Cut Adrift

So, in a week and on a day when pretty much all the Arsenal news has been bad, Arsenal fans had something to celebrate; well, sort of. Schadenfreude; taking pleasure in somebody else's misfortune. Yes, Manchester City lost a game. The legend of The Invincibles lives on.

Of course, there's a downside to even that. Liverpool's win meant that Arsenal are now stranded in 6th place, 5 points behind Tottenham, and a further three behind the our other supposed challengers for a Top 4 spot. That last phrase - Top 4 spot - I typed with a giant dollop of irony - the way the team are playing we should be grateful to already have 39 points in the bag and it will take a massive turnaround in fortune to get back into that particular race.

So after Sunday, where are Arsenal? Let's start with Bournemouth; and it might sound like a long-playing record. An uninspired away performance against an inferior side that led to an all too familiar defeat. From a winning position. With recent faults repeated and contributing to the defeat.

But were we surprised? Not really. Without the soon to depart Alexis Sanchez - and frankly who can blame him for wanting to leave for a club with a bit of ambition? - and the injured Ozil (who doesn't deserve to have to play with most of the current squad) we were left with Jack Wilshere to drive the team on. And with due respect to Jack, for all his qualities, he isn't ever going to be World Class now. Expecting the likes of Welbeck and Iwobi to provide the service to Lacazette - and it's difficult not to feel sorry for the poor guy, to be honest; he looked miserable throughout - is optimistic to say the least, and with Ramsey barely back and Xhaka possessing little pace (either in legs or brain) there's no other inspiration in the side at all.

On top of which, the Manager appears to no longer be able to set out or motivate the side to do anything different. Yet he comes out at the end of the game with a comment about making 'mistakes we should not have made'. 

Really? So he's never seen Cech mis-judge a cross across the front of his area, or a side vulnerable in the early moments after a change of defensive shape, or more pointedly he's never seen Xhaka fail to track back ( I can think of three occasions this season without giving it more than two seconds' thought)? And there's the problem; for all his abilities on the ball, Granit Xhaka is not a defensive midfielder. Xhaka doesn't have those instincts and Arsene Wenger is incapable of coaching them into him. He seems to believe that Arsenal - contrary to literally every other current side I can think of - don't need a defensive midfielder (and even let go the closest we had in Coquelin).

And this is what's damning about that. Only a few days ago Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who we must remember turned down the £60,000 (50%) a week extra offered by Arsenal to go to Liverpool, said in an interview:

'The biggest thing I've had to learn is how this Manager likes to stop situations at source. I was in certain habits and certain things became second nature to me and in football it is all about instinct. You train and train a certain thing so when you are in that situation you don't think about it. It might just be a simple trigger when something happens and the defence passes to the deepest midfielder and the ball is slightly behind him. That's your cue to go and press. At your previous club you might not even look into that.' I repeat 'At your previous club you might not even look into that.'

This is poor on two huge counts. Firstly, that Wenger doesn't coach what is second nature to every single other side, and secondly that this is precisely what happens when Xhaka receives the ball in that very situation. Utterly infuriating.

So we have a squad where a new goalkeeper is going to be required very soon. If not two. An indefinable defensive system with a hotch-potch of players who the Manager can't work out how to employ. A midfield without the key component of an out-and-out defensive man. And a dysfunctional forward line. With a Manager who these days seems incapable of improving players; indeed, many are going backwards. He continually plays people out of position. And there is a pervading lack of confidence throughout the squad. 

Koscielny, Kolasinac, Monreal, Ramsey, Ozil and Giroud are either injured or on their way back from injury, and there is contract/transfer speculation about Debuchy, Walcott, Giroud, Welbeck, and then Wilshere, Ozil and Alexis. Bloody hell; it's literally all falling apart!

So where to apportion blame? Well, we can point every finger we like at the Manager - and we probably should - but the inertia at Board level has been the catalyst for the mess that the club is in. It's certainly a 'catalyst for change', Ivan. Just the wrong sort! Wenger should have gone last summer, or after any of the recent FA Cup wins. He could have got out whilst the going was relatively good. 

