I didn't see much of the Hull game - I was out of the country and couldn't get a feed on my iPad - but by all accounts it was much the same as last night; laboured, if I had to sum it up in one word.
So what's been going wrong at Arsenal Football Club, following the FA Cup win and the feel-good factor in engendered? I'll tackle it on three levels: 1) The Owner, 2) The Manager, 3) What happens on the pitch.
Let's get straight into it:
1. Stan Kroenke, for all his massive wealth, is precisely the type of owner that supporters cannot abide. Distant (literally!); apparently uninterested in reaching the heights of competition to which a club like Arsenal should aspire; happy to merely see his investment grow and now happy to start taking money out of the club for 'services rendered'. He appears to know very little about 'soccer' itself, and leaves the running of the club to his appointees - all well and good in theory, but due to a vacuum at Board level, there appears to be a lack of drive towards anything apart from maintaining the status quo, and lining Stan's already well-filled pockets. Meaning that far too much power has been devolved to the Manager. Kroenke is known a Silent Stan for a reason; we have never heard what his ambitions for Arsenal Football Club are.
Looking around the higher echelons of the Premier League, who could one cite as a model Owner/Chairman from the fans' point of view? Let's rule out United and Spurs (whose respective regimes are frankly dysfunctional); and Manchester City, who have the sort of money that most people can not even imagine but whom FFP is frankly treating rather inequitably; plus Everton, who due to circumstances don't have the resources to break properly into the Top 4. That leaves Liverpool and (I'll whisper it...) Chelsea.
Liverpool lost Luis Suarez in the summer, and their owners didn't hold back on spending money in an attempt to replace him. OK, they don't appear to have succeeded, but replacing a world class player never is (unless you have lots of others, and Liverpool aren't Real Madrid). I'd settle for owners who are prepared to give it a go like FSG.
Chelsea have in the past represented everything that made me cringe about modern football. Huge amounts of money to chuck around; a ruthless owner, not the slightest bit averse to changing Managers almost every season; attracting the sort of characters to play for the club that you wouldn't want your daughter anywhere near; a set of arrogant, unpleasant, thuggish fans (present company excepted!); a Manager so full of himself that I want to commit physical violence on him every time I see his smug face on TV or hear his voice on the radio. Yet, yet... Those 10 years of awful excess have moved Chelsea Football Club on from a mid-table club to a world powerhouse, with a fantastic side, a brilliant Manager, and due to astute transfer dealings a base from which they can now remain at the top indefinitely.
Which Arsenal fan, today, wouldn't want an owner like Roman Abramovich? Kroenke has the money to do something similar - and if he is unwilling it would appear that Usmanov would happily step into that breach - yet Arsenal just chug along, achieving the bare minimum that their resources indicate they should.
Kroenke Out. There; I've said it.
2. People have been saying Wenger Out for years now. The fallow years, as a result of the move from Highbury and the simultaneous rise of first Chelsea, then Manchester City, have as time gone on dragged on a little too long. If Wenger has changed in that period, it has not been with the times; one just has to look at the size, power and pace of teams like Real and Athletico Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Chelsea and compare them to the current Arsenal squad to see the difference in their make-up. And it is clear, from where I am sitting, who has got it right and who has got it wrong.
Up to the middle of last season, I was a big apologist for Arsene Wenger. No longer. The FA Cup win merely papered over the cracks. It gave the regime the excuse to give him another three-year contract, and him to carry on in his not-so-merry way. Yet again this season the squad is just two or three players short of being really good, and yet again it will fall short. Despite the signing of the excellent Alexis Sanchez, there is plenty missing and if we can all see it, why can he not?
Yes, we again have the ready-made excuse of a long injury list. But that's all it is - an excuse. Even at full-strength, the squad is not quite good (yet again) enough to hit the summit. And lack of money is no longer an excuse. Where's the depth in defence? Where's the big defensive midfield enforcer on whom EVERY other top Manager insists? William Carvalho? - I'd settle for Steven N'Zonzi!
I wish I could understand the man's psyche. It's almost as if he is doing it deliberately; leaving the squad short as a ready-made excuse. Well, people aren't buying it any more.
Don't get me wrong; I love the man for what he helped the club achieve between 1998 and 2005 and will always be in awe of those great sides. But those days are long gone. And the worst thing about it is that when things are going badly on the pitch these days, he does not seem to have the capacity to change things, or to inspire his side to do things differently.
Which brings me on to...
3. When Arsenal (almost inevitably) fall a goal behind, I don't see any change in attitude. Last night - and by all accounts against Hull also - they carried on as before; with the only difference being that their confidence (already not high) dropped, thus making things more difficult. Where's the change of gear, of tactics, of pace? Even Guardiola says that Tiki Taka is dead.
Let's see a change to 4-4-2 - or at least a return to 4-2-3-1 and no more 4-1-4-1. Just... something less predictable. It's almost as if there is no planning; Wenger sees a shiny Ozil or Alexis bauble and feels he had better have it, with no thought as to what to do with it. And what would we do for Cesc Fabregas now! The shining jewel in Chelsea's crown...
This season, unless I am much mistaken, the Manager is not sure of his best side (even if he could put it out). How to accommodate Ozil and Sanchez is a problem he has not solved, and playing your most expensive player out of position simply cannot be the answer. Yes, he was badly out of form before his injury, but what came first; the chicken or the egg?
Make no mistake, Gibbs' sublime volley and a typical Podolski finish got Arsene Wenger out of jail yesterday; but bringing on Campbell, and then Podolski with just 7 minutes remaining, were no more than desperate throws of the dice.
Something has to change. What, or how, I do not know, and it doesn't help that Debuchy, Koscielny, Arteta, Ozil, Giroud and Rosicky are all injured, and Ramsey and Walcott only just coming back; but he is not making the best of what he has. Whilst a fully-fit squad might just about be able to challenge, he is to my mind making the wrong decisions, both before and during matches.
Plus the Monreal centre-back experiment has to stop now. In the absence of the two Frenchmen, Chambers must play in the middle and Bellerin at right back. Play people in their natural positions, Arsene; not positions in which they are uncomfortable. You got us into this mess by not reinforcing the squad; now think more logically, please.
And as I have mentioned before - how about Jack and Aaron as the back two in a 4-2-3-1 - playing in the old Vieira/Petit manner that if one goes the other sits. At least they have more energy than either Arteta or Flamini, plus it frees up an extra spot further forward.
OK, I've said my piece. I could go on, but if you're still reading then I congratulate you! What is likely to change in the near future I do not know, but it's already abundantly clear that the best finish we can hope for in the Premier League is third, and that's merely because United and Liverpool are currently in such a mess. And third will NOT be an improvement; Arsenal were just 7 points off of the title last season, but I reckon we're going to be looking at more like 20 this season and that, my friends, it totally unacceptable.
No comments:
Post a Comment