Match Report | Match highlights | Wenger’s thoughts | Credits: The Sun
To appease obvious doubts, let me begin with an important clarification – Steve Bould is not in any way a better manager than Arsene Wenger. For all his current faults you and I may identify, the simple truth is that Wenger has achieved much more than Bould. He’s defeated Barcelona and Bayern Munich in their prime, he’s competed for trophies over the course of seasons, and like it or not, he has won a lot of trophies.
Steve Bould is certainly not a better manager than Wenger, and over the course of this post, I will do my best to neither say nor imply that. I hope this exposition fans the cognitive flames to the requisite Goldilocks levels, for it is important to continually remind ourselves of this while analyzing Arsenal’s ruthless 5-0 demolition of Southampton yesterday in their own backyard.
Perchance what made this victory different from big-margin wins against Basel or Ludogorets was that the manner of it was fundamentally unique. I’ve written extensively enough on Wengerball over the past years to recognize football that does not adhere to that category. Yes – Arsenal were clever, Arsenal were precise and Arsenal were clinical, but what we saw yesterday was not Wengerball. It was something else.
The signs were more obvious in the initial stages of the game than in the latter. Wengerball does not adhere to central midfielders dribbling past opposing midfielders that we saw so frequently yesterday. Yet Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Jeff Reine-Adelaide enjoyed acres of space, largely because they were creating it for themselves. They were running at Southampton men with a clear motive of “taking them on”, for lack of a better phrase.
Wengerball doesn’t dictate that. In Wengerball, when an opponent blocks the way in front of you, you try to pass the ball away from him – sideways, forwards and sometimes backwards. It was clear five minutes into the game that philosophy was well and truly sidelined. Heck, even Ospina once shimmied the ball past a Southampton man. It really felt like a clear instruction before the game, and boy was it a joy to watch.
In addition, Arsenal were mixing short passes with long ones much more often than in previous games. Look at the ball Oxlade-Chamberlain played over the top for Danny Welbeck’s second goal. It was as amazing as it was atypical. Granit Xhaka’s arrival has brought with it an increase in lobbed sprays across the pitch, but I don’t think we’ve seen an assist from the halfway line this season (with the possible exception of Mohammed Elneny’s assist for Mesut Ozil’s ridiculous solo goal).
Another point to consider is our lineup. Bould opted to choose pace over technique, with a crazy quick midfield trio and an equally electric front three. More technical (and more ‘Wenger’) players like Mesut Ozil and Olivier Giroud didn’t even make the bench. It meant that we were more direct, more dominating and wrapped the game up nice and early.
Again, I do not mean to imply that how we played yesterday, different that it was, is a long-term successor to Wengerball’s pass-and-move approach. After all, Wengerball has been tried and tested against over a thousand games, and this newfound style was adopted merely once. It’s also important to note that despite keeping a clean sheet, some of our defending was definitely not up to scratch, and a better team would have punished us.
To also suggest that merely banning Wenger from the touchline would deny him any form of input is equally bananas. Of course Wenger must have had some form of decision-making authority over how Arsenal chose to play yesterday. Theo Walcott himself said that Wenger was in the dressing room during the half-time interval, and before/after the game.
On the other hand, I refuse to believe the polar opposite is true. I refuse to believe that the win was 100% down to Wenger and that Bould was merely a puppet who was carrying out the Frenchman’s orders via phone calls or chits. There was too much different from the mainstream for it to be a consideration – passing technicians were not on the bench, Francis Coquelin and Aaron Ramsey were not overplayed, and substitutions were made before the 65th minute; to name a few.
Yesterday was different, that I have no doubt of. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m deluding myself into thinking what I saw was not trademark Wengerball. But get this – I realized Wenger was not managing this game five minutes after it began. I didn’t watch the game with any prejudiced spectacles on. Arsenal have never won at Southampton since they were promoted, until today when we absolutely decimated them. If that doesn’t count for something, I don’t know what does.
Yesterday was wonderful in many rights, but it was also quite illustrative. It showed that Arsenal are not as dependent on Wenger as many have made it out to be. It showed that his famed Wengerball is not necessarily the best footballing philosophy in the world. And as heartless as it sounds, it also showed that while Wenger has been a useful asset to Arsenal over the years, surely a better one is out there.
I’m not for one second banging the drum on Bould to replace Wenger – it’s way too early to make a preemptive guess like that. I’m merely stating that we need not be as afraid of change as we currently are. That, for obvious reasons, a post-Wenger Arsenal will be an uncertain period in the club’s history, but it need not be catastrophic.
Indeed, yesterday highlighted that it may well be better.
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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