I’m not sure you want me to re-hash 8 conceded goals. What’s the point? We knew in May we were average at best when defending. We knew that 43 conceded goals was one of the records of the past 20 years. What we hoped for was progress…
I’ve cut short a bank holiday night to go home. I’m numb. I don’t know how you all feel, but Arsenal isn’t a pass time, it’s an extension of my everyday life. To watch my club disappear into predictable mediocrity is a huge drain, so writing this is horrible… But I’ll try and address the issues as best I can…
The kids…
It’s a disgrace that our squad is 3 games into the season and we’re fielding a debutant, a non-league loanee from last year, a left back who is so bad we’d rather play our right back in his position and our best solution to chase a game is a League One winger with no pedigree.
We’re a club with huge resources available, a manager who is one of the greatest talent spotters on the planet and we sent out a team of beginners to take on last seasons European Cup Finalists.
Speak to any professional worth his salt and they’ll tell you the best time to ring talent into the team is when it’s settled… Not when it’s on its knees. Arsene Wenger’s disregard for this rule is damaging for the players and the clubs prospects.
It’s hard to even pinpoint youth as the main problem here. United had a team with the same average age as us. It’s down to pure quality. We don’t have enough of it. United shared the same average age as us yesterday, but boasted far more experience and talent. I had to sit there with Arsenal fans pre-match debating whether Coquelin was experienced because he’s played half a season with Lorient. Ask yourself this, how many of the players on show yesterday would get in the Everton starting 11? Not many… So why are they starting for us in a crunch tie?
The adults…
The senior squad players were terrible yesterday. As has been the case during most of the past 3-4 years, when the chips are down, our senior players refuse to take responsibility and often let us down. Andrey Arshavin was pathetically bad yesterday. He’s not mentally there anymore. There was one moment in the first half where he had the ball outside their area, he looked up, no one moved for him so he just lashed at the ball. Now to a certain degree, I understand his frustration, he’s in the prime of his career and he’s playing with dross, but on the other hand, he’s old enough to know better and he should be leading by example. He should also be giving the leagues worst left back a bit of a hand every now and then, especially against world class wingers.
We had Rosicky pulling out of 50-50′s, spraying bad passes round like and idiot. Johann Djourou was defending like a total novice. Simply put, the man is not up to Premiership standards right now, his positional awareness is shot as is his confidence. Laurent Koscielny looks to have talent hidden away somewhere, but he’s still incredibly raw and naive as a defender.
Theo Walcott is supposed to be one of our lead players, 5 years on and he’s still leaving his full back horribly exposed, so much so he’s getting an on pitch b*llocking from him. He is yet another example of precocious youth talent never making that step up. Sure he can score goals using his pace, but so can Andy Johnson.
The main ingredient they all seem to lack is a good attitude and on pitch intelligence. How could the boys not see we were getting destroyed early on and make an on pitch decision. If the manager wouldn’t do it, surely the players could club together? To allow it to get to 8 goals is almost criminal for a top class football club. It’d be criminal in Sunday League. Surely when you reach the upper echelons of football, there should be some level of on pitch management that could prevent that happening?
Tactics…
I said this yesterday…
I do hope the coach has factored that into our tactics. I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks ‘just play your game’ on the white board will be enough.
Well, he didn’t. He never gives instructions to his players. That’s fine when you’ve inherited a back four and employed superstar talent, not when you’re fielding players who haven’t learned the game. Yesterdays game plan was suicide. The worst thing about it? It was predictable. Should a blogger be able to call out our match plan before it happens? Disgraceful management again.
Predictability…
Journalists, bloggers, pundits, ex-players and current players have all cited the problems Arsenal have. Le Grove has banged the drum for a change in mindset for three years. Every summer it doesn’t happen, every next summer it’s the same outcome. The defence never improves, the squad never gets bigger and all the time our quality diminishes as another top player gives up the project.
