Kevin Whitcher
I was asked to answer some questions for a Liverpool website in the build-up to yesterday’s match, and predicted a 3-1 home victory, explaining that defensively, Arsenal were currently too disorganized. I’d like to claim insight, but in truth, the loss at Anfield was highly predictable. Arsene Wenger’s teams rarely win away against the other members of the top six, a draw the best one can hope for. It’s a big part of the reason why the Gunners have not competed for the title past early spring since moving from Highbury.
So, if the defeat was no great surprise, the team selection was. Mesut Ozil apparently had flu, because Arsene Wenger never drops a player, although I have to take that notion back immediately, because he did drop Alexis Sanchez. The reasoning was that his team would need to counter Liverpool’s pressing game with a more direct style, so both Giroud and Welbeck started. Ok, but then were Iwobi and the Ox seriously going to create more danger than the Chilean? One suspects there is more to this than meets the eye, because Arsenal did not play long balls up to their forwards and suffered accordingly as Jurgen Klopp’s side showed greater hunger and desire in their appetite to get the ball.
Arsene Wenger was agitated in a recorded pre-match interview with BT Sport’s Jake Humphrey, saying he believed he was the right man to take Arsenal to the next level. Humphrey asked him to define what that was. In other words, he was trying to make the manager accountable, to put him on the spot by forcing him to make a concrete statement about what he was trying to achieve. Wenger – not pushed like this in a normal press conference – did not like it. Eventually, it was prized out of the manager that the next level was winning the Premier League.
However, how many more seasons does he need to actually take Arsenal to ‘the next level’? Wenger wouldn’t answer why he couldn’t manage it this season. The one thing that recent matches and displays have demonstrated is that he can no longer motivate or organize his players to get the required results to make his side contenders.
And so it was in the first half against Liverpool. Sanchez, one assumes left on the bench as punishment for not committing his future to the club (everyone knows he is off in the summer), dropped in the same way that David Beckham was by Alex Ferguson in 2003. Only Ferguson was able to get results and so leave his superstar on the fringes. Arsenal were so poor in the opening half at Anfield that the manager was forced, at 2-0 down, to bring on Sanchez at half time.
On one level, fair play to the manager for at least trying to do something different with his team selection, except that his players did not actually carry it through. Was this a miscommunication? Or have all those years playing tika taka become so inbred that Arsenal can no longer adapt and play a different style even when they are under instruction to? Assuming of course they were. Maybe not enough preparation for the change on the training ground.
Defensively, Arsenal were all at sea, with players not tracking back and all too often losing their one-on-one battles. They had no attempts on goal for the entire first half. When Sanchez was introduced, they performed better, and the second half was more even. Despite that, chances were fairly rare. Giroud had a good header well saved by Mignolet after Sanchez crossed, and when the latter put Danny Welbeck though, he finished well. But the two goal deficit was too much to make up, and in injury time, the home side wrapped things up with a third goal on the counter attack.
Aside from the lack of tracking back or adequate marking by the attacking players, Arsenal’s other obvious huge weakness is the porous nature of the midfield. Coquelin is not up to the job. Xhaka can be good in distribution, but defensively is undisciplined. None of the other options are any better as far as stopping opposition attacks is concerned. As a consequence, the back four are exposed far too often.
It needs sorting out on the training pitch, and Arsenal had eleven days between the Sutton win and the visit to Anfield to work on the solidity they would require in this fixture. Shkodran Mustafi tweeted a photo of himself having a break in Monaco. Wenger, after the game, claimed the long gap between matches put his players at a disadvantage. He has previously used fatigue through playing too often as a reason for underperformance. Make your mind up. He’s become like an online troll switching his argument just to get a reaction.
For those that still believe the club should persevere with the manager past the end of his current contract, ask yourselves this. Do you seriously believe another manager would not get more from the players that Arsenal have on their books? Look at the upturn in performances at Chelsea and Swansea and when they recruited quality men. Look at the transformation in the attitude of the players at Leicester now they have made a change. It looks to me as if Arsenal’s players, with the odd exception, aren’t really bothered.
