kevin, ESR and Tete are key to our success in the long run. However, they need to adapt to the way he wants the team to play. I actually think ESR has run his ass off when called upon, even if last 10 minutes at right wing. Kevin has been underwhelming when called upon so far tho so I understand why he is not getting minutes, let alone a start. I would hope though that AA and his various coaches will be working with the whole squad to get the best out of them, working to tweak his obviously flawed defensive set up.
People are seeing problems all over the pitch but we have played some great football, we have also been guilty of some clown car defending, that is down to both the set up and the players, both are adjustable. I think AA needs to show he can adapt and keep the team happy and focused, neither shown so far but it is 3 weeks in. I hope we turn up at Anfield, even though we will lose, we beat West Ham and get at least a point against Manure.
There was always going to be the “storming” stage with such a change in style and player - nobody likes change, especially the old guard. This new approach may or may not work… after 3 games you can’t judge it either way! It feels like there’s a want for this project not to work, which is a real shame because going forwards its a real exciting watch so far. After 10 games, i get it, but right now I’d love to see a bit more support.
As for the mystical social media posts / disappearance…. I’d hope these professionals would be mature enough to get their heads down and work hard as opposed to make a scene online, especially if you've cost a lot of money and delivered bugger all. COYW
Kevin and ESR have never delivered for Fulham and are vastly over paid for what they have done for the club. ESR has also been a stone overweight for the last two seasons. AA is dealing with some of the deadwood left behind by Silva… Iwobi could fall into this bracket unless he improves his attitude. They are highly paid professionals behave like ones not spoilt children .. but then again maybe that is what they are
Kevin is very young. The club paid so much for him because of his potential, not his output. I think there’s a player in there, and it’s way too early to give up on him. I would not say that Palacios has dazzled to a level that makes his replacement of Kevin in the team obvious, but I guess we don’t know what is happening in training.
Point taken, but if Google is to be believed 19 of those were appearances off the bench, and he is 23 years old, one season out from making the jump from a much less competitive league. I think the makings of a game-changing player are in there, and it’s too early to write him off as deadwood.
I’d take €50m if Roma offered it again. Would love to see him develop into the sort of player we all want him to be, but I'm struggling to see that happen in this team or in this league.
I feel like I’ve seen it in moments, and I have loved how aggressively he works to win the ball back. But there’s often something lacking in the final decision making, and I suppose the worry might be that he is ultimately Adama Traore in disguise? Though I don’t know how Adama would hide all those muscles.
The Tete situation is the most worrying. Surely he should have been on the bench at least. He looked sharp in the cup game. Silva managed to reintegrate him back into the team the last time his transfer to Everton fell through, so maybe Arbeloa's man management needs some work.
And maybe his style of playing would work if we had the quality of players that he is used to working with. But how does that song go? "We're not Real Madrid, we're not Barcelona"
Since being promoted in 2022, Fulham had scored a paltry:
22/23: 55 goals
23/24: 55 goals
24/25: 54 goals
25/26: 47 goals
The reason that Fulham maintained the position in the Premiership was due to a solid back-four line, a top-tier keeper who could make hard saves look routine and a holding midfield with Palhinha and then Berge/Lukic that made it difficult for opposition to get too far away from us in any given match.
The result was a team that could get results from the likes of Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea, etc. But, could frustratingly yield points to Aston Villa, West Ham, Tottenham and Wolves.
Arbeloa was brought in to liven things up. The signings of Palacios, Garcia and Angel were supposed to liven up our attack. The move to get Josh King in the lineup did the same thing. But, the loss of Lukic and the new style of sending Castagne, Bassey and Robinson as attackers in the front half and forcing Andersen and Leno to have to be far more responsive to the flow of the game is not how this back was created and held together through the transfer window.
Arbeloa can complain that the team isn't doing his system correctly (except for the Spaniards...of course...eye roll), but he signed up for this team. He signed up for a team that was built on back four and two holding midfielders and is asking them to be a back two and all-out attack team with largely the same personnel.
