Credits: Football365
Groundhog Days are here again as the space of one week confirmed what many already feared – Arsenal are not winning the Premier League, and after a summer of investment close to £80m, yet another season appears wasted.
And in the cold light of day, could you look at the performance against Chelsea and begin to argue we ever deserved it? Insipid at times when the players and the manager needed to be the most charged, and deserved losers without question.
From first minute till last, there was nothing that indicated we were better than Chelsea yesterday, no signs of the day when we trashed them 3-0 in September. Some argued, Wenger including, that we started the game brightly. Since when did “starting the game brightly” mean barely being able to hold larger chunks of the football and listlessly pass it sideways and backwards?
Are those the standards we’ve fallen to now? It was obvious that this was a game Arsenal simply had to win. The league table said it all – before kickoff the margin between Arsenal and Chelsea was nine points. A bad position to find ourselves in, but surely not irreparable. Worse margins have been overtaken, unlikely as it sounds.
Fine – if not for trophies, if not for the history books, at least for pride? You don’t need me to remind you that Chelsea are everything Arsenal should be against. They are our geographical London rivals. They’ve spent trillions when Arsenal couldn’t rub two nickels together. They’re physical where Arsenal attempt to be aesthetic. They’re utterly reliant on a Russian business tycoon while Arsenal try to build a self-sustaining business model. And for a long enough amount of time, they were managed by one of the biggest disrespecting cocksuckers the football world has ever known, who had a pathological hate for Arsene Wenger.
You’d think that would be enough for a lasting rivalry to be formed. You’d think that would be enough for the players to be riled up the wall hours before the ball is kicked in anger. You’d think the sheer repulsive nature of their players, their culture, their ethos and their institution should be enough for the players to give the fuckers a fight, even if not win it.
But no. Arsenal losing was not unexpected by any means, but sadly, neither was the nature of it. It was hesitant, it was lily-livered and it was cowardly from a team that is fast appearing to be scared of success. We were outclassed, we were outmatched, we were boys against men, and in the end, we got exactly what we deserved – what we’ve always deserved.
I really liked Arseblog’s point on Chelsea’s first goal. Yes, I felt it was a foul on Hector Bellerin and yes, the fact that it wasn’t given is another shocking indictment of the levels of officiating in English football. But apart from Bellerin himself, no one even looked affected by what had happened. The Arsenal of fifteen years ago would have waged wars over less. Yet, we looked defeated and despondent; resigned to accept we weren’t good enough. A few shrugs and football went on.
If you’ve ever doubted our loserlike mentality, just look at Eden Hazard’s goal again. I refuse to believe that was an ingenious piece of play more than it was utterly shambolic and casual defending from our side. Francis Coquelin, Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi made fools of themselves when they should have dealt with a relatively innocuous piece of play, something that tends to happen more often in games that actually matter. That kind of mentality won’t even win you the EFL Cup, forget England’s golden crown.
There was hardly any willingness from anyone to make amends, and even if there was, any tactical plan to back that up was absent. Oxlade-Chamberlain had an okay game, and Danny Welbeck looked decent when he came on. Yet that’s what they were, okay and decent. In high stakes games like yesterday’s, ‘okay’ and ‘decent’ won’t get you anything better than the pasting we forced ourselves to see.
Chelsea were better, simple as. It’s not even about individual quality of the players, it’s about how well they gel together as a team, something that ultimately comes from the manager. At the end of the day, they have better concentration, better finesse and greater ambition. If they win the league, as seems increasingly likely, I’d have to admit through my clenched teeth that they deserved it.
What about us? Petr Cech carelessly tossing the ball toward Cesc Fabregas for him to score a rub-salt-in-the-wound goal said it all. I think it’s obvious that Arsenal have a goalkeeping problem – decent shot-stoppers like Wojciech Szczesny, David Ospina and now Cech have become dangerously inconsistent and unreliable through the years. But that’s a different debate – a problem for the next manager to deal with, whenever he comes.
But when will he come? Arsene Wenger is already heading into the December of his footballing career, and has never looked more like a man who does not know how to win modern football anymore. His players are too nice, his philosophy has outdone itself and he doesn’t hold the popular vote anymore. Yes, Wenger was great 20 years ago, but so was the Nintendo 64.
The more years the board stupidly decide to keep him on, the more years he’ll waste. With our Premier League ‘challenge’ dead in early February (?!), the only other competition where Wenger can hope to win something worth winning is the Champions League. And unless his Arsenal team miraculously manage to get past Bayern Munich when they can’t even defeat Watford, it would be safe to say we can rule that out as well.
In regressive times like these, it’s astounding that there are even talks of a new contract. Apparently Wenger himself confirmed that a two-year-deal was on the table (although I didn’t find any quotes), although it has not been signed and agreed yet.
To say nothing of a money-hogging powerless board that cannot even gauge the mood of the fans well, I find it interesting that Wenger hasn’t signed the contract yet. At long last, Wenger appears to be questioning his competence and his relevance to this football club. It finally looks like the 20-year reign, nearly half of which has been full of forgettable memories, could be coming to a close.
Whenever Arsene Wenger leaves, the new manager will have a lot to do. He’ll have to try to keep the club’s star players. He’ll have to fix the injury problems, the scouting system, the youth academy, the backroom staff. He’ll have to find ways to deviate from the outdated Wengerball and he’ll have to appease large sections of the Arsenal support, some of whom might be secretly rooting for him to fail.
It will be a tumultuous moment in the history of the football club, no question, but yesterday was a reminder on how overdue and necessary it actually is.
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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