Wow. Where do I start? I don’t normally blog because I’m only motivated to rant like this when we’re doing badly, and therefore blogging makes me more depressed as I analyse our flaws in more and more detail. I’ve just sat in front of my TV and watched the club I love be humiliated in front of millions of people. Sure, there are the dissenters among Arsenal fans. There are rifts between those who believe Wenger can do no wrong and those who believe he can do no right. Both sides are morons who take one sensible view to a ridiculous extreme. To think the best manager in our history is a failure, can’t fix this and must go now is silly, yet so is the idea that he cannot be criticised or held at least partially responsible for all the happenings these days in and around our club. I’m getting this out here as it needs to be written as I’m feeling these raw emotions. Just a flow of consciousness. There are four main issues to address here:
- Where did we go wrong?
- Why did we go wrong?
- What did we miss?
- The bombshell
Let’s be honest – we were outplayed. Yes, we were outplayed by a very good side who cost a lot of money blah blah blah. But this is the Champions League. We know who our opponents are. We know who we have to beat and therefore we should know the level our team needs to be at to challenge at this level. Before the game Arsène Wenger was asked if we thought we could win the competition and his reply, albeit sarcastic, said if he didn’t think we could win it, he’d be at home. Obviously he has to stand by his team, but anyone who has seen us this season would find it hard to convince themselves that this side is anywhere near where it needs to be to win a competition of this level.
The most frightening thing for me was the ease at which they cut us open. You can’t blame Szczesny at all for any of the goals – other than a poor kick for the first but he was unlucky to get hit by that ridiculous goal from Boateng. The problem here was our midfield. Song, usually so dependable, struggled to cover the defence as he has done all season – partly as he was outnumbered in the middle and partly because they were playing 2 up front meaning there was always the extra man to cover. Arteta got back but never early enough. His distribution isn’t in doubt nut his mobility often is. We could’ve done with a second body in defensive midfield. Ramsey still looks tired. I still don’t think he’s as poor as people have been making out. There’s a lot of talent there. Remember he’s never played a full season and playing almost every game since August is clearly taking its toll.
Yes the pitch was poor, but two teams had to play on it and only one of them made the quality of the pitch into an issue. It was hard to get pace into the game through players running with the ball. But if the ball’s moving side to side in the air, the pitch isn’t able to have an impact. Fast movement of the ball, and fast movement of players off the ball are both important – as Milan showed. Ibrahimovic isn’t quick but he knew where to be and helped stretch our team. Milan made space in front of our defence as the pitch wasn’t fast enough to expose any space in behind. We were naïve. Passing football was possible on that pitch, as we showed with some short, intricate play at time. However, the long balls we tried along the floor at times were silly. We failed to judge the speed of the pitch, failed to adapt to the way it slowed down the ball like a Sunday league pitch and failed to realise that our usual way of play wasn’t going to win us the game against a side who clearly were used to playing on that surface.
Yet before that came a bizarre decision. There we were, about to play one of our biggest games of the season, and we line up with a formation we have never really played before. What looked like a 4-4-2 with Theo & RvP up front was a bizarre tactic. Even if we were used to it, playing 2 in the middle against a Milan side who had no wide midfielders looked strange. Yet they didn’t use the width so that flat four in midfield soon became very narrow. The centre of the pitch was too congested yet in the wrong way. When we attacked, we didn’t get wide and tried to go through the middle where there simply wasn’t room. When they attacked, our ‘wingers’ tried to cover their full-backs, leaving us outnumbered 4-2 in the centre of the park and making it easy for them to get at our centre-backs. The formation did not help. We looked tactically naïve as well. I think mertesacker was a loss. His composure and positioning are very useful. He would’ve been more resistive to the stretching of our defence which happened all game. As highly as I rate Koscielny (who had yet another good game until he went off) & Vermaelen, they do tend to rely on their pace as a lifeline a bit too much. Per has shown this season that nothing is more effective than good positioning.
Back to our centre-backs, and there are more worries. People worried that not signing a full-back would hurt us there, but it could hit us elsewhere too. Vermaelen looked very awkward at times. Early in his stint at left-back, you could tell he naturally gravitated to the middle of the park and had to force himself to drift wide with the ball. That showed today. Too often he followed the ball wide & left too-big a gap between himself and Koscielny (and later Djourou). The time when he tried to buy a foul off Robinho in the centre circle was silly, very clearly something a full-back would do and would never have happened a year ago. Djourou also looked unfamiliar in his ‘natural’ position. He gave away a silly penalty but the game was gone by then and he looked a little bit off the pace.