Is that a team issue or a manager issue? I think we can expect a lot more goals scored than we've seen by our Cottagers over the balance of the season. I'm predicting a 60+ goals scored team. But, I'm also predicting a 75+ goals against team. That latter part of the stat line would indicate relegation. The last squad to yield >75 goals and not be relegated was the 21/22 Leeds squad. And, they survived on the last day only to finish 19th the following year when they gave up 78 goals.
Can Arbeloa fix things? Yes. But, he has to acknowledge what he has as a squad first and stop pretending it is something it isn't. Otherwise, hoping for a January Transfer Window solution won't fix the cancer that will be allowed to bloom between now and then in the club house.
Its very easy to blame the players on this by saying "they have thrown their toys out of the pram" and so on but this is all on Tony Khan.
We had the perfect manager to consolidate our position in the premier league and yes, it got a bit stale in the last season or maybe 2, but we knew what we were. Hard to beat, competitive and on the right path. That can be easily proven with the finishes in the league and performances in the cups.
Recruitment of players is more important, in my opinion, than recruitment of managers and we have been so poor. Leaving everything to the last minute season after season has driven Silva to Portugal and left another manager scratching their heads at trying to work out what players he has at his disposal on September 1st. We have had zero forward planning for young players and thats how we have got to where we are today.
We have fallen way behind the two sides that came up with us (Bournemouth and Forest), even sides like Sunderland and Leeds, who are bigger clubs but took them a few seasons to get promoted and stay there, have overtaken us. All these sides can lose a few players and not really worry too much.
Us? We lose two players in Raul and Wilson and we are facing relegation.
We have a keeper that should have been replaced 2 seasons ago. Kelleher was the perfect candidate.
We signed a 30 mill defender in Andersen, and now we are looking to replace him with no chance of recovering much of that money back.
We are in deep trouble this season but the fact is, that in the board room we have an absent DOF and thats not acceptable at this level. Has he done some good work? Yes, players like Tete and Robinson have been great servants but we also lost players like Mitrovic and Palhinha and not properly replace them. We also lost Carvalho and Elliott for nominal fees and things like that rarely happen at a well managed club, let alone happen twice.
Arbeloa wasnt the right choice for us after Silva. No real experience and a lot of trust based on potential. Now we are putting that same faith into the same person who has got us into this mess. Tony Khan.
This is Arbeloa’s management style all along. He was the Spartan figure at Castilla. He once publicly questioned Joan Martínez’s level and effort a month after the boy came back from an ACL injury.
All this makes his bootlicking of Vinicius all the more jarring.
You can't just excuse Arbeloa's faults as 'inexperience'. He's been in football long enough to know how this works, and some of it is just basic common sense. He is publically calling out players and showing blatant favouritism after just 3 games, it is outstandingly immature and petulant - it's Igor Tudor levels of incompetence. As a new, inexperienced manager, he really needs to get the most out of the players he's got, and to do that you have to take them on the journey with you, not just shovel out a load of non-negotiable demands. He hasn't earned that right, he has to earn the respect of the players before being so publically castigating. As it stands Arebloa's managerial acheivements amount to sweet f.a., so he needs to be very careful about how he conducts himself. I'm not saying he can't give players a good roasting, but there is the right way to do it, and this isn't it. Fulham is not a big or strong enough club to withstand a disenfranchised dressing room.
Also, players shouldn't just be measured by how much they run around, regardless of the style you are trying to play. Look back to last season and you'll see ESR actually ran his socks off employing a pretty effective press. OK, he hasn't lived up to the fee or expectations, and he is a quiet rather than demonstrative player, but I think it's a fallacy that he just swans about and doesn't work hard.
But ultimately this is Tony Khan's fault, he should never have employed Arbeloa in the first place, because he's simply not a good enough manager for Fulham.
Excellent post.
Can’t believe AA would have been our choice had the naive assumption of Silva staying not been made. TK dazzled by the Madrid connection.
