THE PROJECT™

GUEST POST FROM JAMIL ALESSANDRO

This is the first installment in a guest series from writer Jamil Alessandro who is a longtime Gooner and Le Grove reader from way back when. Let him know what you think in the comments.

There are two sides to every tale. 

On the one hand, there is the Project ™ led by a plucky young former player tactics in his first managerial gig. The dashing former-captain, prodigy of the loved-again elder statesman Wenger…who after taking the league by storm with a brilliant hungry carefully-curated squad, is now as perfectly placed as each of his immaculately positioned hairs to take the beloved Arsenal 2.0 into successive epic title clashes against an unstoppable cash-gobbling juggernaut. 

On the other hand there is a former Premier League giant, without a championship trophy in 20 years, finally banishing years of sentimentality and slow decay to make a meaningful return to the Champions League… years after even sorry recollections of consecutive years shipping 5 goals to Bayern have become a hallowed memory. A hefty once-in-a-lifetime dose of Hale-End academy fortune mixed up with a potent shot of surprise- allowing the mighty Arsenal to take on the most successful team in the history of a competition. In a Premier League which has become less competitive than the Bundesliga.

On the one hand, there is the talented apprentice battling the aging master. Arteta poetically snaking the club which for half a decade stole our best players, betraying them only after using them as nothing more than a juego-de-posicion finishing school. There’s a one-in-a-million tactical genius, a mix of Pep and Wenger, at the helm of a club stacked with academy prodigies. One of the youngest teams in the league. Built differently. Players who want it more. There’s the impossible-to-not-love Star boy against the genetically engineered goalscoring machine. There’s the lights being turned on at the emirates. The chance to compensate for all the nearly years. To right every wrong that was ever done to us…to win the Arsenal way.

On the other, there is a statistically improbable, narrow path to victory in a highly competitive league. A multimillion-pound upgrade to the Emirates and one of the highest executive budgets in world football is, for a moment, finally clicking, allowing us to competitively entertain our even more financially powerhouse rivals. We have to hope for a pot of luck, and a points tally higher than the invincibles. 

There’s a Herculean labour made harder by a refereeing organisation that is unsympathetic and incompetent (to use the kindest terms libel laws will allow). The slim glimmer of light leading the way is only offered by a generational Liverpool team. One who lucked out on probably the two best ever signings in prem history, and still only won one title in five near flawless years. (In a COVID season no less where the whole show was very nearly cancelled.) Moving us towards that light, there’s a ruthless, modern, pretty talented coaching team working wonders with a cleverly assembled but still limited squad. Hoping to win the big time. 

On one hand there’s generational talent, the best coach in the world and the whole of N7 singing as one for the first time since Highbury.

On the other there’s relying on each astute signing being  absolutely perfect, the physios staying right on top of their game and Nicholas Jover somehow finding a new way to take a corner every single week.

The difficulty of reconciling these two different elements is pulling us apart.

Delusion FC

For a long time we Arsenal fans lived in a delusional state. Sentimentally holding on to players who weren’t quite good enough but were special talents or fan favourites. We were talking about how the integrity of Abu Diaby’s muscle fibres cost us the Champions League. Basically immune to the effects of even the most devastating break-up after what RVP did to us, we could be found harping on about the invincibles, and wallowing in the betrayal of Cesc for years at a time. All our tears were used up, over what Alexander Hleb’s short term career ambitions might have cost us.

We were in constant disbelief that a team of diminutive playmakers was getting fouled into oblivion in a league where it was essentially open season on any 5’7 foreigner with a hairband, the referees were afraid of not laughing loud enough at Fergie’s jokes and Tony Pulis publicly broadcast his intention to end careers.

We kept making our peace with fan favourites, living in a heady delirium that good football would triumph over tactical fouls and long throws. Utterly deluded that likeable players who really needed to be out of the club would come good, we could never quite see the path to the next step. I was one of those who ultimately had to print out an apology form, a vocal part of the petulance Arteta had to put up with when shifting Ozil and Aubameyang. 

But Arteta got us over that- realising consistency was the most important stat for a footballer to have. Then height. Then speed. Then strength. We had to sacrifice a bit of the poetry of our beautiful game and the prose of our club history. In order to build a solid foundation, bring in proven winners and improve the mentality, so that we stopped conceding 4 goals in the first 20 minutes of big games. (what a grim period) Arteta reaffirmed the non-negotiables, restoring the club’s reputation, its traditions could come next.

Arteta

And then suddenly we had a season where we thought we could have it all. 

The horseshoe of death had been banished. An underappreciated Gabriel Jesus, now the main man and undisputed no.9, was going to fire us to glory against his former team. He and Zinchencko were the final diamond pieces that had slipped through City’s gold-tipped fingers. The final pieces added to a winning formula that was 90% poetry.  

