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Why exactly not? He was playing through injuries before he went down and before that he scored 10 goals just in the back half of the season. Then by the time he got properly fit we added lots of players. He needs game time to get fitness back, but Arteta has been pretty stubborn about substitutions and also doesn’t even take starters off till very late in the game. If Arteta was making subs at 60’ or 65’ then these backups would get those 20-30 minute appearances to help prepare them for starts. And vice versa, take Smith off after 60’ until he doesn’t look gassed.
Substitutions have been oversimplified by us fans. Every fanbase has this myth that their manager sucks at subs. They haven’t sat back to question this view and why they’d be wrong.
Sub analysis needs a lot of context.
What’s the physical state of the game? You can’t throw on ESR when Spurs, United have started running at you at 1-0. You sub on Tomiyasu.
What’s the score? Chasing the game or seeing it out. Is the sub better than the starter for what the objectives are? Will the sub ruin the flow of the game? Injuries. Is the player exhausted? Are we changing tactics? We are going long, sub on Kai, not ESR. Is their CAM running riot? Sub on a DM, not ESR.
Need creation with passing and control? Vieira, not Tierney.
High line, but incompetent attack? Sub on ESR, not Tomi. Too much logic. And a lot of other things.
There have been better names and tools off the bench at all times. It’s not a matter of “manager stubborn”, which in most cases comes out when a manager doesn’t sub on a crowd favourite.
He didnt score 10 goals in the back half of a season. In fact he scored 2 goals between January and May.