I looked out my window and the sky was still black. Then I looked down at my computer and noticed it’s 0705. That wasn’t a great feeling.
The good news is that we are almost at the nadir. Just 18 days before the darkest days of the year pass us by and we start gaining sunlight again.
This is an apt metaphor for Arsenal as well: we seem to be reaching something of a low point at the club and things may start looking brighter soon.
The first bit of good news is that some fans are going to be allowed into the stadiums – both the Emirates Stadium for the men’s fixture against Burnley and Meadow Park for the women’s fixture against Birmingham City. The matchday experience is not something one can replicate watching on TV – no matter how carnival-like they make it on NBC when they travel to some giant tent in NYC or something. That’s not to say that TV viewing doesn’t have its own rituals and it’s own quirks. But rather that there is a special thrill to the matchday experience which I tried to capture a bit in my chapter in the book “So Paddy Got Up”.
It’s the smell of burgers, the silly hats, the fancy dress (English English for “dressing up in costumes”), people selling pins and nicknacks, the packed out trains full of smiling, nervous faces, getting a pint (or 6 as I used to do) in a crowded pub before the match and complaining to your friends about the last week’s fixtures or whatever else is going on in life.
Then emptying out of the pub and walking briskly along London streets – conversations continuing! Through the security checkpoints, up the stairs, into your seats and the buzz around the stadium full of anticipation, nerves, and even more talk. The endless camaraderie of belonging.
The games themselves are nearly completely memorable in a way that watching on TV never is for me. I remember van Persie’s miss against AC Milan. Van persie’s winner against Liverpool. Adebayor being offside for 89 minutes and then scoring Arsenal’s 2nd late in a game against Blackburn. Bendtner’s hat trick against Porto (and the previous match in which he stunk the joint up!). Nacho Monreal’s first goal at Swansea. Munich away twice and the thrill of nearly going through, only for Bayern to hang on in the last few minutes. Ozil’s nearly perfect performance against Everton in the FA Cup in 2014. The worst football I’ve ever seen in a 0-0 draw against Sunderland (plus Arshavin’s first home game). And losing the League Cup to Birmingham City – that’s a big one, tons of crazy memories from that.
The only thing that’s very different about the live, in stadium action to TV is that sometimes you don’t catch the action in the stadium as well as you would on TV. There’s no instant replay. I missed it when
And it’s not all beautiful memories, nor perfect. I can’t remember how the goals were scored in a lot of these matches. My first ever game, I only know Hleb scored because I looked it up later. I also can’t remember even who the opponents were, much less the scoreline, when I took my daughter’s mother to a match. Though I still have the hat I bought her because we were parked right in the sun. I think Fabregas took a corner right next to us and I think Steve Sidwell played for the opposition. I don’t know now. I do remember the awful B&B we stayed at though! It was like Fawlty Towers but somehow, sinister.
And then there’s even the experience of leaving the stadium. Packed in like shuffling little sheep. Maybe get back to another crowded pup. Maybe more beer. Then on to a train or car and back to the place where you sleep. And either red cheeked and happy or red cheeked and melancholy, depending on the result.
All of that was stopped suddenly and it’s been a huge (but necessary) loss for a lot of folks. So, I have to say that I’m so happy for them that some people get to go back. It won’t quite be the same yet, but it’s a start.
Arteta has also spoken ahead of the clash against Vapid Rienna today and as usual, what he’s saying is certainly not unifying opinion outside of the squad. The highlights seem to be
- More crosses?
- More time!
- Wolves were lucky?
- They wanted to protect David Luiz
I don’t know what to think about this stuff. I think I understand the crossing thing: he’s saying we need more players in the box. But we need to actually go ahead and get forward a lot more. If you want scoring midfielders, you need to let the midfielders get forward. But doing that obviously sacrifices defense, so there’s definitely a balance that needs to be struck there.
And more importantly, there’s something in the eye-test that says to me that Arsenal don’t seem to know how to play attack quite yet. Which gets to the time question. I have written extensively that we need at least three or four seasons to repair this squad but at the same time, it nags at me that he’s been boss for a year and the only major tactical reform he’s made is to crater our offense in order to play low block defense.
His response to that was actually to blame some of the players that he has (specifically Ceballos and Xhaka). But according to reports, he’s the one who asked Edu to sign Ceballos this summer. Now, maybe that was a last act of desperation (because we have so few MFers?) but he also hyped Cedric Soares this summer (saying he was our best final third player, which is nuts) and begged the club to sign David Luiz and spoke glowingly of Willian’s addition.
