By Tony Attwood
“How hard can it be?”
When said in a football context, this is a notion based on the belief that most football clubs are run by morons who don’t understand simple things like “get the best players and make them play together.”
So you go and buy the best (no question that they want to come to your club) and then because they are the best they play together (no question of egos or tantrums) and you win (no question of those pesky outside forces like bent referees, luck or other teams also buying very good players at the same time).
Sadly it doesn’t work like that. Liverpool got to second last season because they had no European distraction, a brilliant but morally flawed centre forward, and the right bit of luck without which no one gets anything.
Now without any of those they are sinking back to the position they occupied for the seasons before hand. 7th, 6th, 8th, 7th, 2nd… And just in case the position of 7th or 8th doesn’t sound too bad, these days, most of the time 7th or 8th means the club is closer to relegation than it is to winning the league.
At the moment, all the clubs from 8th down are in this position. This includes Swansea, West Ham, Everton and Newcastle. That doesn’t mean any of them is likely to go down, but rather than they have a hell of a long way to climb up to the top.
This season it is Man U who have benefited from the lack of European football. They also arranged for their to be no league cup distraction either, going out singularly early to MK Dons. Next season will be tougher – so they need some serious considerations of whom they should buy.
As for Man City, I think most of us can imagine that their owners think that it is easy to win everything. After all, back home the owner can have everything and anything he wants, and it is hard to drop such thinking. Get a new manager, and a new set of players. MEN WHO WANT TO WIN THINGS.
But Pep Guardiola doesn’t want to work for Man City. And seemingly nor does Carlo Ancelotti. And from what is being said (which of course is always a poor measure of reality) Diego Simeone doesn’t fancy it much either.
Which leaves Brendan Rodgers and Jürgen Klopp. Remember when Mr Klopp was touted as the man who could show Wenger a trick or two. Wenger’s bad seasons ended in us being in the “not a trophy” position. Dortmund are 10th.
The trouble at Man City however is not just that of the manager, because it was Txiki Begiristain who has spent £120m on a range of unsuccessful players. Ferran Soriano is largely thought of being the man who screwed up with Uefa in such a way that when Uefa did impose its modest penalties Man City didn’t even have a response ready. Maybe time to shift both.
The fact is, if it were easy, lots of clubs would kick people around and win stuff because they wanted it more. And those way down the league like Aston Villa would borrow money to do it in the sure knowledge that really they were risking nothing because it was easy as long as they wanted it.
Of course it isn’t easy. Here’s one example of why it isn’t: the problem of who the player wants to play for. Bacary Sagna successfully drove his career into the wall by moving to Man City and signing a three year deal. That uses up valuable Man City resources (valuable in that Uefa is watching them) and he gets the number 3 shirt and has played this season 14 times thus far. Last season with Arsenal (who wanted him to stay) it was 48 games. Who wants to buy him and pay a fraction of his Man City salary? No one. Man City will sell him – but keep topping up his salary for two more years.
£42m spent on Eliaquim Mangala and he didn’t play against Palace. A bit like Balotelli at Liverpool except he cost less – but didn’t turn up for the Arsenal game. It’s crazy, it annoys Uefa, and it stops players and managers taking the club seriously.
Yaya Touré didn’t get a birthday cake, Samir Nasri seems to be in a permanent strop, Fernando ain’t the gravy… one might even start to say that the policy of nicking other clubs’ best players isn’t quite all it is made up to be.
Put it all together and you have the sort of scenario that journalists were talking about last year for Arsenal: the need for a full-back, a central defender, a defensive midfielder, an attacking midfielder and a forward.
And a manager quite possibly, just to round things off.
That doesn’t mean everything is flowing our way – of course not. Chelsea will have to have significant cock-ups in four of their games for us to sneak up and win the league, which seems unlikely. But it makes the point that Man City had everything they wanted. The ground given to them by the state, an infinite sum to spend on training, a huge win-over-the-people campaign, a worldwide network starting to develop…
So I still ask, why isn’t it that easy to get right?
But in a sense that is like asking how did it happen that the Liverpool that won the league all those times from 1973 to 1990 suddenly stopped winning. From 1992 to 1994 they were 6th, 6th and 8th, and since then have drifted between periods with that sort of position and periods in which they are top four.
And here’s the problem: once players stop believing that the club is the real deal they won’t come and play. I mean, how would you behave if you were earning £1.5m a year and someone said he could get you four times that much. You’d probably say ok, and then starting considering the options – because if someone will pay that much, so will someone else.
