From Adam Firth : a response to Mr Lipsky
Hi Myles,
Merry Christmas and thanks for another year of your contributions (and those of your readers) to the thoughtful discussion of Arsenal football club.
I am looking forward to your contributions as we enter the New Year, with the greatest football positivity I have held since 2008 and I would think that would be the same for the majority of fans.
So, as I look forward, I wonder whether ‘supporters’ like Pascal Lipsky will this week be writing to you with observations that celebrate Arsene Wenger for his vision, ambition and capacity for change.
I genuinely enjoy the different perspectives conveyed by your readers that you share.
For a large part of 2013 those contributions have been a lot more negative than positive and although I am not a doomer, many of the ‘Arsene out’ brigade have an opinion that I may not agree with but which I have understood.
I try to take all the arguments for and against and make up my mind and of course, I have had frequent negative thoughts and doubts in recent years.
During the most recent off-season the heat on Wenger was intense, despite a second-half of ’12/’13 that was outstanding for a number of reasons including, importantly, the results.
I was surprised, however to read the level of criticism directed at Wenger by Mr Lipsky as recently as the Man City game, despite the fact that Arsenal were top of the league and were a couple of poor decisions from a much closer result.
I do think the better team won on the day, but that happens.
Another day we can be better the better team against Manchester City, though they are rightly seen as a benchmark team.
Yet going into 2014 we are still top of the League and have more points in the 2013 calendar year than any other team. More than City. More than Chelsea. More than United. More than Liverpool, and once again more than Spurs. And I repeat, more than anyone else.
In 2013 we have also beaten both of last years’ Champions League finalists at their home grounds in Germany.
Though tempting, I will try not to use this note to talk about the respective available resources of the Clubs I have just mentioned versus Wenger’s available spend since 2004, which the game that inspired Mr Lipsky’s contribution most clearly demonstrated.
That discussion has been often argued for both sides, though the numbers do speak for themselves, as does the City bench that day (let alone the players that did not make it) and as does that massive shiny new construction that since our last trophy popped up in Ashburton Grove and which is an enormous cost funded by the Club, built with enormous foresight and which, despite the short-term challenges, so clearly demonstrates the Club’s (and Wenger’s) ambition to compete at the top of European football.
Oh, how that word ‘ambition’ (or rather lack of it) has been used to beat Wenger in recent years and Mr Lipsky is still using it when we top the League.
To think that a man who rightly won the plaudits for changing the very face of the game and bringing as close to football perfection as we may see to Arsenal Football Club in 2004 would not want more than 4th is absurd.
I mean, just think about it for a moment…
And the fact that Wenger willingly accepts such gross personal attacks from the Club’s own fan base to see through a long-term plan to build a base to keep the Club competing well beyond his own tenure (admittedly in return for some remarkable financial compensation) has demonstrated a very rare ambition in the modern game.
Ferguson would not have done it.
Certainly not Mourinho. Nor Guardiola. Who would you want Mr Lipsky? AVB? Owen Coyle? Tony Pulis?
Twelve months ago, I read a lot of the following:
1.Wenger doesn’t teach defence.
2.He never listens to his assistants. Bould is having no effect.
3.Wenger’s teams have no heart, no guts, no steel. They can’t grind out results. They are in intent on playing pretty patterns and not getting results.
4.Arsenal need a new keeper – The bloke whose name I can’t be arsed spelling is shit.
5.We need a new centreback too. The BFG is slow and has the turning circle of the Queen Mary. Koscielny is error prone and what happened to our Captain? We need a lump like Samba.
6.We need a new striker. We are never going to score enough goals to compete for the Premiership without someone better than Giroud up front.
7.We must get some wingers and play with width.
8.$100k a week for Walcott? He cannot even run with the ball.
9.We need a beast of a midfielder. A player worth 20 -25 million in the transfer market. I think Fellaini has a 20 million pound buyout clause. He would be perfect.
10.I can’t understand what Wenger sees in Ramsey. It is a massive shame about his career was ruined by that Orc up North but he is sadly never going to fulfil his potential. He needs to be shipped out.
11.Rosicky too. When not on the treatment table he is just old. We have plenty of tippy tappy little midfielders anyway.
Much of the above was repeated six months later despite the end of year run and I have no doubt that a re-read of the mood in your Mailbag from the month of July would be a depressing experience that I would prefer not to relive.
So what did Wenger do in 2013?
He bought a Spanish international left back who was virtually unknown outside Spain, brought back that traitor Flaimini on a cheap-arsed ‘free’ and yet another tippy tappy midfielder, who while universally regarded as world class (at least before he had played a few games for Arsenal) was in the one position we did not need reinforcements for.
