Stubborn people are hugely frustrating. As a stubborn person myself, I have observed my friends’ faces drop with exasperation as I again dismiss their solid, well thought out argument rather than at least partly entertain it.
This trait, along with a love of late-renaissance Italian loft conversions, I share with Arsene Wenger.
He’d rather fail than change. After all, how could he be wrong? He’s studied at great length every league in Europe from the bottom to the top every day of his life since he was three and a half, has a PhD in footballology and listens to re-runs of radio commentary from Ligue 3 games through headphones whilst sleeping in an oxygen chamber.
He is the Einstein of football, a sporting scientist to the purist, most devoted degree. If football had a bible, he’d burn it.
So maybe it’s Faith he’s missing.
Some things cannot be explained, and are not always what they seem. Space, deep sea ocean life, the hidden functions of the brain, and female intuition: these are just a few examples.
Wenger has the following theory:
RVP x Cesc / 4-3-3 + Nasri squared = the square root of Arshavin
Now if we count ‘RVP’ as 1 and ‘Nasri’ as the provider of the assist, then Arsenal should, obviously, win every match they play. But they don’t.
This is because football is played by humans, creatures far too complicated to apply logic and scientific reasoning to.
Psychology, Wenger’s least favourite subject at school, also has its part to play, as well as certain other truths rooted in common law, dismissed from Wenger’s progressive school of thought for being ‘too boring’. Par example:
“If one man should jump at the same thyme a fellow man should jump, and the first man is taller, it is the first who’s forehead glances the leathersphere toward the onion bag…………so sayeth the Lord. Amen.”
Let’s apply some common truths and psychology to Arsenal.
Truths
1. If you don’t shoot, you won’t score.
2. If you don’t stay goal side, you can’t defend.
3. If you can’t beat your man in the air, he will get to the ball first.
4. If they always beat their man in the air, your team won’t score headers.
5. If you can’t beat the first man with a cross, don’t bother trying.
Psychology
1. If they score first, it makes the game twice as hard, never let that happen.
2. If your defenders have no faith in their keeper, they will lose confidence in themselves.
3. If your midfield has no confidence in your defence, they will lose confidence in themselves.
4. If your strikers have no confidence in the midfield, they will have no confidence in themselves.
5. If you’re 28 and five foot nothing, and have to constantly try and create space by running like a madman the entire game only to ultimately be barged off the ball by two great hulking defenders who are watching you like a hawk, it’s going to make your head drop.
More could be applied. The point is Wenger has to look beyond the factors that come up in sour-faced post match interviews.
It wasn’t so much the second goal that defeated us as the first. We weren’t concentrating on the first ball into the box but apart from that we played well. They played a physical game and marked our players well.
Do those phrases sound like something you need a PhD in footballology to work out?
No. Because they’re chop-smackingly OBVIOUS.
Remember that Chris Rock sketch about mothers who say, “I look afta ma kids!” and Chris’ response is, “YOU’RE SUPPOSE TA!”
Well Wenger, “YOU’RE SUPPOSE TA!”
Your team is supposed to always concentrate, always make life difficult for the players who are supposed to be marking them, suppose to take their chances, defend corners and complete crosses. These are the basics and Arsenal are in the top class doing advanced studies alongside clever kids like Barcelona, when they’re still struggling with their ten times table.
I love this team and their manager, and I know we can be successful again….but how I wish Wenger knew the solution to his problems is as plain as the nose on his face.
Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arsenal. Show all posts
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Defeat - Introspection - Improvement - Success
ON SUNDAY afternoon, Didier Drogba dispatched a perfectly flighted free kick into the corner of Almunia’s net and sealed a victory which brought Arsenal’s latest weakness into cold focus.
Before the game, I’d been preparing a blog entry centred on the Gunner’s physical shortcomings. I was going to make a detailed comparison between the stature of the Invincibles squad 03/04 and the current team, and point out why this meant we lose matches like the game against Sunderland the previous weekend (which I didn’t even watch!) and why we’d struggle against Chelsea.
But having observed our defeat against the Blues I realised I’d got it wrong…or more accurately, only got it 15% right.
We did very little wrong in terms of our performance. We passed well, kept possession convincingly and physically held our own. Song looks increasingly like a Mascherano figure, an excellent ball-winner with superb distributional skills. Fabregas, Nasri, Denilson and Arshavin are all fighters and put paid to the flimsy argument that we are a soft team.
All three of the goals scored against us were undeniably unstoppable, and the Gallas/Vermaelen partnership continues to improve. This wasn’t a defensive issue either by the way.
No, our shortcomings came from the most unlikely source. Despite a large goal haul this season our multi-pronged attack was completely impotent. As a result of the loss of a single player, Robin Van Persie, the ability to convert the many openings we created into goals, or even shots, escaped us.