We were going to win the league! 

After all of the parts fell in place. Wenger’s deadline day signing, his captain, was to lead a team that had been rescued from its darkest days by the best product of Hale-End’s illustrious history. 

The aftermath of the infamous ‘You deserve better gunners’ tweet turned Baku’s humiliation into a redemption arc. It became the fuel for Saka to go Super Saiyan. It was a trademark academy third-man run that had saved us, in the fury of a Fulham blizzard, before long ‘Saka and Emile Smith Rowe’ blared out at the Emirates during the games, which were serenaded by ‘north London’ forever as the whole of Islington found its force before kick-off. The pitifully labelled ‘Arsenalification’ of the emirates was finally actually happening, long after tears of laughter had turned to sorrow, listening to the pitiful overtures of Gazidis. 

The crazy signing saga of William Saliba, turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. A play surpassed only by Arteta’s careful management of his loan move. Odegaard was  becoming the best captain we’d had since Vieira. Per Mertesaker was the BFG (big fucking can’t find a word beginning with G that relates to doing bits with scouting and recruitment). Jack Wilshere was heading up the youngsters on a romantic run to the youth FA cup final . Even when injury struck- Eddie Nketiah, the youngest ever Arsenal debut goalscorer, was on hand to hold the fort against Haaland. We were touched by fate. Les foggin go. It was our year. 

Season 2//Follow-Up Act

Until it wasn’t. A dodgy offside call went against us at Brentford, the last rub of the green we needed didn’t fall for us, before an unceremonious defeat at the Etihad put us to the sword. The misery merchants who had previously predicted we wouldn’t finish fourth couldn’t wait for us to languish, despite the cataclysmic step up in quality, we were bottle-merchants and specialists in failure once again.

The next season we began to emerge with the tightest defence in England and the tallest backline in Europe. Unfamiliar taglines for Arsenal fans used to being bullied in school for wanting to pass the ball into the net. Wearing gold, 20 years after the invincibles. THIS was our year. And it was. I mean, if, by the standards of the league themselves we were given the points in place of a meaningless apology, we would be champions. Fans naturally fixated on the back to back losses to Fulham, and it’s true we could have avoided defeat in those games. But we narrowly won others we could have lost. Rather than look soberly at what had come together so nearly perfectly, people were forgetting about the 90% that was good and demanding a perfect season.

Before the next campaign had got underway… A new problem had emerged. 

There was suddenly a vibe change that came from the swag of feeling entitled to win. Posting two of the highest points titles in the club’s history was now not even viewed as progress. The muscle memory of shouting Arteta out, sometimes even slipped into the Stockholm syndrome of calling for Emery’s return. A rogue defeat at Villa park, and suddenly even doing the impossible job of competing with City wasn’t enough. 

Meanwhile under the surface there were cracks. Ben White, who’d been ridiculed when we signed him, by way of being recast as an immaculate signing, was now a do-everything defender after being pushed from CB to RB. And had become indispensable. William Saliba was kinda unquestionably the best defender in the world. 

And that means now when he isn’t playing at best, we can longer factor in the best defender in the world in our performances. Saka is a near constant outlet on the right, by himself a whole tactic for one of the best teams in the world. Greedy as the kids say. But he still has to be indestructible. The most fouled and most poorly protected player in the league simply has to play every game. 

How impressive Saka’s stats are has inadvertently redrawn attention to a young Raheem Sterling- turns out he’s an all timer btw who needs some respect on his name. Unfortunately that name isn’t the backup we have on the right wing rn. His ailing older self isn’t really offering anything.

Our squad has gotten better, but it isn’t as stacked as it needs to be. As Timber returns, this season’s injuries have piled up, and we are learning about the myth of a ‘first XI’ in the 2020s.

The recent Odegaard layoff was a sobering reminder that our squad is just a little bit worse than City’s. On its day it is young, hungry, full of flare and genuine and powerful connections to the club. And as much as we want this to count for more, in reality it counts for a little bit less than the boring attributes of consistency, reliability and experience. 

We may be annoyed with Tomiyasu’s injury record, but we can’t do a city and keep 100m backup defenders on the bench, rotating them by season rather than by game as they become good again after a while.

In the midst of the captain’s lengthy spell on the sidelines, Saka has looked frighteningly tired, Trossard is not conjuring the magic that he enchanted us with in his first season. Martinelli is out of form…and we don’t have the resources to sign Doku as a backup to Grealish. And Sylvinho after him.

