Burnley’s 2-0 win in the Carling Cup showed us that a 28-year old team can beat a 19-year old team because they have more experience.
Owen Coyle is an excellent young manager who will move on to bigger challenges than a Carling semi. His Burnley team had shape, intelligence, slick movement. And they missed chances too.
The defending of Arsenal’s second team was as disorganised as that of their first team. The first goal was a basic passing move that kids learn at school, with a simple ball to the near post, a ball into the same area where Djourou scored an own-goal agaunst Chelsea three days before.
Second goal : A quick throw-in on the 40-yard line beat the whole of the Arsenal back four! And McDonald made it 2-0 with the outside of his right foot.
After losing 2-0 at Burnley, Mikael Silvestre said the kids will learn from this defeat. What gives him the right to mouth off? He’s only been there 10 minutes. Is Silvestre now a senior spokesman for the French Republic of Colney? Where was he on both goals? Where was Mikael Silvestre on both those goals? Where was he? Being pulled out of the box on the first, on his arse for the second.
Wenger says Arsenal lost because they missed chances, an obvious explanation.
But I disagree. I thought they lost by conceding an early goal. Keeper Brian Jensen is six feet tall and four feet wide and he only made one save, from Vela. On the other four he just put himself when any keeper should be – and Bendtner & Randall hit him. If you have a style of play that depends on quick passing to create one-on-one situations against the keeper, you need poachers with quick feet, not clumsy giants who get the shot wrong nine times out of ten.
The fact that five of Arsenal’s chances were so similar reveals a style of play that is too specific, too rarified. If you mix it up more, you create different types of chances. However, the first team don’t mix it up that much, even on their good days. If you don’t train that way, you’ll never score from a cross into the box.Your movement will not be good enough and your heading won’t either.
We should not have to hear the manager say he’ll play his full team in the FA Cup. He should always, always , always do that, especially during a five-year period when Arsenal were never going to be strong enough to win the title.
My best friend, a huge Wenger fan who always defends the great man, phoned on Wednesday and said, “I’ll give you the Ballon d’Or. That game proved you right, it showed everything that you’ve been saying. He is all about creating a team to a certain pattern, with five or six inside forwards passing to each other, and the rest of it is nowhere.”
Generally, I reckon defence is about shape and good habits. It’s about best practice, which has to be learned. Most things that happen on a football pitch are things that you learn over time, over a period of years. Bould, Adams, Keown, Dixon and Winterburn played on after their legs had gone because their minds were still working.
Wenger, the radical cleric of attacking football, has decided to delete defensive know-how from Arsenal’s vocabulary, to improvise in defence, based on recovery pace, rather than drills, leadership and shouting. He hates shouting. He wants a team of nice athletes who will never shout at each other or him. That’s why he said good passing is more important than leadership. The way they lost to Burnley demonstrated this self-defeating folly more clearly than any other game Arsenal have played this season. His current Arsenal team can concede a goal at any time in any game. At Burnley they conceded after five minutes. If his team are 4-2 up at home with ten minutes to go, you’ve still got a chance.
Last week, suggesting that Chelsea wouldn’t stop at three goals, I was wrong. On Tuesday, betting on over 2.5 goals, I was wrong again. But losing 2-0 at Burnley, the way they did, proved me right. We all get some right, some wrong.
Wenger gave us powerhouse Arsenal teams for eight exciting years but he now has an inferior side that will win nothing. The way they play does not give me hope – and football lives on hope. However, it’s always possible that might change, since they might improve over the next four months. But I’m not holding my breath. I look for certain qualities in a team and I haven’t seen those qualities in his teams since 2004.
Yes, he put Arsenal on the global map by winning two Doubles with dynamic attacking football, with fast, stylish moves ending with killer finishes by world class goalscorers like Anelka, Overmars, Henry, Pires and Ljungberg. But since 2004 they can’t play that brand of football because his players are not dynamic enough to create such exciting moves and score the goals that finish teams off. This outfit is one-dimensional because the midfield lacks power and the entire strike-force is mid-table quality, Uefa Cup quality, not Champions League quality.
I suppose what I’m really saying is : You can’t ignore efficient defending and play attacking football with average strikers if your style of play means that your strikers never put your midfielders into scoring positions. If you make chances, and don’t score because your strikers are not good enough, you won’t get goals from other areas if you play this way.
My friend said, “Enjoy your moment. You’ve taken the Ballon d’Or of punditry this week. A supposedly super-talented team, that hammered Sheffield United and Wigan, how can they turn out at Burnley and get beaten so easily? You’ve been proved right. Next week you’ll be proved wrong.”
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