Rarely has a club’s fortunes been dissected in such detail by the football community as has been the case with Arsenal’s 2010/11 season. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on what Arsenal have done wrong and what they need to do to put it right (that includes this writer, who is not an Arsenal fan).
Why is it so? Probably because everyone thinks it’s so easy; the solutions to Arsenal’s woes are staring them in the face – spend some money, sign a centre back and a goal keeper, add some steel to the midfield. We’ve all heard these lines recycled by numerous pundits and reporters, we’ve probably all used variations of them ourselves.
You don't know what you're doing, or do you?
Some of the comments are so well worn they need no further discussion here. Others are just staggeringly ignorant, such as recent remarks by Paul Merson who told the Sunday Times that Arsenal “wont win anything until they sign an English centre-half” . I wonder, has he entirely dismissed the efforts of Jaap Stam, Nemanja Vidic and Ricardo Carvalho, who have all excelled in England, or does he just not like foreigners winning things? The fact is Arsenal need to sign an excellent centre-half, nationality is irrelevant.
Merson’s views and those like it infuriate me, but they could also explain the self-satisfied smugness projected by certain sections of the football media following Arsenal’s latest failure. Arsene Wenger’s philosophy has never sat easily with the proud English types of Merson and Phil Thompson. They might acknowledge the quality of Arsenal’s football, but when the big matches don’t go their way, we still hear the same tired old lines about ‘Englishness’ and ‘spirit’. They love to claim that Wenger’s initial success was built around Adams, Keown, Dixon, and Winterburn, players he inherited. This is true, but ignores the obvious fact that he subsequently built an entirely new team which completed the 2003/04 league season without defeat and won the title in the process.
If Wenger managed to win a title with his current set up he’d make a lot of people look very stupid. The fact that he keeps threatening it must make them nervous, so there is bound to be some relief when they fall over in mid-April. Imagine if Arsenal signed the no-nonsense, English centre-half these experts think they require, and he proved to be an abject failure. What would their next solution be, would they need a big man up front?
This endless discussion of Arsenal’s frailties is part and parcel of media obsession with the Premier League big guns, but what I wasn’t prepared for are the increasingly frequent references to Arsenal’s “long-suffering” supporters – when exactly did they start suffering? Let’s remind ourselves the horrors they’ve had to endure over the past decade or so: they’ve been entertained by some of the greatest imports ever to grace the Premier League; they watch a team that plays skilful, attacking football; they are established as permanent residents in the Champions League and appeared in the 2006 final; they moved to a high-spec new stadium only five minute’s walk from their spiritual home (calm down Spurs fans, I know they moved to North London from Woolwich); oh, and since 1997/98 they’ve won three Premier League titles and four FA cups, including two double winning seasons.
So, they haven’t won a trophy for six years. Good! It’ll keep them humble, or maybe not, as we’re now hearing Arsenal fans calling for Wenger to step down. Are these the same Arsenal fans that have previously boasted about their team’s style of play and bought into the club’s policy of developing young players?
Perhaps Arsene Wenger made a rod for his own back here, regularly getting on his soap box to moralise about the ‘Arsenal way’. Arsenal have built their ‘brand’ around Wenger’s legacy in nurturing talent, but their most successful period was driven by exceptional imports such as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, and Patrick Viera. It’s not that Wenger is now out of date, as some have suggested; Premier League tactics may well have evolved in the past decade, but his ‘Invincibles’ team would have strolled to this year’s title with ease.
Arsene Wenger is stubborn, maybe to a fault, and clearly he hasn’t been able to source the same quality of players at prices Arsenal are willing to pay. But, he is also correct to suggest that if you want to build a sustainable model then you can’t suddenly start spending huge sums on players and not expect that to have a detrimental effect on the development of young players. The two are not immediately compatible. Look at the trouble Chelsea have had bringing young players through despite investing heavily in their youth set up.
Wenger has conceded that he needs to strengthen his squad this summer, but I hope Arsenal don’t stray too far from the path they’ve been pursuing over the last decade. If it wasn’t already obvious, I’m jealous of Arsenal, and I suspect certain pundits are too. I’ve been jealous of them since Arsene Wenger took over and remain jealous now. Every season brings moments of tremendous excitement and jaw dropping football. Although they are more divided than they were, I think most Arsenal fans still believe in Arsene Wenger. Hopefully they recognise they’re fortunate to support a great club regardless of the trophy count. I doubt very much they want anyone’s pity, they certainly don’t need it.
It’s certainly worth pointing out, as you do, that Arsenal are hardly plummeting down the divisions. Not only are they permanently ensconced in the Champions League spots, but also regular participants in the knockout phases of Europe’s premier footballing competition. It seems strange that in some quarters the tide of popular sentiment seems to be turning against Wenger, when for the duration of his tenure Arsenal have been amongst Englands’s elite.