But maybe more problematically, we don’t have the willingness to give up on winning the league with Saknelli. We lost the jewel in the crown, Emile Smith Rowe, and with him a little bit of magic, but whilst half of us wants to be ruthless, the other needs the teenage Nwaneri to be the new chosen one, and score the last minute winner in the CL final.

Now feels a long way from the heady heights of Nketiah’s late winner against United, or Jorghino’s crossbar downing of Emi Martinez. Being right at the heart of a title race meant that for the first time in two decades every contest was a thrill. Even the invincibles didn’t have those levels of jeopardy. But it wasn’t good for the nerves. We soon came to realise every game is either a win or points dropped.

The reality is we’ve addressed most of our problems- we’ve created a team of abnormally tall mentality monsters, we’ve got a beautiful blend of skill and tactical discipline, and we’ve built up depth in important areas in a couple of transfer windows. Arteta has made mistakes sure, but he’s mainly learned from them, trying to rotate his squad more, whilst the performances of ex-gooners is scary evidence for why he never trusted them. 

We are searching for an extra 1%, maybe 5% but somehow it feels like the other 95% is always on trial. Some of the creativity’s gone. But long gone are the days when it would be readily apparent in a first half that fell away to an unceremonious defeat away at Blackburn.

The football has at times been a bit blander this year, but we said that last year until we saw the benefits of gaining control in the big games that used to rock us. Some of the signings aren’t hitting. But we’re saying that as Kai converts. Haavertz haters turned superfans. We’re short at the back and getting angry as though we didn’t sign Calafiori for the squad depth. If we turn on a miracle striker, then it’ll be pitchforks, but with Kai upfront we’re pretty much unplayable these days- so it’s CM where we kept Partey and signed Merino that’s still to blame. For sure, we need a better creative plan b and cover for Odegaard and Saka, but consolidating our place at the top and consistency in the Champions League, let not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

As I now watch every game behind a sofa, it takes the odd occasion I catch Arsenal with my brother to hear his reminder that we’ve got to enjoy the stakes we demanded for so long. 

Otherwise what’s the point he says. We’re literally getting what we asked for.

We have to savour winning games as well as winning titles.

Unlike most, I’ve always been one of those insufferable Arsenal fans who boast proudly about training pitch triangles and our style of play…But maybe in the binary of winning or losing the league its clearer than ever that these secondary things also have to be enjoyed.

We wanted academy players to break through into the first time, we can’t demand instant perfection and Nwaneri getting enough minutes to make it at the same time. 

Now I myself, well I’m a romantic and a serial loser. I’d take finishing second with an academy team, beautiful footballers coached in Wengerball, than with a bunch of 6’5 shaolin soccer robots, media-schooled to perfectly reproduce their interviews for each of the 16 online streaming services quizzing them in unison after the game. 

Luckily there’s a good chance that it’s not an either or.

Arteta can deliver both. I genuinely believe.

But it’s not all or nothing. (other fly on the wall tv shows are available)

There’s a way that we change a few things and we manage to get trophies, but there’s a lot of ways that we don’t.

So now there’s a few questions that haven’t come up since the late Wenger era civil war. At what point do we start to question the manager?  What can we realistically expect on the refereeing front? How bad is this season going? How do we come to terms with not being in a title race? 

It’s been nice to outsource all worry about signings to the Arteta masterplan, to stop feeding in the twitter bins for transfer rumours for great players who wouldn’t fit the system. But could we have done a bit better with our signings?

What if Arteta gets fed up? Players start to see the white of Real madrid shimmering in the silver of their second place medals?

How bad are things right now? Are we still in the race?

So how bad are things right now? What’s gone wrong?

It’s a well-known football truism. Once you start to talk about decisions, it’s over. 

When Rafa Benitez whipped out his ‘facts’ during a post-game rant, it was his ‘it’s always sunny moment’, the advertisement board behind him giving away to a web of crazy conspiracy theories joined together by strings. His well-respected football analysis just sounded like mad ravings and each poorly fielded question after that was a bloodred stab of Tuna thrown into the pack of chasing sharks that represent his inevitable sacking in this over-salted metaphor. 

However the margin of victory in the last two seasons means that one dodgy call can now be terminal. A sketch red card might already have cost us the league. A favourable goal may have given it to City. And all the huff and bluff of leadership, discipline and desire come to nothing. The lightbulb moments and Anfield speakers wasted. Consigned to the dustbin of second place finishes, alongside all of our carefully crafted set piece routines.

The compounding of the bad calls that went against us in the first few games, which in line with the pattern of the past few seasons meant things were given against us that had not been given in the history of football.  Sour grapes it might seem. But, well, a few recent things suggest that the refs might not be miraculously objective, politically neutral unimpeachable professionals. 

