I’m not sure you want me to re-hash 8 conceded goals. What’s the point? We knew in May we were average at best when defending. We knew that 43 conceded goals was one of the records of the past 20 years. What we hoped for was progress…
I’ve cut short a bank holiday night to go home. I’m numb. I don’t know how you all feel, but Arsenal isn’t a pass time, it’s an extension of my everyday life. To watch my club disappear into predictable mediocrity is a huge drain, so writing this is horrible… But I’ll try and address the issues as best I can…
The kids…
It’s a disgrace that our squad is 3 games into the season and we’re fielding a debutant, a non-league loanee from last year, a left back who is so bad we’d rather play our right back in his position and our best solution to chase a game is a League One winger with no pedigree.
We’re a club with huge resources available, a manager who is one of the greatest talent spotters on the planet and we sent out a team of beginners to take on last seasons European Cup Finalists.
Speak to any professional worth his salt and they’ll tell you the best time to ring talent into the team is when it’s settled… Not when it’s on its knees. Arsene Wenger’s disregard for this rule is damaging for the players and the clubs prospects.
It’s hard to even pinpoint youth as the main problem here. United had a team with the same average age as us. It’s down to pure quality. We don’t have enough of it. United shared the same average age as us yesterday, but boasted far more experience and talent. I had to sit there with Arsenal fans pre-match debating whether Coquelin was experienced because he’s played half a season with Lorient. Ask yourself this, how many of the players on show yesterday would get in the Everton starting 11? Not many… So why are they starting for us in a crunch tie?
The adults…
The senior squad players were terrible yesterday. As has been the case during most of the past 3-4 years, when the chips are down, our senior players refuse to take responsibility and often let us down. Andrey Arshavin was pathetically bad yesterday. He’s not mentally there anymore. There was one moment in the first half where he had the ball outside their area, he looked up, no one moved for him so he just lashed at the ball. Now to a certain degree, I understand his frustration, he’s in the prime of his career and he’s playing with dross, but on the other hand, he’s old enough to know better and he should be leading by example. He should also be giving the leagues worst left back a bit of a hand every now and then, especially against world class wingers.
We had Rosicky pulling out of 50-50′s, spraying bad passes round like and idiot. Johann Djourou was defending like a total novice. Simply put, the man is not up to Premiership standards right now, his positional awareness is shot as is his confidence. Laurent Koscielny looks to have talent hidden away somewhere, but he’s still incredibly raw and naive as a defender.
Theo Walcott is supposed to be one of our lead players, 5 years on and he’s still leaving his full back horribly exposed, so much so he’s getting an on pitch b*llocking from him. He is yet another example of precocious youth talent never making that step up. Sure he can score goals using his pace, but so can Andy Johnson.
The main ingredient they all seem to lack is a good attitude and on pitch intelligence. How could the boys not see we were getting destroyed early on and make an on pitch decision. If the manager wouldn’t do it, surely the players could club together? To allow it to get to 8 goals is almost criminal for a top class football club. It’d be criminal in Sunday League. Surely when you reach the upper echelons of football, there should be some level of on pitch management that could prevent that happening?
Tactics…
I said this yesterday…
I do hope the coach has factored that into our tactics. I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks ‘just play your game’ on the white board will be enough.
Well, he didn’t. He never gives instructions to his players. That’s fine when you’ve inherited a back four and employed superstar talent, not when you’re fielding players who haven’t learned the game. Yesterdays game plan was suicide. The worst thing about it? It was predictable. Should a blogger be able to call out our match plan before it happens? Disgraceful management again.
Predictability…
Journalists, bloggers, pundits, ex-players and current players have all cited the problems Arsenal have. Le Grove has banged the drum for a change in mindset for three years. Every summer it doesn’t happen, every next summer it’s the same outcome. The defence never improves, the squad never gets bigger and all the time our quality diminishes as another top player gives up the project.
Am I looking for a gold star here? Absolutely not. But how can a blogger who can’t cook kidneys properly be picking out the problems in our squad and getting them right time after time? Wenger earns £7million a year and the mere mortals are telling him the problems before they happen. Even the blogs that cushion critique Wenger are struggling to deal with his inaction and lack of intent.
Still though, even after our worst defeat since 1886, Wenger nonchalantly declares that signings aren’t the solution. Unless of course, he’s recruiting unknown teenagers from around the globe. They’re always the solutions.
Is this the sort of man who should be managing our club? Or can we just call a spade a spade and be honest. It’s time for a change.