In one world that Stan Kroenke inhabits - NFL - it's firing season; for far less than Wenger is guilty of. And if Stan thought that Wenger and the wonderful Arsenal Board of Directors could enable him to carry on milking his Cash Cow, how wrong has this season proved to be! £40m lost due to failure to qualify for the Champions League and another £40m down next season, up to £100m down on possible transfer fees for Ozil and Sanchez; and that's just for starters. Unsustainable.

Inevitably, lots of names are being linked with Arsenal at the moment, and that's understandable. The team is badly in need of injections of fresh blood. But if I were on Arsenal's radar I'd be asking why join Arsenal at this moment, what system am I going to be coming into, who else is coming and who will be in charge next season? Imponderable on all counts.

I tell you what this feels like. It feels like the end of George Graham's time in charge. A side that has lost its shape and character, and a Manager who has run out of ideas. So who is going to be Wenger's Chris Kiwomya, or his Glen Helder? As it happens, those last George Graham years are when I got my first season ticket; and that's got me thinking, I can tell you! I am sad to report that going to games is becoming quite a chore. Maybe I'll spark it up this week by joining the protest march?

Let's heed lessons from the past here. Far from competing with Bayern Munich - really, Ivan? - the club is in freefall. Lessons have not been learnt - apart from being a shining example of how not to do it. I think that we're a long way from becoming another Leeds United or Sunderland, but it's a long, long way back from here.

The only thing is; the squad is not totally devoid of talent. Not by any means. What it needs is a new man to deliver a different message, and to shake things up. It's started already, around Wenger, with Mislintat and soon with Sanllehi, but I truly believe that the way things are going the Manager's legacy will be forever tarnished and he should leave with whatever shred of dignity he has left. Things can, as it stands, only get worse.

Full Circle

A lot has happened since my last blog post, the week before the Spurs game. To my loyal fans, I apologise for the delay. lol. And I'd like to apologise for having expressed so little faith in the team prior to that result. Although to put that in context Arsenal have taken just 6 points out of 21 against the rest of the Top 6 this season; a typically poor showing; so my point essentially holds. These clubs are pulling away from an inert Arsenal.

Now, some might accuse me of only posting when something goes wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth; plenty has gone wrong in the intervening period. However, Sunday was a nadir and possibly a watershed - or at least it might be if the owner of the club displayed any interest in its welfare!

This is of course what I'm talking about. The FA Cup debacle in Nottingham on Sunday.

I and many Arsenal fans have been losing the faith for weeks/months/years now, and after Sunday I've taken some time  to think about where the club are right now, compared to when the Manager arrived, 21 years ago (and counting). I am afraid that I have reached the conclusion that he has now taken the club full circle - a big upward swing culminating in two doubles and an unbeaten season, full of flowing, devastating, beautiful football, followed (for all that 'blame' can be pointed at the stadium move and at the influx of 'dirty' money) by an inexorable decline, now gathering pace, which has taken the club back to where it started - and to make things worse moving in the wrong direction.

I'm not talking about where the club is physically, or even financially. Apart from the sentimental loss of Highbury, Arsenal are better off than they were in 1996. In a much bigger stadium, with more money than could have been envisaged, and with a beautiful training facility to boot. I'm talking about its ability to compete with its competitors, and the negligence at Management and Board level that has led to inertia and the team's tumble out of real contention. And this in a competitive climate which shows no less than 5 serious domestic rivals - in those days there was just the one massively dominant force in the Ferguson-led Manchester United - and that gap was breached for a while. It's going to be so much harder now.

Compare the current squad to that of 1996-7. Then, Arsenal had its famous Back 4 in place, the likes of Bergkamp, Platt and Merson to back up Ian Wright up front, but a deficiency in central midfield which Wenger filled very quickly with Patrick Vieira. Nicolas Anelka was bought to eventually  replace Wright, and in the next close season Petit and Overmars arrived, followed soon after by Henry, Ljungberg and Pires (amongst others). Glorious days ensued, helped by Wenger's knowledge at that time of the untapped French market. We all remember what followed, starting the following season by winning The Double, but do you really need a history lesson? What was clear, however, was that the team and club were moving forward. How many of the current squad would get into the 2002 or 2004 side, let alone the 1996-7 tram that Wenger inherited?

