Michael Preston
When one of the most successful Arsenal captains of all times states categorically that the team lacks the mental strength to succeed, and when you recall his excellent relationship with the manager, it strikes an odd note. Patrick Vieira will have heard, as we all have heard, Arsène Wenger’s repetitive, and often embarrassing, tributes to the team’s mental strength whenever we have won a hard-fought game or successfully come back from behind.
Is Vieira contradicting his old manager? Are his comments an act of lèse-majesté? I’m quite sure that he is not, and that they are not – for one simple reason: Vieira never for a moment thought that his old manager believed what he was saying. The words were a mantra to instil in the team something that they clearly lack. When Manchester United come back, week after week, and snatch a win from an improbable position, does Sir Alex pay tribute to his team’s mental strength? No. He doesn’t need to. It is a given – to him, his team, and the viewing public. I don’t think that Arsène even expects us or his interviewer to believe him: he is merely using a public forum to encourage his team to believe in themselves. Which they clearly don’t.
I am neither an AKB nor an AMG. The two positions neither illuminate nor solve the issue. Most of us have derived enormous pleasure from the team’s style and attacking verve (when on display) over recent seasons. Most if not all of us have despaired not just at their repeated fragility but even more at the increasing sterility – and turgidity - of their attacking play. “We were not sharp enough in the final third” is a euphemism for “we were clueless”.
To me, this is a team of players who don’t believe that the football they play can be relied on to win matches. Sure, they will find a sucker or two who will try to play them at their own game and who, if they are not Barcelona, will be out-danced at the prom. But there are fewer and fewer suckers, and we have become an easy mark. The players know this, and have no response because that is not how they have been taught to play.
I leave it to others to prescribe the solution – bigger players, a different formation, better defensive coaching or whatever. I don’t believe that we are full of lazy or self-satisfied players who are happy to draw a high wage for insufficient effort. This is about belief in the very essence of what they are doing. There can be no mental strength without belief. Someone has either to demonstrate that what the team is set up to do can win in all situations, or to adapt what it is set up to do so that it really can. And then they have to get the team to believe it. That’s what the management is paid for.