Oh, and he happened to win more points than any other team in the Premiership. That’s right. In 2013 Arsenal have more points than any other team in the Premiership.
Clearly, Wenger began prioritising defence and has spent the past couple of years clearing the ‘deadwood’ (I hate that term), widening his transfer gaze beyond France and French-speaking Africa to Spain and Germany, and has brought in experienced players with some mental steel (if not physical power).
These were some areas where he had been previously criticised and it shows that Wenger is accepting of change in his approach.
Even in recent games, with defensive substitutions and approach to defend leads, we are seeing what most of us thought we would not see from a Wenger team.
I am not sure that I personally felt it was quite appropriate to go five at the back and cede possession as we did in Newcastle, but hey, it worked in the end who knows what result would have happened with a different approach?
Such a new philosophy and approach will have teething problems… There is also no doubt he was seriously on the look out for a world class striker in the summer (and I suspect he would still take one), however he couldn’t acquire one that would warrant changing the team’s restructured system, so he stuck with Giroud for his work-rate, hold up play and his ability to bring the best out in the one area that the team is clearly so very strong: its midfield.
And in those areas, despite his obvious areas for improvement, Giroud is world class.
At the half way point of the new season, having played every team once, Arsenal top the League.
This Arsenal team is certainly not without areas for improvement and if I was forced to bet the house, I still would not pick our team for this year’s Premiership, but after the Aston Villa game would I have taken the season as it has thus far played out? You bet.
Would Mr Lipsky? I expect he would have, yet after three games he remained so vocally critical.
Like the team, Wenger is not immune from criticism, but Arsenal are top of the League having played every team and we are there despite Wenger taking an approach largely contrary to EVERYONE’s advice on player requirements at the start of the year!
Well if that does not demonstrate a level of ‘Genius’, it most certainly demonstrates a very keen understanding of how to build an effective football team without spending hundreds of millions in the transfer market and an ability to change and adapt in spite of the fact that without a bit of luck (e.g. Ozil) he cannot compete with the likes of City and Chelsea in the transfer market.
It certainly deserves some positive acknowledgement.
Wenger’s biggest problem, as I see it, is expectation.
An expectation that he has created and with which others beat him. The possibility of moving 7 points clear at the conclusion of the Everton game created what was to become unfulfilled expectation.
In the same way as 1998 – 2005 created an expectation that was always going to be difficult to sustain, particularly with the financial doping that has entered the game. And that expectation gets the better of us fans from time to time and it has done it to me and will do so again, I am sure.
But Arsenal is top of the League – can you tell I like saying that?
Whatever imperfections exist in the team (and they are there, and I have my views on them), Arsenal was the best-performing team of 2013.
Without a world class striker. Without even a back up striker to the one we’ve got other than one who wants to leave the Club and the Club itself does not want! Without a world class keeper. Without a midfield enforcer. Without wingers. Without a $100 million pound transfer kitty. Without a new manager…. And with Ramsey, Rosicky, Walcott, Szczesny and such apparently flawed centre-backs.
So with such a flawed team, surely someone deserves credit for the team being top of the League?
Hmmm, I’ll have a go… How about Arsene Wenger? Again, we might fall on our swords beginning with our next game or we could have the season cruelly taken from us, or both as we saw in Birmingham, 2008, and I know trophies are not awarded after round 19, nor for calendar year performance.
But surely we fans should just be enjoying right now and appreciating the things that the team (and Manager) are doing well, despite limitations. We know that being top will not last forever. It didn’t in 2008.
But it also hasn’t in the past for Barca, Milan, Lyon, Dortmund and apparently Manchester United. It won’t last forever for Bayern Munich and it certainly won’t for Arsenal Football Club. But we are top of the League at the half-way point and therefore clearly competing for the title; doing so with a team that began being remodelled again only two years ago following the departure of Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy, then RVP and Song, and which clearly has room for improvement (organically with the development of its existing players and with some purchases) and which, I think most would agree, is ahead of where we expected its development to be at right now.
So if we cannot be positive and enjoy the team for the qualities that for the time being are hiding the flaws that we can all see, then what enjoyment are we ever going to take from following our Club?
And if we cannot stop short of continuing to throw insults at the greatest manager our Club has seen when we are sitting top of the Premiership then how many moments of joy will we take from the game?
Best wishes for a wonderful New Year to you and your readers.
Let’s hope it brings some exciting times for Arsenal Football Club.
Cheers, Adam.