I’ve read a lot of the press releases and puff pieces this year (unfortunately) and they seem to be full of some misleading information. The idea that the Kroenkes care is put to bed when they make decisions on player acquisitions at half-time of a Rams game or during one of their famous barbeques at their ranch house in Texas or whatever.
There are also reports this morning that Arsenal have been after Szoboszlai since 2018 along with other journalists saying that Kroenke has been putting his own money in to the club (through guarantees or something). But if we were after that kid, and Kroenke was ready to put money in, holy cow why didn’t we activate his buyout clause this summer?
It all feels like there’s something big going unspoken in the background. Maybe this is all still Raul’s fault. I’m certainly not ready to blame Arteta for the squad composition: the issue with Ozil/Xhaka/Mustafi is a hangover from Wenger’s final year and the stuff with Torreira and others is certainly on Raul. And maybe he was deeply unhappy with purchasing Soares, David Luiz, Willian, and Ceballos but couldn’t say anything because.. I dunno, Raul would have bit his shins or something, the little Goblin. Whatever happened I’m not Arteta out by any stretch.
That said, this is not good football and we all know it. It’s not great that he feels the only way we can play is passive, low block defense, and that our attack is so utterly neutered by our incompetent midfield that we can only attack from wide positions with crosses.
The crosses thing worries me, I have to say, but I think he’s smart enough to know that crosses alone are a terrible way to play football. You need not just midfielders bombing forward and getting on the ends of crosses but also midfielders playing throughballs on to forwards making runs behind, midfielders collecting the ball between the lines and turning to face, wide players breaking people down, dragbacks, shots from outside, I mean, pretty much everything! I feel he probably misspoke when he said that if we have 50 crosses per game it would be good. I hope he means that it will be good if we have 33 crosses plus a ton of through balls and we are creating shots of the dribble and so on. That’s how it works with the good clubs.
Anyway, I’m talking about Arsenal again and I really wish I wasn’t. This is all sort of moot because either he’s going to solve this or he’s not: we are either going to buy better players or we won’t: we are either going to get better or not.
Though if I’m 100% honest, I think that we are near our nadir as a team and eventually we will start getting better.
PS – I started a little fundraiser for the holidays over on One Tree Planted – the same charity that Hector Bellerin donates to – and want to invite you all to get involved and donate if you can. For every dollar that you give (I think there’s a $2 minimum) they will plant a tree. As you know forests, birds, and trees are a passion of mine and I wanted to do something (no matter how small) to help reforest as much as I can. They seem like a very efficient charity and are well respected. So, maybe you could even give a dollar or two. No need to get too fancy, I’ve only set the goal at $350 for now and we are almost 1/3 of the way there in just a few hours. Imagine it, 350 trees! And you would be part of that. That’s pretty cool. Happy holidays everyone.
Donate here:
Thanks for another great post Tim
I agree completely we need to score more goals and more creativity would certainly help. However, I still think the biggest problem we have is a lack of goal scoring forwards outside of Auba. With Auba in such bad form we have very little chance to score even with more creativity. Arsene Wenger managed teams in this decade had Ozil, Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey, Nacho. Kos Mert etc etc and they had more creativity and passing acumen and the better passing stats then almost any team in the world. However, none of Arsene’s teams in this decade were all that good at scoring actual goals. More creativity would certainly help the current team but what in my opinion what we really need are more players who are good at scoring goals
“You need not just midfielders bombing forward and getting on the ends of crosses but also midfielders playing throughballs on to forwards making runs behind, midfielders collecting the ball between the lines and turning to face, wide players breaking people down, dragbacks, shots from outside, I mean, pretty much everything!”
Quite!
There were so many great comments in the Breaking Bad blog the other day about our offensive malaise. In my view, the most important issues are:
– The passivity that Tim and others have spoken about. If you don’t put pressure on the ball and compete physically, you will lose!
– Midfield progression. Personally I think Ceballos isn’t too bad – he’s able to create space with his touch and short dribbles. He so often lacks options from others not making themselves available. Xhaka is hopeless, of course.
– Lack of off-the-ball movement up front (and from the midfield)
Jack shared some great analysis the other day, related to Tim’s points above, about how this forces us to rely on crosses from out wide.
I’m hopeful we are indeed coming through this low point. Partey and Gabriel signings are good omens.
Ceballos? Fondly known as “the spinning top”. Round and round he goes. He comes from the Mesut Ozil school of football. Moves elegantly into space, good first touch and then passes it 10 yards sideways again and again, ad infinitum.
