(Originally written on OCTOBER 2, 2011)
IT is a
reflection of the mess Arsenal find themselves in when the only positive you
can take out from the loss to Tottenham is that they did not score an own goal.
IT seems as though everything that can go
wrong at Arsenal has already gone ahead and done so. Cesc and Nasri leaving;
defenders blanking out in the middle of games; injured players; red-carded
players; the defeat at White Hart lane; the humiliation at Manchester United; the
manager being sent off to the stands in the Champions League and the death of
Arsenal’s most notorious fan: Osama bin Laden. Now, it emerges that this
hurriedly put together side can’t play the type of attractive football that the
Gooners have grown accustomed to. Add to that the Robin van Persie contract
situation.
And the season has only just begun.
Arsenal’s predicament is a simple Catch-22: You
cannot win trophies if your team does not have top players. And you cannot
attract top players if your team isn’t winning trophies. (Unless you’re Manchester City, who clearly didn’t get FIFA’s
financial Fair Play memo and are collecting players.)
This leaves Wenger crippled, considering the
best players available to him are injury prone (van Persie, Walcott) or are
already injured (Wilshere, Vermaelan). Some others are simply not good enough
(Yes, Denilson, I’m looking at you!) Arsenal’s new signings are good but Arteta
is not Fabregas and Santos is not Clichy. If Arsenal have
another trophy-less season, you can expect more players to start looking
elsewhere (Robin van Persie) while the manager, even with his eye for picking
up diamonds out of the rough, will be unable to convince them to join Arsenal.
Because let’s face it: no player worth his six figure-per-week salary wants to
play at a club that hasn’t won anything at all for the last seven years as Juan
Mata pointed out earlier this season when he snubbed Arsenal to sign for
Chelsea.
The fans might be justified in chanting ‘Spend
some f***ing money’ but everything can’t be solved by waving money at it, no?
Just ask Manchester
City’s ‘homesick’, £250,000-a-week
Carlos Tevez.
Meanwhile, the other existential dilemma
Arsenal face is the future of the manager himself.
In the last 15 years, Arsenal developed a
style of football that made it an enjoyable team to watch even when they
weren’t scoring; became an international club with massive fan following in
continents other than Europe; moved to a bigger stadium while remaining
financially self sufficient; became a grooming academy for some exceptional
young talent and won trophies too. All of which is courtesy Arsene Wenger.
In the last six years, however, Arsenal has
won nothing, coming close sometimes but always choking when it mattered most. But
what do you expect of a team whose average age is consistently below 25 years. For
six years now, Arsenal fans have been buying the ‘Future is bright’ dream while
player after player has left for other clubs after coming of age.
To compound Arsenal’s misery, transfer window
economics evolved over the years.
Players were sold at inflated prices (Andy
Caroll to Liverpool for £35 million!) Quite simply
put, there emerged a huge difference between the ‘auction buying’ of players
that the transfer market encouraged and the flee market bargains that Wenger
was looking for. Wenger’s philosophy suddenly found itself at odds with the
transfer market thereby ensuring most players in their prime were out of
Arsenal’s reach.
To make up for this, Wenger brought Jens Lehmann
out of retirement in March 2011; re-signed 35-year-old Sol Campbell in January
2010 and gave Manchester
reject Mikael Silvestre a second chance.
The ‘bright future’ never came and this became
obvious even to the most ardent Wenger fanboys when we had to sell Fabregas and
Nasri and lost humiliatingly to Manchester United, who we beat one-nil in April
earlier this year. More alarmingly, even the fast and fluid passing game of
Arsenal supported by heavy doses of possession seem to be waning at Arsenal. The
balance sheets of Arsenal are healthy but the goal difference after seven games
is -6.
Wenger may be the best manager Arsenal ever
had but it seems that his best is clearly behind him. Even then, how on earth
do you even start replacing someone who has won you three League titles, four
FA Cups and four Charity/Community Shields. Not to mention, his ‘Invincibles’
of 2003-04 showed you the artistic mastery that could be achieved on a football
pitch long before Barcelona came along with their tiki taka. (Barcelona in 2003-04
could not even qualify for the Champions League.)
It is only fair then, as much as it is
ironical, that Wenger’s current (and future) Arsenal teams will be judged
against the performances of the Invincibles, which have set a benchmark for
every Arsenal performance. Wenger’s best performances as a manager in an
Arsenal blazer are being held up against him.
So, how then can Arsenal get out of this
Catch-22?
Ask that
man, Arsene Wenger. After all, he knows best.