*cough cough*.

The margins are so narrow that even a small dent to confidence, can utterly destroy a title challenge in an infancy that hasn’t yet seen the cold cruel of the Christmas fixtures.

Again, the margins are SO narrow. 

Generally, referees in Europe are a comparative breath of fresh air from the dizzying egoism of their premier league counterparts but even in Europe marginal calls are going against us this season. Needing to win was not ideal preparation heading into a game against our new nemesis Newcastle @ the caldron of St. James’ Park. A place of good vs evil, where it feels like the winner will decide UK migration policy. We should have been in a place where a draw kept us at the top, not where a win was necessary to stay in the title race. After being hard done by on a couple of occasions, we got beat up. That game shouldn’t have been as costly as it was. 

But that’s the reality. 

It was.

Ignore the Media Narrative we’re still good

It’s hard not to keep harping on about decisions whilst the Overlap™ is in overdrive redeeming Howard Webb and his clique of  referees who have now become one of the major variables in costing a team which is 99% perfect most of the time these days. .

In most seasons, competing against any other team besides city, even a fair few dodgy calls wouldn’t have been able to derail an Arsenal title charge, but right now the extra % which would take us into the fabled land of titled success seems a bit further away than it has done. We’ve got used to the exponential growth curve, believing our own hype about the project ‘exploding’, expecting things to always only get better. 

But that’s not the reality of football right now. A season in the champions league places is not the end of the project, and neither would Liverpool winning the league. Yes, it makes it extra annoying that our stumble has coincided with a city slip, but 

a.) Its not over yet and 

b.) We could have won every game so far in another standard city season and ended up losing the league. 

It's also worth recalling that Gary Neville said with his chest 4th place was Arteta’s ceiling. The fact that he’s catapulted himself from a sackworthy flop to a peer of Klopp and Guardiola has never really been underlined in the media.

This was the BBC pundits prediction table for the first season that we finished second:

As Granit Xhaka pointed out, everyone hates Arsenal. It’s true. There’s been no humble pie, and all the genius tactical prowess and progress of this team largely ignored, by ext-utd pundits talking about heart and desire.  (Most of the fergie title winning teams posted points totals that wouldn’t be enough for top 4 in this era btw.)

But whatever the reasons we’re sitting on 19 points, and that’s not good enough. It’s below where United were after 11 games last season. So if we’re not to wallow in it, we do need to look at what we need to do better. 

That’s not to put the whole Project™ on trial. The second half of the season last year was pretty much perfect, true we could have done better against Villa but that one loss,  shouldn’t be put up against all the games we won.  Villa are still riding high but the gap between what counts as glorious success for them and failure for us is the gulf between the Liverpool-City-Arsenal triumvirate Arteta has launched us into and the rest. 

We’re miles away from the Emery days. People still saying Unia’s better than Arteta… well we had him. For 6 months we had the hardest watch at a football ground outside of the Red Wall. What has been lost is just how high the ceiling has been raised since those dark days, the glorious third man run of Saka and Martinelli banished the tundra of turgid basque ball for good. It’s taken us to a different dimension, one where runner up means a lot more than the Europa league.

Winning the CL or Barclays will take something very very special. And we might not be able to do it as romantically as we hoped. That 1% we need might always elude us. But to be 1% away from the Champions League and Prem, well if you don’t enjoy that season after season, if you don’t enjoy being able to beat basically any team, then I don’t believe you’ve been an Arsenal fan for the last ten years.

Of course the fact that Liverpool are back in the race, particularly hurts.

It will be a fumble if we don’t go the distance this year, and they do. But they were saying the same about us last season.

There’s isn’t a new team, it’s the refurbed remnants of one of a hall of fame outfit, with the boost of some timely additions. The parts that work well are part of a Liverpool that distorted the picture. Their unprecedented performance under Klopp was underpinned by miracle signings- if Salah, Alisson and VVD had only been the second or third best players in their position. Well, they would have been successful- but there probably wouldn’t be any silverware.

People are often quick to forget what extremely slim margin for error we’re dealing with, and to see that it’s worth looking at the gulf between us and the other top four challenging teams- who have all done pretty well these past years  Zinchenko and Jesus, who now look more out of step than a club foot at a tango competition, are proof of this. An Odegaard, Saka, or Saliba inj*** I can’t even say it.

The fact Liverpool could be out of it entirely and rebound back, shows that competing at this level is a gruelling marathon with ups and downs. It will just be a sucker punch to compete for 3 seasons and emerge empty handed. I would take a sprint finish to a title and a few years outside of the CL.

But there’s no need for talk like that.

If we can keep it together we will get to the promised land. And the place we’re in right now, it’s still pretty good.