Am I looking for a gold star here? Absolutely not. But how can a blogger who can’t cook kidneys properly be picking out the problems in our squad and getting them right time after time? Wenger earns £7million a year and the mere mortals are telling him the problems before they happen. Even the blogs that cushion critique Wenger are struggling to deal with his inaction and lack of intent.
Still though, even after
our worst defeat since 1886, Wenger nonchalantly declares that signings aren’t the solution. Unless of course, he’s recruiting unknown teenagers from around the globe. They’re always the solutions.
Is this the sort of man who should be managing our club? Or can we just call a spade a spade and be honest.
It’s time for a change.
The board…
Equally complicit in this, regardless of the money they have offered as a transfer budget.
Stan took over the club, he was supposed to bring direction to a rudderless club and he’s done nothing.
Did he watch the game yesterday? Does he give a rats ass about what went on? Does he know he just oversaw the sale of our two best players and the worst defeat in living memory?
Stan has offered us nothing. If he’s happy with the status quo under the guise of self sustainability, what was the point of him buying the club?
Here are some points. Usmanov goes to the games. He has more money than Abramovich. His business record is phenomenal. He’d pay our Stadium off, he’s offered to fund squad strengthening and he wouldn’t tolerate a power structure based on anything other than success.
Forget your personal take on his alleged past, what matters to you, a self-sustaining model that is built on us selling our best players and hitting the fans with massive personal costs. Or a model that brought the success to the club?
Give me a football fan willing to invest their own money over an American whose 1st, 2nd and 3rd sport don’t come close to the great game any day.
Onto Gazidis. I can picture his issue. To sack Wenger he’ll need fans begging for it. His hands are tied, we can’t complain we want an autonomous manager then blame the board if the manager chooses not to spend. Wenger needs to go now, however, it’ll have to get a lot worse before that happens. It will though… sadly for us.
Where I will offer criticism is on players purchases. If Wenger wants Cahill, he should have been snapped up for a realistic price in June. If Wenger wanted Phil Jones in January, we should have paid the £12million they wanted in January. If we were in for Mata, what the hell is he doing lining up for Chelsea right now? Our backroom team costs £15million a year to service and their negotiation skills are nothing short of shocking. Is that an American problem? Have we recruited a whole team of executives who have zero experience of European football? It feels that way… because deals seem to be passing us by at a ridiculous pace. Or is it that we’re allowing Wenger to dictate what he pays for the players? Either way, some transparency is needed to explain the summer of inaction.
The manager…
‘In England always the first solution is to sign players, we have 8 players coming back’
Kind of sums the manager up. United were missing 5. They didn’t have to debut a defensive midfielder, field an inexperienced League One right back and chase the game with a 17 year old. Injuries are standard with Arsenal. Suspensions are down to bad discipline that the manager should be controlling. Signings would absolutely solve this problem. He doesn’t want to do that though. He is so focused on being the manager than won out against financial doping, that he’s lost track of what matters… the success of Arsenal football club.
He’s gone the way of Rafa, he’d rather make a moralistic point at the expense of a trophy. He’d rather shaft a whole season than do his job properly. That’s leading to empty seats in the ground. Regular booing and a squad of players that have never been lower. This team isn’t good enough for top 4 this year. That’s the reality of the situation. Even with all our players back, we’d struggle.
That’s mostly down to one man. It’s been a predictable demise and it’s only going to get worse. Swansea up next where we’ll have to start a fresh. Hopefully we’ll have a couple of new signings before then, if we haven’t expect the fans to show their dissent in a very public way.
Arsene has 3 days to save his career, I have no expectation he’ll do that even with the players I know he’s trying to bring in. Not even the most disgraceful defeat in living memory can jolt his stubborn dedication to the failing project. Still, it can’t go on like this forever, he’s accountable to the fans, the board are accountable to cash and the two go hand in hand. He won’t last the season, of that I’m sure.
The car crash is underway…
