Hamza Ali Baksh
First off, I’m just an average football fan. I don’t know much about the technical aspects of the game… I just love watching good football, and for as long as I’ve been a football fan, the team that usually does this best in the Premier League is Arsenal.
There was a time when the ball would go from box-to-box in a matter of three or four swift, precise and penetrating passes (squeezed in-between some blistering pace by our bolt-of-lightning attacking players). Those were also the days (and this has been mentioned many times on this site) when Arsenal would blitz the opposition in the first 20 minutes of the game and then make them look like amateurs for the rest of the game as they chased Red-and-White shadows. I loved watching Arsenal play in those (not-so-long-ago) days.
Today, however, I feel endlessly frustrated. Not at Arsenal’s inability to defend (because I really wouldn’t mind them winning 6-5 each week), but rather because they are no longer playing the ‘passing game’ that I love to watch.
Oh yes, they string together 24 consecutive passes. And once in a while there’s some brilliance shown by a Nasri or a Walcott (or a Chamakh this season - I must confess I really like the look of him) at the end of those passes to remind me that this is still Arsenal I’m watching, but that passing game that was played in the Henry/Bergkamp/Pires/Vieira days is now all but gone. What we have left is a team that keeps the ball a lot, and then keeps it some more. And then goes home. We are too rarely swift, only occasionally precise, and (most importantly) almost never penetrating. But has Arsenal (read Arsene) not realised this?
The next comment will probably kill this from being posted on the site, but here goes anyway: Did you see the way Sp*rs played against Chelsea/Inter Milan? That really made me feel nostalgic. It’s like they’ve become the new Arsenal. They certainly look like they’re playing the way Arsenal used to. There have been recent articles here about Harry Redknapp’s obsession with Arsenal, but it may look like he’s gone one step further and turned Sp*rs into the Arsenal that Arsenal want to be. Has Arsenal (read Arsene) failed to see this as well?
The Arsenal passing game is, today, a myth. It’s merely a lingering memory of what was. Whether it’s the quality of the players at the club right now, or something that Arsene is responsible for, I don’t know enough about football to say. But this Arsenal team certainly does not pass a football the way they used to.
Please bring it, back Arsene Wenger... We know you can.