So. Their four goals. Wondergoal? Offside? Player slipping on a poor pitch? Not a penalty? Maybe. Maybe all these are valid. Maybe none. The fact is we were outplayed and, while none of those could’ve gone it, we didn’t have the luck and quite frankly didn’t deserve it. We failed to step up. Vieira talked about a lack of leadership on Twitter and maybe that was the case. Yet players such as Sagna, Vermaelen, Song, Arteta & RvP – all of whom have been lauded for their maturity & leadership this season – were out there on the pitch. What happened? I don’t know. Nobody does. But this is all-too-familiar. I’m not going to criticise players who have been solid all season. Players have bad games. It’s incredible that so many crucial players could all have a bad game on the same day but it happened. To be honest, I don’t care if we don’t play well. Well I do but you know what I mean. If we work all game & give our all, but don’t play well enough, then fine. But we didn’t give our all. We didn’t go out there looking like we wanted it. We didn’t play like we wanted it. We didn’t perform like we wanted it. We talked the talk before the game and to be honest I believed what the players were saying. Milan were a beatable side. Maybe I was a fool for believing that the players believed what they were saying. Or maybe they did believe it and were misled. Maybe they’re overconfident and have an over-inflated view of their own abilities. But this side outplayed Man City earlier this season. This side have shown what they can do, in glimpses. There are so many contradictions it’s confusing, but essentially a side that were able to win and who claimed they knew they could win went out there and played like they neither believed they could win or had any right to take anything from the game.
Today brings me back to the fundamental problem we’ve had recently; winning games. We lack balls. We lack the players to take the game by the balls and do something. This team used to be reliant on Cesc to make something happen. Now they’re too reliant on RvP (and lately Chamberlain) to produce a match-winning moment. We lack fluidity in our play and the ability to build pressure. We lack the element of surprise. Too often we just fire it to van Persie, often isolated and expect him to do something. When we have the ball in midfield, it’s obvious we’re just working it for a chance to feed van Persie in for a goal. We play 3 in midfield and as good as their stats may be, too often what looks like possession football is actually players passing on the responsibility. I get the feeling sometimes the players look for something, can’t see anything so just pass it to the nearest man. There’s quite a lot of aimless possession. Possession football is about manoeuvring the opposition and creating an opening, but without midfielders running from deep or wingers cutting in, our aims are too obvious. A good centre-back like Thiago Silva can man mark, his partner mop up, and quite easily negate our tactics.
Here comes the bombshell. I hate to say it. This Arsenal team is suffering from exactly the same problems which led to us letting Thierry Henry go the first time round. We are too over-reliant on one player. There’s nothing wrong with having a star player, but when you rely on one player to save you so often, it prevents others from developing. Walcott, Ramsey & co are yet to step up in the same way. There’s always an easy option. If you take RvP out for a game, they’ll realise that they have to be the ones to make something happen and that’s the point when you find out what our players are made of. Every team has a star player. Every successful team has a dangerman – look at Rooney, Drogba, Messi & Ronaldo. The difference is that there are other players who can step up and rescue the team when the star man doesn’t fire. There’s nothing wrong with having van Persie at Arsenal. Of course here isn’t. But you can’t have a situation where one player commands all the focus. His brilliance has forced an ever-weakening squad to become increasingly dependent on him. Last season we had 3 players who could do something out of nothing to win a game. 2 left and now the side places all their faith in that last man. We now have to find out one important thing – what would this team be like without van Persie? If they’re not good enough to win games without him, then we have to acknowledge our squad isn’t good enough. You can’t have the team’s fate depending on one man alone. So, we need to know if these guys can step up. I’m not saying let him go, and I’m not saying drop him as we have to make 4th, but we need to play some games without him to know where we need to go next. Maybe rest him & see if the side can take the lead without their star man. If it works, the confidence it’ll give the team could be invaluable.
Until they realise they can perform without van Persie, Arsenal won’t be able to reach their full potential with him in the side.
I’ve calmed down. A bit.
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