The board…
Equally complicit in this, regardless of the money they have offered as a transfer budget.
Stan took over the club, he was supposed to bring direction to a rudderless club and he’s done nothing.
Did he watch the game yesterday? Does he give a rats ass about what went on? Does he know he just oversaw the sale of our two best players and the worst defeat in living memory?
Stan has offered us nothing. If he’s happy with the status quo under the guise of self sustainability, what was the point of him buying the club?
Here are some points. Usmanov goes to the games. He has more money than Abramovich. His business record is phenomenal. He’d pay our Stadium off, he’s offered to fund squad strengthening and he wouldn’t tolerate a power structure based on anything other than success.
Forget your personal take on his alleged past, what matters to you, a self-sustaining model that is built on us selling our best players and hitting the fans with massive personal costs. Or a model that brought the success to the club?
Give me a football fan willing to invest their own money over an American whose 1st, 2nd and 3rd sport don’t come close to the great game any day.
Onto Gazidis. I can picture his issue. To sack Wenger he’ll need fans begging for it. His hands are tied, we can’t complain we want an autonomous manager then blame the board if the manager chooses not to spend. Wenger needs to go now, however, it’ll have to get a lot worse before that happens. It will though… sadly for us.
Where I will offer criticism is on players purchases. If Wenger wants Cahill, he should have been snapped up for a realistic price in June. If Wenger wanted Phil Jones in January, we should have paid the £12million they wanted in January. If we were in for Mata, what the hell is he doing lining up for Chelsea right now? Our backroom team costs £15million a year to service and their negotiation skills are nothing short of shocking. Is that an American problem? Have we recruited a whole team of executives who have zero experience of European football? It feels that way… because deals seem to be passing us by at a ridiculous pace. Or is it that we’re allowing Wenger to dictate what he pays for the players? Either way, some transparency is needed to explain the summer of inaction.
The manager…
‘In England always the first solution is to sign players, we have 8 players coming back’
Kind of sums the manager up. United were missing 5. They didn’t have to debut a defensive midfielder, field an inexperienced League One right back and chase the game with a 17 year old. Injuries are standard with Arsenal. Suspensions are down to bad discipline that the manager should be controlling. Signings would absolutely solve this problem. He doesn’t want to do that though. He is so focused on being the manager than won out against financial doping, that he’s lost track of what matters… the success of Arsenal football club.
He’s gone the way of Rafa, he’d rather make a moralistic point at the expense of a trophy. He’d rather shaft a whole season than do his job properly. That’s leading to empty seats in the ground. Regular booing and a squad of players that have never been lower. This team isn’t good enough for top 4 this year. That’s the reality of the situation. Even with all our players back, we’d struggle.
That’s mostly down to one man. It’s been a predictable demise and it’s only going to get worse. Swansea up next where we’ll have to start a fresh. Hopefully we’ll have a couple of new signings before then, if we haven’t expect the fans to show their dissent in a very public way.
Arsene has 3 days to save his career, I have no expectation he’ll do that even with the players I know he’s trying to bring in. Not even the most disgraceful defeat in living memory can jolt his stubborn dedication to the failing project. Still, it can’t go on like this forever, he’s accountable to the fans, the board are accountable to cash and the two go hand in hand. He won’t last the season, of that I’m sure.
The car crash is underway…
Have a great day Grovers, see you in the comments.
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GET CAHILL NOW WENGER!!
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/950863/arsenal-target-mario-gotze-staying-at-dortmund?cc=5739
Usmanov meeting agenda,
1. Buy Arsenal, tell Wenger he is manager not accountant
2. Sack Hill Wood & Gazidis
3. Sign Goetze’s
4. Sign Schweinsteiger
5. Sign Sakho/Cahil?? (fuck it, i will have both)
6. Sell Bendtner, Denilson, Squid, Almunia, Rosicky (if we can’t release)
7. Speak to the fans
With Usmanov it would happen,
The Metro rehashed the Daily Mail story..
Ah Slow Sports News finally report the Andre Santos story.
Mario’s agent said no move this summer. So thats a bust.
who is available for transfer come the end of the transfer window?: you either get shit (like Squillachi or Silvestre), or else you overpay (35m for Carroll). I can’t see us overpaying, so what does that leave us? chelski won’t sell us Alex unless his legs have gone. They won’t sell us Malouda unless he is finished. They may sell us Benayoun and Kalou, as they are shit.
