Arsenal play a lovely, silky game of football and, when they are in full flight, their Premier League fixtures show them as a team that can match Barcelona. Unfortunately, they don’t match the Catalans in terms of finishing or defending. In fact, in both of those areas they themselves can be matched by quite a few of the ‘lesser’ teams in English football.
It’s a real pity that a team that can pass like the current Arsenal squad somehow seems to come up short time and time again. Players of the calibre of Cesc Fabegas – if he doesn’t move to Barcelona – and his teammatesshould have surely bagged some silverware by now.
So where has it gone wrong? Or maybe it hasn’t gone wrong at all – as some Arsenal fans are bound to argue it’s just a question of time. Or economics. Or something else.
There are three things that stand out: the first is that thinking back to that truly great Arsenal team of a few years ago it’s not just their quality of passing that is remembered. Yes, Pires, Henry, Bergkamp, Ljungberg, etc could pass the ball – but the whole team had a solidity and physicality about it that just doesn’t seem to be there in the present one. When you remember Patrick Vieira, you remember his hardness as much as his undoubted skill. All too often the Arsenal team looks like a bunch of amateurs when in the pre-match lineup. That so-important spine running through the team doesn’t seem to be quite right.
Having said that, my second point is that today’s strikers seem to be a long way from tose golden years of Arsenal in terms of ruthless precision with the ball.
Finally, and here Arsenal fans will be able to shed light on this – the lack of trophies seems to have coincided with the move to the Emirates Stadium. It’s wonderful to watch Arsenal fixtures at the the stadium – but Arsenal left Highbury in May, 2006 and haven’t won anything since. Has the financial impact of the stadium, especially in what we have to call ‘the current economic climate’, has had a dramatic impact on the manager’s transfer budget?
Although Arsene Wenger can take players of whom we know very little and make them into superstars, is it possible that this policy has rather been forced on him because most of the money is tied up elsewhere? Find out in the 2010/11 season by reserving your Arsenal tickets now.
