Do Arsenal need to get rid of their tactical straightjacket?

 

 

By Tony Attwood

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There is an idea doing the rounds that the key to winning the Premier League comes down to the way a club and its players handle pressure.   And this, it is claimed, makes life interesting because no one really knows exactly how to handle pressure.    And that in turn, is because we all handle pressure in different ways.  Which, in fact, brings us round in a circle: everyone handles pressure in their own way.

Such articles are quite amusing because as with so much writing about football, they deny that the scientific study of psychology actually exists while newspaper journalism is done on the basis that the writer knows much more about football, footballers and in this example, the concept of the pressure that individuals feel, than footballers, football managers or professional psychologists. 

Now maybe that is so – except if it is so, why aren’t football journalists actual managers of football teams?   After all the pay is better – so if they aren’t now, why aren’t they applying for jobs as psychologists?

In fact the concept of pressure felt by people is one that is studied by psychologists, and yet journalists who want to write about pressure generally don’t actually interview psychologists to ask them about the subject.  Which is really a bit odd.

So journalists like Barney Ronay in the Guardian can assert that “a sport as sharp-edged and science-heavy as football is hostage to the best guesses of its managers in trying to process pressure.

“Perhaps this is to hope for too much.”

I guess in reply, one might also say, perhaps accuracy in a newspaper report is too much to ask for.   And I write that because, although I don’t normally bother with the results generated by anything AI tells me, I wondered in this case if the journalist involved could have been put on the right track simply by asking AI “Does Arsenal employ a psychologist?”  (By which I mean, I knew the answer but I wondered if the Guardian journalist could have found itt easily.)

In fact, I think I first came across a psychologist employed by Arsenal about 30 years ago, but anyway, AI replies to my question “Does Arsenal employ a psychologist?” with the answer,

“Arsenal Football Club heavily invests in sports psychology to build a “champion mentality,” utilising specialised staff for the academy and first team. Key figures include Academy Psychologists Adam Bracey and Sapna Sharma, along with external experts focused on performance under pressure.”

After that, the Guardian article tells us that “Personality is not fixed. The chemistry of teams shifts all the time,” and that is odd.   Personality is embedded in the mind of the individual.  The chemistry of a team relates to the way individuals react to each other.   This is a huge part of the sport’s ongoing fascination: it is not a machine simulation, but 11 humans interacting to overcome 11 others – and the whims of the officials.  

And here’s another point.   Although writers often like to suggest personality is fixed, that is not the case.   We all change over time; those changes are influenced by experience and the rewards and punishments we experience following our actions.  Even if some journalists don’t know this, there is no doubt that when the top managers and their recruitment team consider who they might add to the squad,  personality is one of the topics considered.   You can’t, after all, have a team full of leaders, nor is there much point buying a player who refuses to change his approach to fit with the rest of the side.

But what is particularly interesting is that the Guardian article denies that Arsenal employ psychologists, while the Guardian writer himself tries to play at being a psychologist.  He writes about the impact that Arsenal being six points ahead might have on ManC because “There is a theory that Arsenal will at some point experience The Freeing Up, a bursting of the dam, pressure transformed into joy juice, flying without wings, football without fear.”

But he then wonders, suggesting, “The tactical straitjacket is at least a form of support. The team has come this far in acquisitive mode, gatherers not hunters, storing up its pile of nuts through the winter. The entire energy of the project is based on these fine margins, including the energy around it.”

So we are asked to accept that Arsenal being top of the league is that it is based on a “tactical straitjacket.”    I don’t think that is true, and no evidence is produced to support it, but even if it is true, surely we should then consider the result of this “tactical straightjacket.”   And when we do, the only question that arises is, why haven’t other clubs tried a tactical straightjacket? 

 

	Club	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	34	22	7	5	64	26	38	73
2	Manchester City	33	21	7	5	66	29	37	70
3	Manchester United	33	16	10	7	58	45	13	58
4	Liverpool	34	17	7	10	57	44	13	58