Unfortunately for us, we are lacking class players in many positions. We now seem to be wildly thrashing around in a panic to buy whoever we can to plug those gaps. But what decent player would sign long term to a club so obviously on the slide? It’s so fucking depressing. And so could have been avoided.
I didn’t watch the Man Utd game, until turning on 10 mins from time. Was I surprised to see the scoreline? No. I will watch Swansea as we have a chance of beating them, but the big teams I think I will get too depressed. not sure what winds me up more: the lack of quality or the lack of passion.
On another note, did I hear that Bolton recently signed another CB?
Gay Dave
We’ll become faacking basket cases at every new story in the next 2 days!
Spuds can be interested all they like in Cahill. I can’t see him choosing them over us, can he!!! It will just force Arenal to pay the Bolton price and not the Aldi price.
Apparently the Santos deal is done. Add Cahil and/or Alex to that and that will be major surgery to the defence! I’m afraid it will be one or the other regarding Cahill or Alex. However, I would love to see the two of them arriving. Why not, he’s seen us ship 10 goals in 2 games. If he’s really keen on Cahill why enquire about Alex? Unless he’s just playing poker. Of the 3 Chelsea palyers we are linked with I would put Alex as the number one target.
Of all those creative types mentioned I fear we will sign only one seeing as we are also about to announce the Chu-Young deal! Probably Elia as he’s the only one to declare a possible move to England… but mentioning that two clubs are interested!
At least they didn’t claim they ‘understand’
Twitter will go into meltdown the way anything spreads on there and all the random transfers rumours about it’s frustrating.
Not very happy with the way this summer has been managed.
There’s some much false hope over a dodgy rumour and then we’re suddenly signing Park and Santos, what can you believe nowadays?
What is worrying is all these bit-part players like Benayoun who are not regular starters will be easier to get than big names established in big teams. Just hope that the Blankety Blank Cheque book and pen has enough spaces to write a figure bigger than 10,000,000!
I can see the headlines now ” Arsene covers the cracks with a Brazilian”
NEW POST!
Keep telling you.
No big name players will join us, the amount of rejections from clubs and players this summer has been mamouth
Great, great post, for the first time I can say I agree with every word you’ve written.
Come on a few of those players had good games. Jenkinson struggled but overall was a shining light in a defensive nightmare. But let single out a few players whose arsenal career should end now Arshavin his lack of interest and inability to track back should signal end of his career let the russian anzkhan whoever have him. Djourou is so poor even a sunday league team would not want him. Traore we will leave him alone as qpr have taken him off are hands thank god. Ramsey has once again shown he can’t dominate a game if it had been wilshere or frimpong out there they would not looked like a fish out of water. Rosicky too was conspicuous in his abscence on the field of play. Now for the score and the goals three of those goals were unstoppable the two rooney freekicks and penalty. Youngs two goals were top draw though he could have been closed down earlier maybe. The two goals that are upsetting and really highlight how defensively poor we were are the wellbeck goal either frimp or Djourou or Koscelny should have dealt with that easily and Parks goal should have been prevented. Now Wenger picked the strongest team available to him and it was not an age thing because the two teams had same avg age, but experience does tell and and here I will highlight those Jones and smalling cleverly wellbeck were the least experienced utd players but all have had more experience of premiership football than some of our players making premiership debuts were Coquelin who had a reasonable first game Chamberlain jenkinson and Traore whose last premiership game was 18 odd months ago and lansbury late on.Jenkinson had to contend with Young a talented England international and did a reasonable job against him add that to evra’s attacking runs the boy did well and did set up van persie’s goal.on the other side well we had no defense there smalling was given chance after chance to overlap Traore with Arshavin failing to track back on numerous occassions Yes Wenger is to blame for not having enough experience in the side but thats all, those players out there had to perform especially the more experienced ones and they have to take responsibility on how they defended after first couple they should of had the brains to sit a little deeper and not allow utd behind them so easily but they didn’t.
Is it OK to say that I cried after the game? Out of frustration, Out of Confusion, Out of disappointment, Out of Humiliation. Did not want to show my face to friends or family the entire day
Mertesacker is about to sign apparently. Thoughts?
I’ve read as many comments as I could stomach.
