Tim Charlesworth
This is a bit of an AKB question, as the WOB obviously assume that Wenger is always wrong and the fans are always right. For the sake of this article, I’m going to suspend those thoughts for a moment (hard I know), and think about mundane things like selections. I think that even the most rabid WOB will concede that Wenger has a tiny advantage over them when it comes to team selections. Wenger sees the players in training and has a raft of data and analysis available to him that we don’t see (our FourFourTwo apps don’t really cover it, however carefully we study them). He also knows whether he is rotating or selecting his best eleven, and it seemed that there was, at least an element of, rotation for the Bournemouth game.
Unfortunately, Wenger plays all these things close to his chest, leaving us to try to understand his real thoughts by a process of deduction. For example, he has never really admitted that Giroud has lost his starting place to Sanchez this season. Instead we hear a string of things along the lines of ‘Giroud is unfit after Euro16’, ‘Giroud has a minor injury’, ‘I have tactical considerations’, ‘it’s a squad game’, ‘Giroud will make starts’. All these things muddy the waters, and we have to largely ignore the words and look at the selections. The pattern of selections tell us that Sanchez is now the first choice centre forward.
The most recent controversy surrounds Granit Xhaka. Us fans have fallen a bit in love with this guy, largely thanks to his ‘wholehearted’ approach and two spectacular goals scored from distance. Whenever he gets the ball, the North Bank screams “shoot” and then collapses into what can only be described as a fit of teenage girly giggles. Some people (me included I’m afraid) are also enjoying the frisson of excitement that comes with wondering whether we will finish with 10 or 11 when he is playing. I adored Patrick Vieira, and having an aggressive, big central midfielder with a penchant for cards again is just too brilliant for words.
As the season has worn on, we have become increasingly concerned that Wenger seems reluctant to pick Xhaka, despite some good performances. Whilst we understood that he would be used sparingly at first (as Wenger does with many major signings from foreign leagues), we are growing a little bit impatient.
The parable of Flamini and Elneny
The whole things reminds me a little of last season. In hindsight, the loss of Coquelin and Cazorla to serious injuries in November 2015 were blows that we failed to recover from. I remember being very depressed about it, but the odd thing was that hope came from an unexpected direction. We played two big games in December and January with Flamini and Joel Campbell in the team: we won (what appeared to be) a title six-pointer against Man City and a 3-0 victory away at Olympiacos that saved our Champions League bacon. In fact we continued to challenge at the top of the league well into the new year.
We were still top of the league in late January after 22 PL games and only two points behind after 26 games on 14th Feb (after we beat Leicester at home). It seemed as if we had survived the worst, with Coquelin returning to the side and Elneny (signed 14th January) available to replace Flamini. Unfortunately, Wenger persisted in selecting Flamini and we went on the horrible run of form that destroyed our season. The fans were baying for Elneny to come in for Flamini, but Wenger held back. When Flamini finally did lose his place to Elneny, Elneny played well and we didn’t see Flamini again. Why the delay in deploying Elneny? The idea of selecting Flamini ahead of him now seems ludicrous. Was Wenger keen to ‘ease Elneny in’, or was he rewarding Flamini with loyalty after some hard working performances?
Now, I don’t want to overstate this. Even if I am right, and even with the benefit of hindsight, I’m not sure that the earlier introduction of Elneny would have won us the title. However, it is just about credible that it might have allowed us to win the FA Cup, or put a bit more pressure on Leicester. Flamini became a massive liability, sealing his infamy with a comical scythe at Lionel Messi’s shins from inside the penalty area during the first leg against Barcelona. The resultant penalty removed any doubt that we would achieve our now customary last 16 exit. Wenger implicitly accepted his mistake by removing Flamini from the team, never to return (although, of course, he said nothing). There is certainly a case to be made that the fans made the right call on Flamini and Wenger made the wrong one. Even AKBs must concede that this is not the first time that Wenger’s decisions about defensive midfielders have been questionable.
So what is really happening to Xhaka
Xhaka’s non-selections don’t make sense to us. He is surely beyond the ‘settling in’ period? His performances seem to demand his inclusion. Benching him against Man U was perhaps understandable, in the name of rotation and to avoid an inevitable red card against a Mourinho team, but his non-appearance against PSG was baffling. Perhaps he was injured or training poorly? If so, the evidence of his performances against Tottenham before he was benched and Bournemouth afterwards, gave no hint of such problems.
I am usually highly sceptical about the idea that the fans know better than the manager, but sometimes we maybe do, and I am starting to think that Xhaka might just be such a case. We don’t have access to all the information that Wenger does, but its not so unlikely that we could be right and he could be wrong. In this case we have a bona fide economic-political phenomenon on our side. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’, was first proposed by Aristotle and has been backed up by much economic research.
The Wisdom of the Crowd
Even if the individuals that make up ‘the crowd’ are less informed, educated, dedicated or well-researched than the decision maker, they can, on occasions make better decisions. This is because, in the case of simple decisions, the crowd can take an ‘average’ decision. They don’t need to be right individually, but only on average (i.e. more are right than wrong – and with a large enough crowd this is almost a statistical certainty). This is the phenomena that explains why democracies perform better than dictatorships, why ‘the market’ can outperform ‘central decision makers’ and why juries are preferred judges in law courts. ‘The crowd’ is currently stretching its credit on this point with decisions such as ‘Brexit’ and ‘Donald Trump’, but the basic point remains, that for a simple decision, the crowd may well be wiser than Wenger.
Is there another explanation?
The other possibility is that Wenger fully understands Xhaka’s form, but he has become intolerant of red cards. Giroud, Gabriel and Mertesacker all enjoyed extended spells out of the team last season after red cards that cost us matches (against Dinamo, Chelsea and Chelsea again). This seems a bit odd in a manager who ten years ago was famed for the proliferation of his team’s red cards, but the evidence is mounting. Most of us rather enjoyed Xhaka’s red card against Swansea (some of his yellows have been pretty entertaining too – he looks so innocent and perplexed after his outrageous fouls), but it seems that Wenger was not amused. We have heard a few cryptic comments in press conferences about how Xhaka needs to ‘control himself’. If Wenger were following a policy of leaving out players who get red cards, we can be certain that he wouldn’t discuss it publicly, and his actions suggest that he might be doing exactly that.
Twitter@TimC1972
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