Van Persie is a menace. He thrives on tricking and tormenting defenders, getting in their face, twisting and turning and using his brain as well as his feet to combine telepathically with the equally cerebral Fabregas. This is why everyone apart from Arsenal fans cannot stand him.
Eduardo has brains and talent too, but is non-confrontational and bounced off the brick wall Chelsea presented us with like a tennis ball.
Bendtner, who has been looking more and more capable recently of providing a similar service to RVP, was injured and unavailable. Premier League winning teams don’t become useless because two of their strikers are crocked.
OK that’s a little harsh. We will come up against defences as well organised once in a blue moon. But those blue moons will rise again this season.
Wenger had his beady eye on Bordeaux’s Marouane Chamakh in the summer. Judging by his Champions League performances this season he would have proved useful during this difficult period.
At the same time, the gaffer refuses to bury his squad beneath new signings, giving everyone in the first team breathing space, and with six strikers on the books, he was justified in not bringing the Moroccan to the Emirates.
So in reality, no WRONG decisions have been made here, but Chelsea have brought to attention a chink in the armour which must be repaired.
Wenger says:
"I didn't feel we were in the need to buy anybody but we will be out on the market that is for sure now.”
After being accused of being too proud for his own good on various occasions it looks like this time he’s managed to swallow it, representing an ambition for success that matches the fan’s hunger for silverware.
So we keep the trust, and move onwards and upwards.
Happy advent.
AP
Before the game, I’d been preparing a blog entry centred on the Gunner’s physical shortcomings. I was going to make a detailed comparison between the stature of the Invincibles squad 03/04 and the current team, and point out why this meant we lose matches like the game against Sunderland the previous weekend (which I didn’t even watch!) and why we’d struggle against Chelsea.
But having observed our defeat against the Blues I realised I’d got it wrong…or more accurately, only got it 15% right.
We did very little wrong in terms of our performance. We passed well, kept possession convincingly and physically held our own. Song looks increasingly like a Mascherano figure, an excellent ball-winner with superb distributional skills. Fabregas, Nasri, Denilson and Arshavin are all fighters and put paid to the flimsy argument that we are a soft team.
All three of the goals scored against us were undeniably unstoppable, and the Gallas/Vermaelen partnership continues to improve. This wasn’t a defensive issue either by the way.
No, our shortcomings came from the most unlikely source. Despite a large goal haul this season our multi-pronged attack was completely impotent. As a result of the loss of a single player, Robin Van Persie, the ability to convert the many openings we created into goals, or even shots, escaped us.
Van Persie is a menace. He thrives on tricking and tormenting defenders, getting in their face, twisting and turning and using his brain as well as his feet to combine telepathically with the equally cerebral Fabregas. This is why everyone apart from Arsenal fans cannot stand him.
Eduardo has brains and talent too, but is non-confrontational and bounced off the brick wall Chelsea presented us with like a tennis ball.
Bendtner, who has been looking more and more capable recently of providing a similar service to RVP, was injured and unavailable. Premier League winning teams don’t become useless because two of their strikers are crocked.
OK that’s a little harsh. We will come up against defences as well organised once in a blue moon. But those blue moons will rise again this season.
Wenger had his beady eye on Bordeaux’s Marouane Chamakh in the summer. Judging by his Champions League performances this season he would have proved useful during this difficult period.
At the same time, the gaffer refuses to bury his squad beneath new signings, giving everyone in the first team breathing space, and with six strikers on the books, he was justified in not bringing the Moroccan to the Emirates.
So in reality, no WRONG decisions have been made here, but Chelsea have brought to attention a chink in the armour which must be repaired.
Wenger says:
"I didn't feel we were in the need to buy anybody but we will be out on the market that is for sure now.”
After being accused of being too proud for his own good on various occasions it looks like this time he’s managed to swallow it, representing an ambition for success that matches the fan’s hunger for silverware.
So we keep the trust, and move onwards and upwards.
Happy advent.
AP
Thursday, November 12, 2009
City, Hughes, and Consistency Blues
IT IS OFTEN said, generally in a slightly limp, apologetic manner, that the secret to winning the Premiership is consistency.
It’s a disappointing conclusion to reach but generally an accurate one. Gung ho attack minded theatrics are punished on the break and suffocated to death by focussed defending. The fierce underdog battles with every sinew in its body but falls foul of stringent officials and fleet footed foreigners.
This season Chelsea, scarily, has conceded a mere eight goals (one at Stamford Bridge) and rifled in 30, a statistic second only to Arsenal’s record breaking quota (plug).
The locks have been changed, and the new key to success isn’t turned by grinding out results, playing-badly-yet-winning-one-nil ala Manchester United, but instead sending more teams than not running from the turf squealing, with their tails between their legs and a significantly diminished goal difference.