Also, social media… Smith Rowe hasn’t posted anything as such, IIRC. But he is being paid a king’s ransom so he should suck it up!
Some factual comments first: Arbaloa made the comment about the two Castilla lads in direct response to a question at the Presser about how he felt those two played. He didn't choose to only highlight their performance. The Tete comment is not supported other than "a guy who works with my sister's boyfriend, knows someone who met Tete on his Lime bike." I could also imagine his dropping him being more about acknowledging that after the upset of the failed transfer AA gave Kenny the weekend off to get his head together for next week. What grown men do on their social media is hard to judge in terms of what it really means, partly as some of them have other people managing it for them, partly as its social media for god's sake not casting of the runes.
However I do agree, Jack, that the old adage about saying the tough stuff to their faces not in the media, where he should defend his players to the max; I put that down to naivety and also as English is not his first language some nuance does get lost. He will need the full squad for the whole season as people get injured, Kevin, ESR and Tete are key to our success in the long run. However, they need to adapt to the way he wants the team to play. I actually think ESR has run his ass off when called upon, even if last 10 minutes at right wing. Kevin has been underwhelming when called upon so far tho so I understand why he is not getting minutes, let alone a start. I would hope though that AA and his various coaches will be working with the whole squad to get the best out of them, working to tweak his obviously flawed defensive set up.
People are seeing problems all over the pitch but we have played some great football, we have also been guilty of some clown car defending, that is down to both the set up and the players, both are adjustable. I think AA needs to show he can adapt and keep the team happy and focused, neither shown so far but it is 3 weeks in. I hope we turn up at Anfield, even though we will lose, we beat West Ham and get at least a point against Manure.
Baz: Not sure how long you have to learn management in the Premiership. I fear Arbeloa has Felix Magath written all over him.
There was always going to be the “storming” stage with such a change in style and player - nobody likes change, especially the old guard. This new approach may or may not work… after 3 games you can’t judge it either way! It feels like there’s a want for this project not to work, which is a real shame because going forwards its a real exciting watch so far. After 10 games, i get it, but right now I’d love to see a bit more support.
As for the mystical social media posts / disappearance…. I’d hope these professionals would be mature enough to get their heads down and work hard as opposed to make a scene online, especially if you've cost a lot of money and delivered bugger all. COYW
Kevin and ESR have never delivered for Fulham and are vastly over paid for what they have done for the club. ESR has also been a stone overweight for the last two seasons. AA is dealing with some of the deadwood left behind by Silva… Iwobi could fall into this bracket unless he improves his attitude. They are highly paid professionals behave like ones not spoilt children .. but then again maybe that is what they are
Kevin is very young. The club paid so much for him because of his potential, not his output. I think there’s a player in there, and it’s way too early to give up on him. I would not say that Palacios has dazzled to a level that makes his replacement of Kevin in the team obvious, but I guess we don’t know what is happening in training.
Palacios has scored a goal in 2 games . Kevin has played 27 games and has yet to score in the PL?
Point taken, but if Google is to be believed 19 of those were appearances off the bench, and he is 23 years old, one season out from making the jump from a much less competitive league. I think the makings of a game-changing player are in there, and it’s too early to write him off as deadwood.
I’d take €50m if Roma offered it again. Would love to see him develop into the sort of player we all want him to be, but I'm struggling to see that happen in this team or in this league.
I feel like I’ve seen it in moments, and I have loved how aggressively he works to win the ball back. But there’s often something lacking in the final decision making, and I suppose the worry might be that he is ultimately Adama Traore in disguise? Though I don’t know how Adama would hide all those muscles.
The Tete situation is the most worrying. Surely he should have been on the bench at least. He looked sharp in the cup game. Silva managed to reintegrate him back into the team the last time his transfer to Everton fell through, so maybe Arbeloa's man management needs some work.
And maybe his style of playing would work if we had the quality of players that he is used to working with. But how does that song go? "We're not Real Madrid, we're not Barcelona"
You can understand that much of the discontent is coming from the chorus of older, overpaid, players who have been found out.
