It’s unreal how many opportunities we’ve spurned this season. They’re not even particularly hard ones. Defeating a Manchester United with Marcus Rojo, Guillermo Varela, Memphis Depay, Marcus Rashford and Michael Carrick at centre back should be easy for Aston Villa, forget Arsenal. We’re a bottler. Arsenal is the human manifestation of an Oliver Twist who says, “Please sir, may I have some less?”
When no one expects us to win, we’re fantastic. We defeated Bayern Munich and gave Barçelona a run for their money. We qualified for the Round of 16 after an atrocious opening. But under the pressures of expectation, Arsenal are embarrassing. We lost to Chelsea, drew to Hull City and barely defeated Villa. How many more times will we falter when people don’t expect us to?
United weren’t even particularly good yesterday. They don’t deserve any credit – nor did Southampton, nor did Hull and nor did a million other average sides that we’ve failed to break down, using a dated attacking approach. For giving the opposition too much space and not even taking the odd chance we create, we can’t blame anyone other than ourselves.
How else can you legislate for such a poor showing? Nacho Monreal and Hector Bellerin were sitting ducks all day. The former couldn’t catch up with Varela who plumped in a cross no United player was near. No matter – as our centre backs made a hash of it and laid it on a plate for Rashford to score. Laurent Koscielny with the assist, Gabriel Paulista with the pre-assist. Unreal.
We lost all composure, allowing Rashford to score again. Monreal was sliced open (again), the cross was almost identical (again), and the same player scored (again). If there ever was a neat microcosmic symbolism of ‘same old’ errors at Arsenal, this was it.
Nearly all our of players were dire. Gabriel has been terrible for a while and gone under the radar. Monreal and Bellerin were abject too, but I guess you could excuse them because of what they’ve offered before. The same logic, for me, applies to Alexis Sánchez. Danny Welbeck could have done better, but at least he tried.
I don’t know what to make of Aaron Ramsey. I have no earthly idea why and how the media haven’t caught on to his mediocrity. Andy Townsend described his performance as a “rare poor game”. Piss off. Ramsey has been frustratingly underwhelming for nearly a year now.
He skies shots and shanks passes.He dribbles the ball into nowhere and loses possession. Give him the ball in the center of the park – he’ll run a little forward, unsuccessfully try to get past the opponent in front of him and pass it back to Koscielny. He doesn’t keep the ball ticking. He’s not a team player, he’s become selfish.
Perhaps what refrains me from openly stating any dislike of Ramsey’s qualities is his workrate. At least he tries. Theo Walcott doesn’t. He’s been relegated to the absolute peripheries of our XI. He completed four passes in the first half, two of which were from kickoff. He’s stopped running into space. He’s stopped converting reasonably difficult chances. Lukas Podolski offered more and we called him a fraud.
Well, Walcott earns more wages than Antoine Griezmann and Marco Reus. He has nothing to show for it. He’s been at the club for 10 years, and if he leaves tomorrow, no one would lose much sleep over him. Would I even place him in my top 20 Arsenal favourites? Top 50? Top 100?
What would Mesut Ozil think when he sees the rag around him? The German has been carrying our team and we’re mocking him. He wasn’t even supposed to have leadership material. He’s an introvert. Yet, as of this moment the team’s psychology is wrecked enough for him to rise to the top. If everyone reached his level we’d be winning the Champions League. As of now, we can’t even scrape a draw against the worst Manchester United in 20 years.
Ozil’s not stupid, he knows his stock in the market is high. Andres Iniesta is getting too old for Barcelona, and a team like theirs might consider a player like ours. And at the end of the day who would Ozil want to play with – Messi, Neymar and Suarez, or Walcott, Alexis and Welbeck?
Player aren’t as committed to the club as we are. Mesut Ozil won’t really care about what we’re trying to achieve (if we are trying to achieve anything). He wants progress, trophies and money. Have we progressed enough? Points-wise, we’re in the exact same position as we were a year ago. We actually have an inferior goal difference. We’ve gone backwards.
How are you supposed to account for the regress? Arsene Wenger doesn’t even seem to notice it. Yesterday, he went on record saying United won because they spent a lot of money. Leaving aside the preposterous line of that argument, there’s no law saying Arsene didn’t have to spend more than £11m. No one forced him not to buy apart from Petr Cech. Heck, Sir Chips Keswick even implied that Wenger is given full access to everything and zero accountability.
Ultimately, Wenger refused to strengthen. He could have gotten Morgan Schneiderlin (for instance) and added some competition. He could have at least tried, instead of dallying over Cech and giving United a clear path. What sort of ruthlessness and ambition is this?
It’s this kind of laissez-faire attitude that has shredded his reputation and our club to smithereens. No one in England or Europe takes us seriously anymore. Graham Souness nearly called us a joke on air. How is he wrong? You cannot retort to that. You simply cannot.
At this point it must be asked – if not now, then when? Arsenal have the easiest chance to win the Premier League since it was birthed. Our job is to overtake wild cards Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur, not Chelsea and Manchester United in their prime. It’s not entirely easy, but it’s the easiest we’re going to get.
Despite all that, the title is practically dead. Winning all of our remaining games bring us to 84 points, which should be more than enough to win the league. But it’s worth noting that those games include Spurs at White Hart Lane, Everton at Goodison Park, West Ham United at Upton Park and Manchester City at the Etihad. Will we win all of them, or at least three? I don’t even fancy our chances of trouncing Swansea on Wednesday.
One and a half years ago I had predicted Arsene Wenger’s downfall to this very moment. Understandably I was questioned, if not ridiculed. Today even Arseblog agrees with me. How far fetched does that prophecy sound now? How can there still be people who walk on this world and think Wenger is not at fault for our current predicament?
What happened yesterday, in its own, is not a disgrace. The fact that we kept our faith and money in a person who has no idea what to do with them, is a disgrace. The fact that we’re not winning the worst Premier League of all time is a disgrace.
Arsenal are a disgrace. Arsene Wenger is a disgrace.
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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