From Adam Rivellini : Monaco
What to say that hasn’t already been said?
So here is what has already been said…
I wrote this email to some mates after the Leicester game.
As you have done with articles dating back circa 10 years, it’s easy to dust off opinions from years gone by. It has all been said before.
The worst thing of all, before you get into the diatribe, below is this : Wenger Arsenal has eroded my enthusiasm, like many others, for turning up week in, week out.
Last night I slumped back on my £1200 seat at thought, “Oh well”.
I struggle to muster anger anymore.
We have a terminal illness and the cure will take years to come to fruition.
Observations:
We’re still inept and remaining calm and professional in difficult periods of matches. Panic appears easier for us than implementing anything resembling an organised plan.
– Ramsey has gone so far backwards in a year it’s unreal.
– The difference between Sanchez’s workrate and others around him is stark.
– Walcott is still a lazy little tyke.
– Ozil does not affect games in proportion to his price-tag
– Rosicky should be a first-choice starter in every match
– Kos and Mertesacker are no longer an irreplaceable pair. We should be in the market for another top class CB.
– Monreal – credit where credit is due – he has been very solid in the last month.
– We remain imbalanced. And I think this is actually remedied quite easily IF we do purchase a Schneiderlin type of midfielder to play alongside le Coq in midfield.
– Set pieces remain a game of roulette for us – we still evidently don’t practice or have a plan for them.
– We are not ruthless in everything we do:
o We don’t buy quality to fill gaps when we need it or perhaps more tellingly, when we can obtain it and improve on what we have. We seem to persist with players due to an ethos of loyalty , even when options to improve are in our grasp (case in point being Fabregas – I wonder what Wenger is thinking seeing the shisha pipe pics of Wilshire this week !
Contrast that with Mourinho replacing twice Player of the Year Mata
o We rarely hear manager or players b*llock one another during game. I’ve noticed Coq do a bit of late; Mertesacker was visibly annoyed a bit yesterday – but then I rarely see him communicate and organise players before a situation evolves – it’s like he makes visible gestures afterwards to deflect from his own failings
o The manager refuses to make fundamental in-game changes when things are not working out. I Don’t think Wenger has it in him to embarrass a player by subbing them before the 60 min mark no matter how bad they are playing – reference back to a Mr Ramsey.
o And ultimately the culture of the club is one bred on an outdated mentality of allowing the manager to develop systems and players of a timeframe which is out of kilter with the pace of evolution in the game.
Teams are turned into champion material in 3 years in the modern game with the right injection of finance of course – but then Atletico, Dortmund, Southampton and Liverpool are examples of sides that have made dramatic improvements in extremely short time frames with a dynamic shift in coaching and management styles. Were we focused on winning, we would have someone above Wenger critiquing constantly the gaps in our setup and either consulting him and even holding him to accountability to address them or handling his replacement
– Leadership is lacking in so many areas.
This is a harder problem to solve than most – I struggle to identify too many great on the field leaders (who are also top-end footballers) these days compared to the era of Adams, Vieria, Keown when we seemed to have a team of them.
In the past I think the amount of hard-man leaders we had meant Wenger didn’t need to be ruthless. Others would do that for him. Indeed, Dein would handle the ruthless business elements for him off the pitch as well.
Now without a single character above or below Wenger of this mould, he is exposed… while I cannot identify many players of this ilk nowadays, nor do I know many Dein mark 2s, I can certainly point to a number of managers who do have that “character”…
Myles says:
What you say, Adam, is no diatribe.
It’s a summary.