We’ll come back to that.
To say the wheels have fallen off Manchester City’s campaign to sheepishly stick its tongue down the throat of the top four for the first time is premature. They’ll be fourth if they win their game in hand and only seven points shy of the leaders.
Momentum has been lost though. Five points out of fifteen have been won from their last five matches, with seven goals beating Given. Robinho, despite Sparky’s insistences to the contrary, is by most accounts unhappy and wanting out. The team’s notoriously impatient fans have tasted the golden nectar of…consistency!....and are getting itchy trigger fingers, with crosshairs settled shakily on Hughes’ head.
Of course, this is all nuts. To say City have advanced as a club this season is like saying the human race has come on a bit since the Stone Age. Their performances against Arsenal and United were superb and their squad has more depth than Liverpool’s (cough).
But the bar has been lifted. City is a team in transition that has the finances to morph into pretty much any form necessary, but with the two London teams at the top waking up to the fact that consistency can be achieved the beautiful way (there’s my original point, I knew I left it here somewhere) there may have to be many more millions spent before the title can be bought.
Is City a defensive side? No. Attacking? Yes, and an impressive one at that, but still a long way off their peers. And how many revolutions of the Eastlands doors, one wonders, can their dressing room tolerate before the legendary team spirit which it has purportedly developed begins to wilt.
The rhetoric coming out of the club suggests they will always twist rather than stick, and any players not pulling their weight will not be suffered.
Their bed has been made but The Citizens are tossing and turning, restless with the excitement of their new found wealth. Maybe suggestions that it would be their ultimate undoing weren’t completely born out of jealousy.
Have a good weekend,
AP
It’s a disappointing conclusion to reach but generally an accurate one. Gung ho attack minded theatrics are punished on the break and suffocated to death by focussed defending. The fierce underdog battles with every sinew in its body but falls foul of stringent officials and fleet footed foreigners.
This season Chelsea, scarily, has conceded a mere eight goals (one at Stamford Bridge) and rifled in 30, a statistic second only to Arsenal’s record breaking quota (plug).
The locks have been changed, and the new key to success isn’t turned by grinding out results, playing-badly-yet-winning-one-nil ala Manchester United, but instead sending more teams than not running from the turf squealing, with their tails between their legs and a significantly diminished goal difference.
We’ll come back to that.
To say the wheels have fallen off Manchester City’s campaign to sheepishly stick its tongue down the throat of the top four for the first time is premature. They’ll be fourth if they win their game in hand and only seven points shy of the leaders.
Momentum has been lost though. Five points out of fifteen have been won from their last five matches, with seven goals beating Given. Robinho, despite Sparky’s insistences to the contrary, is by most accounts unhappy and wanting out. The team’s notoriously impatient fans have tasted the golden nectar of…consistency!....and are getting itchy trigger fingers, with crosshairs settled shakily on Hughes’ head.
Of course, this is all nuts. To say City have advanced as a club this season is like saying the human race has come on a bit since the Stone Age. Their performances against Arsenal and United were superb and their squad has more depth than Liverpool’s (cough).
But the bar has been lifted. City is a team in transition that has the finances to morph into pretty much any form necessary, but with the two London teams at the top waking up to the fact that consistency can be achieved the beautiful way (there’s my original point, I knew I left it here somewhere) there may have to be many more millions spent before the title can be bought.
Is City a defensive side? No. Attacking? Yes, and an impressive one at that, but still a long way off their peers. And how many revolutions of the Eastlands doors, one wonders, can their dressing room tolerate before the legendary team spirit which it has purportedly developed begins to wilt.
The rhetoric coming out of the club suggests they will always twist rather than stick, and any players not pulling their weight will not be suffered.
Their bed has been made but The Citizens are tossing and turning, restless with the excitement of their new found wealth. Maybe suggestions that it would be their ultimate undoing weren’t completely born out of jealousy.
Have a good weekend,
AP
Monday, November 2, 2009
Liverpool's Plight, Neutral's Delight
LIVERPOOL Football Club are currently a wildebeest writhing on some desolate savanna in the clutch of a famished lion. Or a motorway wreckage, all twisted metal and flames, with a rescue crew scrabbling desperately for survivors.
For the neutral observer, it's a guilty treat.
This isn't what you think. I support Arsenal, and while I have no love for The Kop there is no malice to be found either. Only the occasional raised and slightly irritated eyebrow at an uncanny ability to win matches in the dying moments.
But Liverpool's unhappy plight is a thing of intrigue.
Despite not having won the league since 1990, a huge club will always be a huge club, and Liverpool are, well, freeking massive. Every season the expectation on the shoulders of Rafa Benitez to win silverware is enormous. He has delivered the Champions League trophy which has earned him a lengthy stay of execution, but his lifeline is running out.