And the next thing you know is that what the player wants, besides a big fat pay cheque is,
- A chance to win something
- A manager who will develop your talent – so you can become immortal
- Champions League football so the world has a chance to watch you
Which is where Liverpool and Tottenham fall down. In the past eight years Liverpool has won the League Cup once, Tottenham has won the League Cup once, and Arsenal has won the FA Cup once. So nothing much between them.
Except that Arsenal has been in the Champions League every year, and have already built their new stadium and have a manager with a reputation that is very high indeed among players.
And Arsenal have a reputation under Wenger of pulling rabbits out of hats. While the world marvels at the emergence of Kane at Tottenham those in the business are actually wondering how Arsene Wenger managed to programme up Hector Bellerin and Francis Coquelin out of obscurity this season. Amusingly Mr Wenger keeps saying he too was surprised by their emergence, but not everyone believes it is quite that simple. It might better be said that we had six or eight prospects who could have stepped up in our hour of need. These are the two that did. It could have been Oxlade-Chamberlain uninjured becoming a defensive midfielder. It could have been Jon Toral being called back from Brentford – who knows. It could have been…
Arsenal has a look, to people inside the business, of a club that knows what’s what, and it has a plan, and that is what people in football rather like. Not the “throw the money at it and see what happens” approach of some, but a proper working plan.
Not a “let’s keep Gerrard playing for as long as possible and never mind him slipping up, and never mind him going beserk and stamping on someone in the first minute, it’s Stevie and he is great” type campaign.
Nor a plan which hopes for being able to sell someone for £75m each year because that really does rely on luck. Had Barcelona not been about to be banned, they would never have paid that – they just needed players and players to get them through a year, so they did pay. That was luck.
But transfers can fail to make it – goodness knows we have seen that happen at Arsenal – but with us, transfers that don’t make it don’t worry us too much because we have the kids coming through from the Academy. With Liverpool, when Dejan Lovren turns out to be not much cop, that is a bit of a bummer. When £16m Mario Balotelli is in the business of declaring himself unfit, well, we nod and say yep, saw that coming, I wonder why Liverpool didn’t.
And what can be said about Emre Can? With others self-certificating or absent due to rank stupidity, he does an insane evil tackle and is added to the list of suspended through stupidity.
And that’s another bonus Arsenal have. Yes some Arsenal transfers don’t work out. But when we have spent big – like really really big – they do work. Ozil and Alexis. Money money money. Talent talent talent.
And the result is…
We have moved from a situation one year ago where every newspaper said that Arsenal had to buy players in each of the key areas of the team in order even to keep out top four non-trophy, to one in which this weekend Tom Peck in the Independent said, and I quote word for word…
with Manchester United likely to spend heavily again in the summer, and Arsenal so obviously superior in almost every part of the pitch, is Liverpool’s brief return to the very top table already over?
Did you get that
Arsenal so obviously superior in almost every part of the pitch,
Even the bizarre Rodgers said,
“I look at Arsenal and their bench, the players, the world-class players on the field with big talent, and it shows the continual work we have to do,”
Hang on, this is Arsenal. We need players in every part of the pitch. I know we do, because last summer everyone said so.
Or did I miss something?
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We’re on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
Great article loads of commonsense, and should be compulsory reading for the moron element both in the game and watching it
The unspoken word at Arsenal “Strength and depth” in each position.
Agree with eezzee. A lot of people owe wenger an apology. All the players written off, monreal, ramsey, Ozil, Giroud, Mertesacker even kosielny at one point a few seasons ago. Also the players that were not ready yet, Bellerin and coquelin. People need to wait a bit before they open their mouths.
HEY! This cant be true!
My lord piers morgan told me that arsenal had to buy a lot of players and hence we must buy a lot of players. end of discussion.
Great article, a plan and common sense trumps most things. Long may Arsene Wenger manage our glorious club
AW has carefully blended a super team together, one which may not yet be at its peak, but each of the last few seasons it has moved a bit closer to that peak – and until the last two seasons this has been achieved with a negative spend.
That Rodgers and certain parts of the media (reluctantly) recognize and admit the quality of the team is welcome, but the same rascals are just waiting to knock us down and give some more air time to the well tried anti Arsenal cliches.
The last part Tony that Rodgers says…
Reading between the lines I see jealousy. And a hope. A hope that we fail at some point so that they look superior. Clearly, people envy us. To the core.
This hatred towards ARSENAL will help us gain that extra bit in our quest to achieve the title.
Nice article. Arsene really does know after all.
