My best friend is a big Wenger fan as well as being a Manchester United fan.
On Tuesday he went to the Emirates with his son Matt.
On Wednesday he told me what he thought of Arsenal 1 Roma 0
He said 5 things, really. So we talked about 5 aspects of Arsenal.
1. He said the Emirates will take years to get an atmosphere because it takes years for an atmosphere to develop.
Personally, I have doubts about it ever developing an atmosphere. It could happen.
2. He said no Arsenal player is authoritative enough to break the rules that Wenger has laid down regarding their style of play. The inability of the Arsenal players to abandon those habits makes Arsenal far too predictable.
I said : The crowd find the team predictable and dull, the opposition just lets them have the ball in wide areas because they know the crosses are rubbish and no Arsenal player wants to get on the end of those crosses. It’s obvious that they don’t practice that.
If they practiced, they would be able to score from crosses. That has been embarrassing for years. But we are all supposed to chant the mantra : Arsene Knows…Arsenal are one-dimensional, good teams are multi-dimensional. Good teams have flair, dynamism, many ways of scoring a goal. But if your manager collects inside forwards, you will play 15-yard passes across the field from August to April, the team will be boring, and you will gradually empty the stadium.
3. He said Arsenal have no player with a box instinct. No player has the instinct to automatically run into a position from which a goal can be scored.
He said Vela was appalling, said that if Ramsey is the next Fabregas he should have been playing.
4. He said Wenger has become David Dein, a wheeler-and-dealer. Having lost David Dein, he’s become David Dein.
I said : Platini said Wenger is more of a businessman that a coach these days. I agree with Platini, although I loathe Platini because he is Blatter’s henchman. I don’t trust anybody who is that close to Blatter.
5. He said: Arsenal have half a team: Almunia, Gallas and Nasri were super, full backs were good, Eboue was OK for an hour. The others were a disgrace, especially Bendtner. Denilson was pedestrian. He said Robin van Persie’s turning circle is 15 yards and his thinking circle is 15 seconds, it’s not hard to see why they can’t score goals.
He said Roma survived the pressure, had a good patch, and Riise almost scored. “That game could have turned,” he said.
I said to him : I know it’s only half a team, I’ve said that all season. Adebayor is single, a party animal, an African who has won the lottery, I would never have turned down £19 million for him. I repeated what I say on ANR (my best friend never reads ANR) : That Arsenal can’t play without Fabregas, that Wenger doesn’t teach defence, that he plays five-a-side football with 11 players, they never mix it up.
Last night I went to Book Slam and all three performers were marvellous.