I mean, Brentford in the EPL under him:
- Never ranked higher than 15th in number of short passes [5-15 yards] attempted
- Never ranked higher than 17th in short pass success rate
- Never ranked lower than 9th in number of long passes [30+ yards] attempted, and ranked inside top 3 in that category in 2 of the 4 seasons.
Unless they brought him here for him to implement a similar style of play, this alone should've planted seeds of doubt in the minds of those who identified him as a prime target.
There's more: Those same Brentford teams consistently ranked inside top 5 in number of aerial duels, and led the entire league in 22/23.
This can be construed as a variable inversely correlated with possession-oriented play, as the ball must be spending a lot of time in the air for a team to get involved in so many of these. To better illustrate the point, I might add that City have been ranking dead last in this for the last 6.5 seasons now.
I've yet to find any evidence that would give one some realistic hope that he could go beyond trying to optimize this football as best he can.If the board don't think it would be worth it, I for the record also don't, they shouldn't drag this out beyond this season at the latest.
But Arteta struggled too !! by itself doesn't exemplify sound decision making process.