I’m on the fence as to whether Arsene Wenger has just lost the plot or if he’s getting shafted by the board. It’s hard to imagine that the guy who won titles and formed the Invincibles could lose it so spectactularly and be so tied to a philosophy that he’d actually rather be crap than spend money. Just doesn’t ring true for me. What does ring true is that an American bought the club and wants to make a profit out of it. Glazers? Gillette-Hicks? Lerner? I’m seeing a trend…
So part of me thinks that AW is trying to force a crisis, to make the board support him properly and let him buy the replacements he needs to win things. Henry left because he wanted to win things – the same reason Fabregas just left. And probably the same reason (plus money) for Nasri. To be fair to AW though, he seems to have a knack for selling at the right time. Henry never lived up to expectations at the Nou Camp, nor did Overmars, Petit and Hleb.
We all know that the “You never win anything with kids” rhetoric isn’t true, provided the kids are good enough. And AW has been successful with young signings like Viera and Anelka (and Henry hadn’t even turned 22 when he joined…) and Wilshere has come through the ranks as did Fabregas, sort of. But for every one of them there’s also been an Aliadiere.
If the board is at fault, then replacing Wenger won’t change much because the problem will still be there. If the problem is Wenger, then replacing him with a good manager should make a difference after there’s been a transfer window or two to sort things out. And whilst the Hiddinks and Rijkaards of the world probably would pass on Arsenal today, one bad season isn’t going to turn us into a small club. We will still be one of the Big 4 in reputation and history, if not exactly results and silverware. So an ambitious manager looking for a step up, like perhaps Owen Coyle, would jump at the chance to sort us out.
Of course the likelihood is it’s a mixture of both these factors. AW is probably getting stubborn in his old age and bored along with the board not supporting him in going for the world class talent. If that’s the case, I’d rather we kept him around as a scout or director of football or something like that to keep finding good young talent, but have a manager who is prepared to buy a £25 million player every year to keep strengthening the team. Maybe it’s time for Bergkamp to begin his coaching career, maybe it’s time for Dein to return.
What I do know is that if a promising youngster isn’t turning into a top class talent after a year or so, then you need to give up on them and get in someone who is a top class talent. Bendtner, for instance, has never been as good as he thinks he is and hasn’t matured into the defender-hassling, 25-league-goals-per-season striker that we need. Adebayor scored 24 goals in 07-08, but Henry did that or better for *5* seasons in a row! And after he left, Adebayor started off looking like a replacement, but then 08-09 was mediocre. So why didn’t we go and break the bank for a new striker then? Van Persie is a winger/second striker, but he’s the Pires or Bergkamp, not the Henry. Back in the good old days we had Henry, Bergkamp and Kanu to come into the team when one of them was injured – three top class strikers. Now we have the combined talents of Bendtner, Chamakh and Gervinho!
Likewise, when Vieira left, he wasn’t replaced with a good, strong, defensive midfielder. A marquee signing like Van Bommel could have worked. Instead, there was a mish-mash for a year or so until Flamini started working well with Fabregas and then because he wasn’t tied down long term, he left for nothing – /facepalm. Diaby had his chance to grow into the role, but, well, that’d involve not being injured for more than 14 seconds at a time. And we’ve established that Coquelin isn’t it either. I don’t even know who to buy for that role if you had £30m either.
Or what about Campbell? I don’t really consider Gallas to be in the same league as Campbell, but he’d have made a good backup. Because that’s the thing, to be truly successful, you need to have good backup. When That Lot are missing Vidic or Ferdinand, they have people like Smalling to come in and fill the void. Ever since the good old days of Adams, Bould and Keown, we’ve had one great (Campbell, maybe Vermaelen), some good (Toure, Gallas), average (Senderos, Silvestre) and mediocre/awful (Koscielny, Squillaci, Hoyte, other Hoyte, Djourou, Cygan…) central defenders. To win things and be a top club, you need two great and two good central defenders. Djourou had his chance to be great, but isn’t, so it’s time to go out and buy a great central defender like Cahill, and at least one good one as backup for him and Vermaelen.
I could go on and on. All I know is that 10 years ago Arsenal stood on the cusp of being the dominant force in English, potentially European, football. They reached their zenith in 03-04 and never built on it properly. And now here we are.
Wenger is anti-Arsenal…this is a foregone conclusion now. He had lost the trust of discerning fans long back. We all got to know he has lost his sense of self-respect too. Else, he shd have quit on Sunday.
Lets hit at the core issue then: STAN KROENKE has to go. How can fans ensure Usmanov get the club’s reins? It will be a matter of a few seconds to see Wenger’s back after Usmanov becomes the boss.