Arsene Wenger is a manager who has had huge success with quick-passing teams.
The speed of Arsenal’s passing comes from constant rehearsal by quick and skilful players. When their passing has rhythm, it’s impossible to imitate and hard to counter.
But the passing hasn’t been so fast this season, so they’ve drawn a lot of games. As the team stuttered through four 0-0 draws, Denilson lost confidence, got scared to make a mistake, and passed the ball sideways.
Wenger has all his Pro-Zone data downloaded onto his laptop half an hour after every home game. He has DVDs of every game. If he looks at his data, and studies his DVDs, he sees that RVP slows the attack down if he plays as a half-striker.
Robin will often be in the middle third, taking takes five to seven touches.
That is NOT the style which Wenger wants his team to play. So he put Robin up front against Fulham to stop him slowing the attack down. He got the ball a lot less and slowed the attack down a lot less, but missed Arsenal’s best two chances, so it finished 0-0. So he dropped him at West Brom, played Bendtner with Arshavin just behind, Bendtner scored two goals and hit the post and Arsenal won 3-1. Arshavin is off the pace physically but played 90.
So Wenger now has Robin fresh for Burnley and Roma.
He’s been an injury-prone player but he’s been fit this season and the team needs his goals. As everyone knows by now, I regard Robin as a bang-bang striker, who is a bit like Batistuta, although his style is nothing like Batistuta, because Batistuta was a centre forward who raced beyond defences and could shoot while sprinting, rather than shoot whole standing still, like RVP. Also, Batitistuta was very good with his head.
At times I think : If RVP would play further up the field, and Arsenal could hit him with a longer ball, he could beat a man and score. If he took five touches and scored, so what? If he took six touches to work a shooting position, who cares?
Watching the Roma game, my best friend put it this way : If Robin van Persie is any good, Arsenal should give him more of the ball. If he’s not any good, he shouldn’t be in the team.
After Fulham, I thought Arsenal would sneak fourth place, even if it went to the last day. Last night City beat Aston Villa 2-0 and Martin O’Neill now has a three-point lead over Arsenal with 10 games to go. He said, “If it’s a 10-game season, I’ll take that.”
Villa’s sticky patch persuades me that my post-Fulham call will be proved correct. I don’t say that because Walcott, Fabregas and Adebayor are coming back. What those three players will do in the next 10 games is so hypothetical that I refuse to consider it. I just think Arsenal will be fourth because results show they are resilient. Not prolific, not exciting. but resilient.
So the question you should ask yourself is not : What do I think of this team? It’s not : if this team kept together for the next three years, will Arsenal beat everybody?
The key question is more fundamental that that. Wenger and Gazidis, who is His Master’s Voice, are selling us the future. So the key questions for a supporter or sponsor or box-holder is : Do I want to buy the future? Will the future be more of the same? Has Wenger now acquired so much power that he is turning Arsenal into Monaco II ?
At Monaco, Wenger got rid of all his experienced players, packed the team with young French/French-African kids, nose-dived down the league table, and got sacked. Does his intransigence have a kamikaze quality that droves him towards that kind of blunder again? Does he now have a bunker mentality?
Hacks have recently said that the more he is criticised, the more entrenched he becomes. I can’t comment on that because I don’t read what Wenger says any more. When he comes on TV, I press the mute button or switch over. I judge him, now as always, by what he does, not by what he says.
Two days ago I was told that the Online Gooner had eight pieces and they were 5-1 against him with two sitting on the fence. One guy said it was time to out an end to Wenger’s vanity project.
Arsenal play Sunday and Wednesday, Burnley and Roma. We have to wait and see how March and April pan out.
Generally, we tend to say that Danny Fiszman calls the shots and he doesn’t say much. Danny hasn’t said anything this year because he’s hired Gazidis to run the club as Wenger wants it run.
But, ultimately, it isn’t really Danny who calls the shots. It’s the fans. If they don’t want to keep paying very high ticket prices to watch Song, Eboue and Adebayor, if they don’t renew, if they vote with their feet, Danny will have to make the decision he has been dreading for the last five years : choosing the next manager.
Will Danny do that? Or will he sell the club and let someone else do it?