From Kier : Red card is a red herring
Just wanted to send you a few thoughts about last night’s game, although I’m sure you’re already sick to death of analysing it…
The red card is a red herring. A disastrous, outrageous one admittedly, but it distorts the real story.
In the 2006 Champions League Final many complained that the sending off of Jens Lehmann 16 minutes in ruined the game as a spectacle. You could not say that about last night. Whether it was on Wenger’s command, or just the team’s terrified reaction to Barcelona’s awesome ability, Arsenal sold out their philosophy.
The team selection suggests the boss holds some blame. The dropping of Arshavin indicates that despite it supposedly being “not the personality of this team” to sit back and defend a lead, that was exactly what they were going to do.
Arshavin may not have great stamina but he does have pace, and in a fairly slow team that would have provided a serious outlet against Barcelona’s high line.
Van Persie had little chance of penetrating it on his own. He tried, bless him, but without full fitness or proper support even his powers of improvisation were unlikely to bear fruit. Time after time Arsenal looked to play the ball direct to him, but on the rare occasions these hopeful punts did find their target there was rarely anyone nearby for him to lay the ball off to.
You’d have expected Arsenal to challenge Barcelona’s weak points – the unfamiliar pairing in the middle of their central defence and their exposure on the flanks where the two marauding full-backs leave space behind them – but we decided to play to their strengths instead.
Sitting deep and pressing is one thing, but Arsenal seemed to think they could survive by JUST pressing alone. Hypnotised by the ball as it swung back and forth in front of them, the players found them dragged towards it as if caught in orbit.
With Sagna and Clichy finding themselves sucked inside to help protect Djourou and Koscielny against Barcelona’s three-man attack, huge swathes of the flanks were left unmanned and horribly vulnerable to Adriano and Dani Alves’ frequent forays forward. Arsenal’s wide players, who should’ve been protecting their full-backs, were too busy ball-watching to consider the fatal narrowness of the team’s shape.
You can’t really blame them as they’ve not been taught the art of defence.
Should we be surprised that they fell short when, having been drilled to play like the Spanish champions, they find themselves forced to imitate Stoke City?
The real crime though is that when we did get the ball, we didn’t do anything with it.
Arsenal, the team for whom possession is ten tenths of the law, reneged on their raison d’être. Has a Wenger side ever passed the ball that badly before?
As Guardiola pointed out afterwards, even with eleven men we couldn’t string three passes together. Granted Barcelona’s pressure without the ball was as magnificent and relentless as their artistry with it, but Arsenal should be used to facing a pressing game.
Were they overawed by the occasion? Or were they all playing so deep that there was simply no outlet apart from the lonely Van Persie?
Either way, the amount of long balls to a striker whose pace and aerial ability are far from his strong points was never going to work. And yet while we gave the ball away so cheaply going forward it was almost absurd, we were all too happy to play short passes around our own penalty area! Fabregas may be able to excuse his invisible performance on his fitness (not that he was much cop in the first leg either), but he can’t excuse that backheel.
Essentially, for all the hard work we were willing to put in off the ball, we were lazy when we had it. The pass-and-move system had become all pass and no move.
Whereas in the first leg whenever Wilshere won the ball deep there were options ahead of him, here there were none. No invention, no initiative, no evidence of our famous commitment to attack.
Xavi was blunt in his post-match appraisal: “Arsenal really didn’t want to play football. All they cared about was defending”. How many times have we heard Wenger and Fabregas bitterly register that complaint after being held by an inferior team! And yet when faced by the side that best exhibits Wenger’s chosen brand of football, we decided we weren’t good enough to play them on their own terms. Arsenal can take a lot of pride from their performance in the first leg where, though largely outplayed, we stayed true to our principles and were rewarded with a famous result. Sadly, aside from the industrious Nasri, the spirited Wilshere,the comitted Koscielny, the desperate Djourou and the surprisingly able Almunia, there is no pride to be taken from last night.
You can complain about the referee all you like. And with good reason.
The red card was absurd and came at a crucial point in the match – with eleven players, an away goal and half-an-hour to play Arsenal had a chance (although I doubt even the most optimistic Gooner would go along with Arsene’s post-match claim: “overall I’m convinced we would have won this game”).
But we’ve been told for years this team is good enough to compete with anybody, on our terms. Instead we went out, parked the bus, kicked occasionally, played long balls more than occasionally, and essentially tried (and almost succeeded) to grind out an undeserved victory.
But we ended up losing not only the game, but the moral high ground.
If Wenger’s prepared to sell out his own philosophy, where does that leave the players he’s preached it to all these years?
Myles replies :
I’d have played Bendtner, not RVP, with Arshavin centrally in the Fabregas role, getting the ball very occasionally, but using it cleverly in spurts
If Fabregas had been fit, he wouldn’t have tried that backheel and made the kind of stupid mistake he’s never made in the last seven years.
Not enough newspapers have admitted : Wenger parked the bus.