Tete situation isn’t good, he’ll be needed going forward. It’s true that Smith Rowe has to have more impact, and the same with Kevin
Since being promoted in 2022, Fulham had scored a paltry:
22/23: 55 goals
23/24: 55 goals
24/25: 54 goals
25/26: 47 goals
The reason that Fulham maintained the position in the Premiership was due to a solid back-four line, a top-tier keeper who could make hard saves look routine and a holding midfield with Palhinha and then Berge/Lukic that made it difficult for opposition to get too far away from us in any given match.
The result was a team that could get results from the likes of Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea, etc. But, could frustratingly yield points to Aston Villa, West Ham, Tottenham and Wolves.
Arbeloa was brought in to liven things up. The signings of Palacios, Garcia and Angel were supposed to liven up our attack. The move to get Josh King in the lineup did the same thing. But, the loss of Lukic and the new style of sending Castagne, Bassey and Robinson as attackers in the front half and forcing Andersen and Leno to have to be far more responsive to the flow of the game is not how this back was created and held together through the transfer window.
Arbeloa can complain that the team isn't doing his system correctly (except for the Spaniards...of course...eye roll), but he signed up for this team. He signed up for a team that was built on back four and two holding midfielders and is asking them to be a back two and all-out attack team with largely the same personnel.
Is that a team issue or a manager issue? I think we can expect a lot more goals scored than we've seen by our Cottagers over the balance of the season. I'm predicting a 60+ goals scored team. But, I'm also predicting a 75+ goals against team. That latter part of the stat line would indicate relegation. The last squad to yield >75 goals and not be relegated was the 21/22 Leeds squad. And, they survived on the last day only to finish 19th the following year when they gave up 78 goals.
Can Arbeloa fix things? Yes. But, he has to acknowledge what he has as a squad first and stop pretending it is something it isn't. Otherwise, hoping for a January Transfer Window solution won't fix the cancer that will be allowed to bloom between now and then in the club house.
Its very easy to blame the players on this by saying "they have thrown their toys out of the pram" and so on but this is all on Tony Khan.
We had the perfect manager to consolidate our position in the premier league and yes, it got a bit stale in the last season or maybe 2, but we knew what we were. Hard to beat, competitive and on the right path. That can be easily proven with the finishes in the league and performances in the cups.
Recruitment of players is more important, in my opinion, than recruitment of managers and we have been so poor. Leaving everything to the last minute season after season has driven Silva to Portugal and left another manager scratching their heads at trying to work out what players he has at his disposal on September 1st. We have had zero forward planning for young players and thats how we have got to where we are today.
We have fallen way behind the two sides that came up with us (Bournemouth and Forest), even sides like Sunderland and Leeds, who are bigger clubs but took them a few seasons to get promoted and stay there, have overtaken us. All these sides can lose a few players and not really worry too much.
Us? We lose two players in Raul and Wilson and we are facing relegation.
We have a keeper that should have been replaced 2 seasons ago. Kelleher was the perfect candidate.
We signed a 30 mill defender in Andersen, and now we are looking to replace him with no chance of recovering much of that money back.
We are in deep trouble this season but the fact is, that in the board room we have an absent DOF and thats not acceptable at this level. Has he done some good work? Yes, players like Tete and Robinson have been great servants but we also lost players like Mitrovic and Palhinha and not properly replace them. We also lost Carvalho and Elliott for nominal fees and things like that rarely happen at a well managed club, let alone happen twice.
Arbeloa wasnt the right choice for us after Silva. No real experience and a lot of trust based on potential. Now we are putting that same faith into the same person who has got us into this mess. Tony Khan.
This is Arbeloa’s management style all along. He was the Spartan figure at Castilla. He once publicly questioned Joan Martínez’s level and effort a month after the boy came back from an ACL injury.
All this makes his bootlicking of Vinicius all the more jarring.