Got to say I can’t disagree with any of that. Arsenal can even sell Walcott as the Ox is a superior player and use that money to buy Geoffrey Kondogbia. Jenkinson should not be sold, Chambers should be learn to be a centerback. But seriously Wenger is going to have to sell a lot of players that as they’re not going to get games. Sanogo, Joel Campbell, Flamini, a right back. Maybe Szechney and try and get Cech, though Mourinho would veto this, as he’ll know that Arsenal will be the main force next year.
There is a lesson to be learnt by the Man Citys’ of the world.
That money alone will never bring sustained success.
And foreign “sugar daddies” will come and go at will….their will.
The fruition of Arsenal’s dedicated youth policy is becoming clear to all.
Players who attain first team status are not necessarily big money signings. They can be carefully nurtured from the very young.
Basically what some are beginning to appreciate (other than the aaa ostriches) is that Wenger, the Board and the owner are capable professionals who really do display skill, intelligence and foresight in their hands-off ,arms-length ownership, the Board and Wenger’s careful planning, whether it is building a new stadium, developing talents, buying and transferring in great players at bargain prices, managing under duress and against poor officiating, despite some hypocrite ‘ supporters’, misfortune and FA mismanagement, nefarious FIFA and EUFA, and the occasional CL slip-up etc.
Those who come on UA (either so-called fans or from other clubs) to whine about how bad everything is at AFC would GLADLY change places with the Arsenal given half a chance, or in the aaa’s case, perhaps rejoice at the idea of being in Liverpool’s shoes?
Reading what other fans have been saying about their clubs, it made me realize that elements like aaa also feature as fans in Liverpool and Man City based on comments on various blogs after the weekend loses.
Someone made a comment on skysports that there are 2 kinds of fans. ve and -ve minded fans. ve minded fans (such as those seen in Untold) stick to their club through thick and thin while -ve minded fans (as found in large numbers in Le grove) are only there when the going is good. As soon as the club hits some trouble, they turn against the players and manager. They want the manager sacked and half the players sold. This we experience on a regular basis and I can bet you that should Arsenal lose this weekend, the Arsene Out Brigade (AOB) will resume duties irrespective of the good run just as they did when we lost to Spurs.
Then you begin to see analysis of how Ozil is lazy and all the other stories we are familiar with as well as the common anthem “Wenger does not do tactics”.
Its common for people who know nothing about football to be critical about the game as if they are pros. What irks me is Michael Owen showing his naivity by saying that Sterling is better than Ozil. So much Jealousy I would say.
Speaking of our academy, I saw Arsenal under 21s beat Stoke 4 -1 this evening, along with a large audience mainly made up of children and teenagers, some of whom were there with their parents and had got the tickets free through Arsenal in the Community. A few Arsenal fans in the making after seeing that, I should think.
It cost me £2 (pensioner rate) plus £2 ticketing charge to see a top class match including Abou Diaby (playing very well), Jack Wilshere and Mikel Arteta and a whole lot of very talented teenagers. One of them was Alex Iwobi, who scored a hat trick.
Arsenal’s academy is certainly alive and kicking.
Arsenal is not a collection of individuals. Arsenal is a team playing a system. Tactics? The ultimate tactic is a system.
Brilliant.
Maybe Owen’s looking for a job at LFC.
Let the blind believe the blind. We believe in Arsene.
Going back to why Lpoo were successful back in the 70’s & 80’s could it be down to money? We’re they not bankrolled by the littlewoods pools company at the time, they could pay the wages, transfers and bonuses of players more than other clubs at the time could. Once the money in the PL came in and MUFC started winning things with their very good youth team Lpoo sucess dropped rather rapidly.
Great article
Very well said all you good things!
COYG -Wenger doing us proud as always!
Great article.
I have been saying for Months on Untold that this is the best ‘squad’ we have ever had.
Alas, I’ve had very little support with that, but I stand by what I said, and it seems more are more are, if not in total agreement yet, at least edging in that direction.
Great article, Tony. The Untold crew appreciate a plan and model that work. We’ve seen this coming and have commented on it. #jambug has been touting the squad for quite some time as have a few others. Brendan Rodgers is not the only one.
Great article, the beauty of Arsene is that he believes in building something, be it the best stadium in the league, title winning teams , or balanced squads , but he is building for our future. Barring the future departures of Rosicky, and Arteta, and to a lesser extent BFG , there is not a single player that needs replacing in the very near future, and no part of our squad needs a drastic overhaul, come on you gunners!!!
Wait a minute ….
http://www.memecenter.com/fun/128705/60-seconds-and-1-minute-arent-really-the-same