Yes, Emre Can should have been sent off for the last 15 minutes, but that does not excuse the no show in the first half. Once again, Arsenal need a minimum of 45 minutes before they start performing to anywhere near the level they are capable of. In isolation, a defeat at Liverpool is no great surprise or disgrace, but in the bigger picture, it’s all too representative of a trend. Arsenal have lost four of their last six matches, the exceptions being against relegation zone Hull and non-league Sutton United. Victory at home against non-league Lincoln next weekend will at least give Wenger a visit to Wembley for an FA Cup semi-final, but before that there is the potential embarrassment of the second leg against Bayern Munich.
Before that game, fans who would like the manager to step down are marching from outside Highbury’s old East Stand in Avenell Road at 6pm to the roundabout outside the Armoury. One can understand their frustration, and the need to try to do something to influence the stasis that is gradually making Arsenal a standing joke. Supporters of the other top sides almost uniformly hope that Wenger will stay on, and there is a good reason for this. As long as he does, the Gunners are not going to be a significant barrier to their own side achieving glory.
So the board needs to be pressured into making a decision that is in the best long term interests of the club if the aim of the club is to compete with the clubs they should be on a par with, given their income. No-one expects them to win more trophies than Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, but they’d like to believe that Arsenal can at least give them some kind of a game and occasionally beat them in a knockout tie, as less affluent clubs with better managers have managed to.
The lack of spirit shown by the Arsenal players in the first half was worrying. The team are in a comfort zone that is not showing any sign of being disrupted, and yet that is exactly what is needed to get the best out of this squad. There is no indication that Arsene Wenger is going to do that because he is the one responsible for the creation of this situation. At home matches, the stadium has been designed so that the players do not have to even see the great unwashed when they make their way in from the team coach, with its blacked out windows. It’s probably nice for them, and the irony of it is that they are not even trying for the manager who has given them this luxury and – in many cases – wages way above their market value. Hopefully the consequence will be that a new man comes in and makes them earn their money, although I suspect there will be a huge clearout of deadwood if Wenger is replaced.
I do get the feeling the manager wishes to hang around for another two years, under the delusion that he can bring the trophy winning glory days of 1997-2005 back to the club. And that is why he has not announced he will not renew this summer – a move that would probably galvanise the team and certainly the support for the remainder of the campaign. However, the board have to be strong and realize that now, with the Premier League TV income so huge, they can afford to take a risk on a new man in the pursuit of greater things, and to make Arsenal matches really matter once more.
And if Arsenal fail to finish in the top four, which is entirely possible, then the last remaining reason to continue with Wenger will have been washed away, just like the club’s title hopes have been for the last 13 seasons. More of the same in the Bayern second leg? I wouldn’t bet against it, but at least there’s nothing at stake for that one. It’s a bit late to worry about salvaging pride.
Recovering addicts say that you have to hit rock bottom before making changes. It feels like we’ve been here more than once. Just maybe, for the board, rock bottom is not qualifying for the Champions League. Time will tell, but even Ivan Gazidis must be getting fed up of going to opposition ground directors’ boxes to witness Arsenal habitually fail to show up. Arsene has been indulged for a long time on significant wages. However, top clubs remain competitive because they know that sometimes, ruthlessness gets better results than sentiment.
If the decision has been made by the board that they are not going to continue as they are, and Arsene does not want to publicly announce he has decided to step down (and the story will be that he has decided to leave rather than any notion that he is not wanted coming out), I can see a statement being made when the manager is on his summer holidays, away from the media glare. Because one thing about Arsene Wenger is that he doesn’t do humility. More and more fans though, are getting tired of seeing the team humbled. I received a text from an occasional contributor last night after the game. He has always been pro-Arsene. He wrote, “Time to go, I regret deeply to say. You’ll get no more articles in defence of Arsene from me.”
The current issue of The Gooner (with a free 2017 Arsenal Legends calendar) can be bought online for £4.00 including postage here. There will be a new issue out on Tuesday for the home match v Bayern.
(You can also buy copies of the calendar on its own for £1 postage free here.)
