As humans we sometimes need a sense of beginning.
A change can give us hope.
And hope gives us energy.
Supporters now feel better times are coming after a decade of slipping backwards.
As the Unai Emery era begins, we now feel happier, more optimistic.
Like many ANR readers, I feel released from a burden that I’ve carried for an eternity of Saturdays and Sundays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and even Thursdays.
Today I was searching ANR via WordPress and didn’t find what I wanted. But I discovered a long-forgotten piece from 10 April 2007 and it’s one of the best I ever posted.
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Watching Arsene’s Arsenal unravel is horrible.
But so predictable
Arsenal played pretty football and lost 1-0 to West Ham and the manager said, “We should have had ten.”
I’m sick of it. I’m really, really sick of it.
It wasn’t unbelievable, as Wenger said. It was predictable.
It was wholly believable. Something you have seen many times before is always believable.
West Ham was deja vu, it was Groundhog Day, it was the same old fault of overplaying, the same old intricate passing, the same old limited style, the same old scenario of working the keeper into his best form by making Robert Green so busy that he became good enough to save every shot, except the two that hit the post.
Then the team that can’t score went to Newcastle and failed to score in a 0-0.
Arsenal are so dismal now that I watch the body language. I don’t watch the passing moves because I know they won’t score, so I watch how they relate to each other, and if they relate to each other.
Clearly, nobody in the Arsenal team is afraid of the manager. Nobody is afraid of the bench. Nobody is afraid of a team mate. Nobody gives anybody a bollocking. Nobody ever gives anybody a bollocking.
However sloppy a player is, there is no reprimand, no censure, no shouting, and rarely an apology. How often does player raise a hand to say, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
They don’t apologise because they are so pampered and flattered and protected, and so spoiled, so into themselves, that they feel above reproach. They know that nobody will ever tell them they’ve had a bad game! They are untouchable.
Overall, AW has to stop talking crap because he is embarrassing the supporters. This season Arsenal have not really beaten anybody except promoted teams and relegation teams, plus Man United. He’s lost to Pardew’s West Ham and then lost to Curbishley’s West Ham.
Van Persie broke a metatarsal scoring that goal against Manchester United on January 21, but Wenger didn’t bring anybody in. He said that he didn’t need a striker, despite the fact that he knew Baptista was rubbish. He never fancied Baptista. He saw him in training and realised he had made a big mistake. But at least he had not bought him. He only had him on loan. Phew ! If he fancied Baptista, he would have started him before November 18, obviously.
On Saturday Arsenal play Bolton, who missed the chance to close the gap by drawing 1-1 at Everton.
The remaining six Premiership games could be as sickening and disappointing as the last four, although you need expectations to be disappointed, and many Gooners have few expectations now.
Newcastle-Arsenal was one of the worst 0-0 draws I’ve ever seen. Both sides were ragged and Arsenal looked like a bunch of spoiled mercenaries who are going through the motions. They don’t know to how to score a goal and they don’t know how to win a game.
What has happened this season? Why has it all unravelled? Because a ball of string always unravels. The manager should now own up and promise to sign some experienced players. Because his ideas have failed. His policies have failed. His squad has failed. And his captain has failed.
Arsene Wenger is a suicidally stubborn, self-defeating science teacher who will never hand his players over to somebody who can teach them how to defend as you have to in English football.
He would not let Don Howe teach them anything, and he will not let Steve Bould teach them anything, because he is too possessive to let any other evangelist influence his precious babies. Or shout at them ! Heaven forbid that anybody should ever be told they are doing something wrong !
Ashley Cole said that when Martin Keown tried to advise Senderos, he walked away ! Senderos was obviously not used to being told anything.
He won’t share his team with anybody and he won’t share the glory with anybody and he refuses to have anybody around who will contradict him. He is a messiah who doesn’t listen and therefore he won’t have to share the blame with anybody. Every Arsenal player is his player. What has happened this season is his fault and only his fault and he knows it.
His stated ambition is to put on training session every day that the players enjoy. It’s his training, his ideas, his philosophy, his pilates, his French osteopath, his hydro pools, his training pitches with undersoil heating, and his lunch menu served on crockery chosen by him. It’s a French club with a French dressing room where three players speak German, (Lehmann, Rosicky and Hleb) and three whose first language is English – Hoyte, Walcott and Adebayor, who comes from the English-speaking part of Togo.
The kindergarden he calls a training ground produces lots of nice passing in two thirds of the field.
He wants to play Thierry football, even when Thierry can’t sprint any more, and even when Thierry isn’t there. Arsenal was a perfect vehicle for his ideas, and Thierry was the perfect instrument for his ideas, so he built around Thierry very cleverly.
Well, that’s gone. That’s ancient history. You can’t play Thierry football without Bergkamp, Vieira, Cole and Robbie Pires. Simple as that. With those four major talents playing for him, Henry scored over 150 goals.
As an Arsenal manager, Wenger’s achievements are huge and unique. But his flaws are huge too.
Right now, in his new stadium, he needs a new model for his team. But he is too blind and too stubborn to see that he needs a new model. He wants to carry on doing what he is doing now, next year, the year after, the year after, and forever. He has been indulged for far too long.
The directors doted on him and nobody in the mainstream media has challenged him since he arrived in 1996. We have access journalism in the UK and he had access to our papers and the TV screens, and he sold us his vision and he is one of the greatest salesmen we’ve ever seen, and he is by far the greatest spin-doctor we’ve ever seen, and he has won seven trophies, six in style, one luckily.
So he has had a bloody good innings and he has really enjoyed being in charge of one of the biggest train-sets in English football, and he’s shown us how France does high-speed railways.
His Arsenal played scintillating attacking football with a style and pace that we have never seen before in England, or anywhere. And we loved it.
Unfortunately, he’s stayed too long. His ideas have taken Arsenal a long way forward but now he has shot his bolt. He can’t take Arsenal any further because he is obsessed with kids and surrounds himself with yes-men.
That Newcastle game disgusted me. As a game of football, and as an Arsenal performance, it was horrible. I saw the body language of players who didn’t want to be there. Just as we knew a strike force of Aliadiere and Baptista was impotent, we knew that a strike force of Diaby and Adebayor, two blunt instruments, would not score or create chances.
It is beyond belief that, in January, Wenger had said ,”I have enough strikers.”
I’m told (and I hope this isn’t true) that in the last 14 games, no Arsenal striker has scored a goal !
For me, watching that scrappy, goalless abortion on PPV, and suffering the co-commentary of Brian Marwood, whose comments directly contradicted what I saw on every replay, was just horrible, just nauseating, a colossal turn-off.