Kevin Whitcher
It’s nice to be able to write a little good news after recent weeks. And yes, I am well aware of the problems inherent with playing Djourou and Fabianski, but just for once, I am going to delay the negative stuff and celebrate the very fine display – especially after the interval – of new number 15 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. He has the pace of a Theo, but a football brain to boot. There are a few flicks and tricks, but if they are good enough for Cristiano Ronaldo, why the hell not. It was easy to see why other clubs were chasing this kid.
This is no sudden vindication of the manager’s transfer policy. My God, he’s got enough wrong over recent seasons. But what is key for the youngster’s development is that he is introduced into a team that brims with confidence and understanding. It is difficult to conclude too much from the game against Shrewsbury aside that there are players who will continue to make costly individual errors. Credit to the visitors, but ultimately, they ran out of steam after the interval. No great surprise there, but whether or not Arsenal made them look good or they are on the up and much better than their League Two status suggests is something that time will tell.
Even if it was a shadow team, it was important Arsenal won the tie. There is enough ignominy at the club at the moment without a cup exit to a team three divisions below adding to it. The club gave the official attendance figure as circa 46,000. This would include all 9,000 middle tier seats as technically they were sold for this match, being on the season ticket unlike the upper and lower tiers. In reality there may have been 3,000 attendees. I estimated the genuine crowd at about 35,000. If 35,000 plus 6,000 empty middle tier seats makes 41,000, are you telling me 5,000 people who had upper tier tickets did not turn up?
Maybe there were 40,000 there in the flesh, but even so, with tickets at £10 and £20 and half price anywhere in the stadium for kids, it shows that the novelty of attending matches at the new stadium is a thing of history. Surely though, more worrying for the club is the fact that – with 12,000 tickets to shift to non season ticket holders, the not on TV Saturday 3pm match against Bolton struggled to sell out. It can only be a matter of time before a 3pm Saturday League match fails to sell out for the first time since before Arsene Wenger came to Arsenal. There is a recession on and the club are paying Manuel Almunia £50,000 a week without even pretending he is injured. Couldn’t they list him as having a bruised elbow for old times’ sake? No matter, we have Abou Diaby, getting £60,000 a week and available for select… sorry, what was I thinking there. The point I am trying to make is that the manager complains he can’t match the wages of the top three and yet is throwing money around on obvious no marks and crocks. So when the stadium cannot sell out matches it would have expected to, with a double dip recession imminent, it’s time for Arsenal to start getting clever.
Offer discounted tickets in the upper tier behind the goal and compensate those that have season tickets in those areas by giving them money off their season tickets when they renew next summer. So you get full stadiums, and working it out, probably more money than you would have sticking to a rigid policy. Arsenal need to get creative and start thinking outside the box, even if it’s too much to hope that Johan Djourou will start jumping for crosses inside it.
If Arsenal want to employ my services to start re-thinking strategy I’m here and I would do it for much less than the Boston Consultancy Group. Apologies this piece has turned into something akin to a Theo Walcott dribble. It’s part of the gig to write something after each match and I don’t want to analyse the first half of yesterday’s game as it was embarrassing in places. My main hope is that Oxlade-Chamberlain is developed properly and the team start to gel and play as a unit. There was little chance of that last night with the number of unfamiliar faces, but a win was expected and so it turned out in the end. Arsenal are in the hat for the fourth round with the faint hope we can exorcise the ghost of last February’s horrific final, at least if none of the big three take the competition seriously. But a win’s a win, and we need to see a few more of them if we are to avoid the fate of this season being one where the team are floundering around in 8th place with nothing to play for.
Ivan Gazidis spoke in defence of Arsene Wenger yesterday morning. As Mandy Rice-Davies once famously said, “"Well, he would, wouldn't he?" Results however, speak louder than words. Let’s see what the forthcoming games against Bolton, Olympiakos and Spurs tell us about the team’s chances of discovering how to defend once again before there is any certainty about what the future holds at the club. It was interesting to note Pat Rice doing a lot more of the touchline stuff than the manager yesterday evening, especially during the second half. Maybe there is life in the old dog yet.
The current issue of the Gooner will be on sale at the next two home matches and can be bought online here
Kevin Whitcher’s newly updated version of the book co-written with Alex Fynn, ‘Arsènal: The Making of a Modern Superclub’ is available in paperback from publishers Vision Sports for a reduced price of £6.99 including postage if you use the promo code ‘Gooner’ on the page that appears after you click ‘buy now’. Click here to order. It can also be bought at Arsenal's own stores for the RRP of £8.99