Kroenke may have issues, but spending money in recent years isn’t one of them. We’ve spent quite a lot in the last few years between fees and salary. The problem hasn’t been how much, it’s that it’s been poorly allocated.
The Spurs match is going to be interesting. Hopefully the first team plays with the same level of energy as the EL team did today. If we can avoid getting caught on the break too badly, think we have a chance.
Daughter-of-1-Nil is nicked named The Tree Hugger as she’s about to finish her MSc. In Environmental Science at University of Toronto and she says your charity SUCKS!
Actually, she claims she told me about One Tree Planted a while ago but I honesty don’t remember. I’m happy to contribute though, with this post as a reminder.
We are not giving up a lot of goals but we are scoring less than we’re giving up. Aside from being just plain awful football, it’s also surreal to see my team play non-football after so many years of Wengerball.
No more suicidal high line, no more always going forward, attackingbat all costs, leaving sad and lonely GKs to deal with the counter attacking aftermath. No more braces and hat tricks. No more being 4-0 at halftime, only to leave the game with a point!
We had some s&$ty results for sue, but at least I enjoyed a lot of how we played.
Agree. We occasionally got shellacked by Bayern, but I’d take that any day vs a 2-1 loss to a team barely up from the Championship.
I have already accepted our current woes as part of the process. Where is that stat about Jurgen Klopp’s first year points tally being the same as Brendan Rodgers’ disastrous final Liverpool year? (I know I know. Can’t compare to Klopp)
Arteta is trying to inject big game mentality and defensive rigidity to the team, and then build up to the attack. Those results were evident from the FA Cup run, when we snuck goals via lofted-ball-to-Auba.
We know from his Man City days that he is a great trainer and communicator, but unfortunately he has not been able to get enough days on the training pitch, so he really hasn’t been able to play on his strengths yet.
I suppose his hope was that the world-class Aubameyang and Willian could carry the team; and fluke/poach goals until he sets up the defence, and then midfield. Unfortunately, teams started to wise up to the lofted ball down the left channel and here we are back at Emery-levels.
I am personally quite relaxed and enjoying the process. When Ozil, Sokratis, Mustafi, Ceballos, Laca, Luiz all leave next year, we are going to have some serious funds freed up for rebuild 1b.
Note on tonight’s match: Laca in attacking midfield still doesn’t work for me, but AMN in midfield does.
Cheers
“This means nothing to me. Oh Vienna!”
I wonder if a little bit of crowd noise helped. It meant the players maybe couldn’t hear Mikel’s constant instructions. Every time you decide to do something, you must subconsciously be waiting for him to tell you what. A bit like a nightmare.
Pleased to see Pablo Mari. I always thought he had something. Also ESR. A lot of energy as always. What I like about him is that he seems to run into the right spaces and is perfectly calm when he gets there. Assuming he stays fit, I’m looking forward to seeing more of him this season.
Have you ever tried performing a task, while someone is continually leaning over you, telling you how to do it?
Szoboszlai would be a good Xmas signing…
Dashing through the snow
With a man called Szoboszlai,
Over the fields we go,
Laughing all the way – ho, ho, ho…
Man, we absolutely dropped the ball on Giroud and Lacazette. Giroud’s heroics on Wednesday seem to have shamed Laca into productivity yesterday, but long term, boy did we get this one wrong. Must admit I was fully on board, but what a weapon Chelsea have as their third striker.
On Gehlomar’s comment, a head coach is supposed to work on all facets of a team’s play, while not necessarily taking full control of everything. There is for example, a goalkeeping coach. The notion that Arteta can’t oversee work on the defence, the midfield and the attack simultaneously has never made sense to me. So if teams cut out the diagonal ball to the left channel (Auba), you get paid to figure out how to counteract that. We the fans rarely strike a balance between how we view Arteta — we’re either excessively critical, or too accepting of what he’s serving up now, which isn’t good enough.
I like Arteta, and thing we should keep him for the long haul, but owners and investors are not as patient, and don’t play around with their money. There is no sentiment, not even, ultimately, for the iconic Arsene Wenger. Arteta’s team in 14th in the league heading into the Christmas congestion with a quarter of the games played. From the POV of Arsenal’s management, that’s not acceptable, and he’s misusing an expensive asset. His next meeting with the Arsenal board should be tasty
I NEVER wanted to part with the Handsome French Bastard!
Merci, Arsene.