And so to today. A squad which, whilst incredibly talented on paper, is riddled by injuries, psychological defects and contract issues from back to front. Nowhere in the squad can anything be said to be settled or organised, and this is backed up by increasingly muddled tactical thinking and planning, with no discernible 'plan' for the rest of the season and beyond. It is only by dint of the amount of latent talent in the group that the team finds itself (just about) around the top echelon of domestic football, but the fall out of the Champions League will be seen to be a disaster for the club; and on current form how can the team break back into the Top 4? Because all over the field there are issues. 

At goalkeeper, the squad possesses a formerly great keeper coming to the end of his career, another international who patently doesn't want to be at the club, and two callow youths - one currently out on loan in Spain but not getting any playing time.

Defensively, the team is a laughing stock. Whether in a 3, 4 or 5 there is dysfunction. Bellerin has no credible back-up, the left back/left wing back position is confused, our best central defender is playing on one ankle and is clearly in decline, backed up by a pot-pourri of either reckless, slow, or young central defenders bereft of confidence. Wenger doesn't know how to set them up, and clearly isn't letting his assistant coach them.

In front of them in central midfield Xhaka is continually exposed - and it's not really his fault. He never was, is not and never will be a mobile, energetic defensive midfielder, but that's the role into which he has been thrust. And the opposition pick on him continually as the most deep-lying midfielder. 

Alongside him, Ramsey and Wilshere are talented but fragile, and Elneny and Coquelin (the latter on the verge of being sold, after only a year ago having been given a long-term £100k a week contract; such muddled thinking and a ridiculous amount of money to pay such a limited player) are not of the required quality. The biggest and most glaring squad deficiency since the departure of Vieira has been the lack of a 'beast' in central midfield; looking back, the Fabregas/Flamini combination is probably the best the team has had since then; followed by Cazorla/Coquelin - a combination stumbled upon by Wenger. Yet year after year it is not addressed. And Santi; how we miss you :-(

Out wide and up front it's an absolute mess. Ozil and Sanchez - world-class individuals - in the last 6 months of their contracts. Words absolutely fail me! Around them, Lacazette must wonder what he has come into, and whilst Giroud is limited but useful, suffering unfairly by comparison to Henry and van Persie. And I despair when I see the likes of Iwobi, Welbeck and Walcott on the field.

On top of all this, injuries are once more hurting the squad in a big way. For all the lack of organisation and tactics (apart from the well-known sideways, sideways, sideways, back, back, sideways, sideways, attempted one-two and trot lazily back when the ball is invariably lost) there is enough talent in the squad to get results. Yet Koscielny, Mustafi, Monreal, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Ramsey and Giroud are all likely to miss out this week, Ozil's knee is risky and Sanchez's mind is clearly elsewhere. Other top clubs - perhaps Manchester United excepted - don't have these regular problems.

In short, the team is in turmoil and needs a focus and direction clearly now beyond Arsene Wenger. The squad needs a massive overhaul and the club faces years in the wilderness - with, lest we forget, no less that 5 more attractive destinations than Islington for incoming talent to the Premier League. For all the 'signings' of Mislintat and Sanllehi to the backroom staff are welcome, their arrival could conceivably be too late, as a result of the prevarication of Kroenke and his Board, and the latent power that Wenger wields at the club. I, amongst more and more fans, am extremely concerned - yet I'll still be at Stamford Bridge tonight - such a glutton for punishment! Meanwhile, Kroenke will feel that he has more important things to worry about as The Los Angeles Rams were eliminated from the NFL playoffs at the weekend. 

Two things to add. Firstly, the dichotomy which means that those people who have most berated the Manager for 'only winning 3 FA Cups' in the past 4 years are the most upset by the Forest defeat. I can't make any sense of that. Except to say that there was absolutely no excuse for taking the risk of putting the likes of Akpom, Da Silva and Osei-Tutu (I have actually never heard of him) on the bench and completely resting the likes of Ozil, Sanchez, Lacazette and Wilshere. That's a lack of foresight and clear thinking (alongside a good dollop of arrogance) that is hard to take.

Secondly, I'll leave you with this from Ivan Gazidis in 2011:

To use the vernacular: 'Nuff said!