The feelings of many football observers were echoed by former Anfield ace Ronny Whelan in a recent interview on Irish television:
"He wants to win the European Cup so he can get a job in Europe. For me, his days have got to be numbered at Liverpool.
"He's taken players off who are the only players who are going to give you a chance of winning the game.
"And he drags them all off because he's got a game on Wednesday.
"When I saw the team I thought he's not bothered about this game. He's putting all his eggs in one basket and I can't see why he's done it."
Benitez's Jenkyll and Hyde style of management can often be forgiven, laughed off or even saluted as quirky providing the latter stages of tournaments and the upper echelons of the top half of the table are reached.
But their last seven matches have seen league defeats dished out by Chelsea, Sunderland and Fulham, Champions League loses to Fiorentina and Lyon, an exit from the Carling Cup at the hands of Arsenal and only a victory over a United side who hardly turned up at Anfield in their favour.
So tomorrow night when Liverpool travel to Stade Georges Lyvet to take on Lyon for the second time in their Champions League qualifying group, us neutrals suddenly become savages, vultures, circling this wounded beast and hungry not for its flesh, but simply for the spectacle of it's demise.
The winds of change have blown strongly in the Premier League of late. The top four is in a state of flux, and many at the start of the season predicted, not entirely unjustly, that us Gunners would finally plunge from grace.
But where new defensive partnerships and Alex Song have given us a backbone, the loss of Alonso and injuries to Gerrard and Torres have robbed Liverpool of theirs.
If a new order is to be brought in, we won't know until Christmas at the very soonest, and not really until April. But the prospect of such a change fascinates us as fans of the sport, especially here in England where the status of the 'Big 4' is so deeply entrenched.
For me, in a more competitive season than we've experienced for a while and with Rafa's boys lying nine points adrift at the beginning of November, things are far from set in stone and Liverpool are not by any means out of the title race.
But defeat tomorrow would be catastrophic in terms of this season's Champions League bid and hugely demoralising for a club already in free fall.
There's something about watching bad things happen to other people that we find comforting, for better or worse. But a cornered animal is often at its most dangerous.
AP
For the neutral observer, it's a guilty treat.
This isn't what you think. I support Arsenal, and while I have no love for The Kop there is no malice to be found either. Only the occasional raised and slightly irritated eyebrow at an uncanny ability to win matches in the dying moments.
But Liverpool's unhappy plight is a thing of intrigue.
Despite not having won the league since 1990, a huge club will always be a huge club, and Liverpool are, well, freeking massive. Every season the expectation on the shoulders of Rafa Benitez to win silverware is enormous. He has delivered the Champions League trophy which has earned him a lengthy stay of execution, but his lifeline is running out.
The feelings of many football observers were echoed by former Anfield ace Ronny Whelan in a recent interview on Irish television:
"He wants to win the European Cup so he can get a job in Europe. For me, his days have got to be numbered at Liverpool.
"He's taken players off who are the only players who are going to give you a chance of winning the game.
"And he drags them all off because he's got a game on Wednesday.
"When I saw the team I thought he's not bothered about this game. He's putting all his eggs in one basket and I can't see why he's done it."
Benitez's Jenkyll and Hyde style of management can often be forgiven, laughed off or even saluted as quirky providing the latter stages of tournaments and the upper echelons of the top half of the table are reached.
But their last seven matches have seen league defeats dished out by Chelsea, Sunderland and Fulham, Champions League loses to Fiorentina and Lyon, an exit from the Carling Cup at the hands of Arsenal and only a victory over a United side who hardly turned up at Anfield in their favour.
So tomorrow night when Liverpool travel to Stade Georges Lyvet to take on Lyon for the second time in their Champions League qualifying group, us neutrals suddenly become savages, vultures, circling this wounded beast and hungry not for its flesh, but simply for the spectacle of it's demise.
The winds of change have blown strongly in the Premier League of late. The top four is in a state of flux, and many at the start of the season predicted, not entirely unjustly, that us Gunners would finally plunge from grace.
But where new defensive partnerships and Alex Song have given us a backbone, the loss of Alonso and injuries to Gerrard and Torres have robbed Liverpool of theirs.
If a new order is to be brought in, we won't know until Christmas at the very soonest, and not really until April. But the prospect of such a change fascinates us as fans of the sport, especially here in England where the status of the 'Big 4' is so deeply entrenched.
For me, in a more competitive season than we've experienced for a while and with Rafa's boys lying nine points adrift at the beginning of November, things are far from set in stone and Liverpool are not by any means out of the title race.
But defeat tomorrow would be catastrophic in terms of this season's Champions League bid and hugely demoralising for a club already in free fall.
There's something about watching bad things happen to other people that we find comforting, for better or worse. But a cornered animal is often at its most dangerous.
AP
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