It is incredibly hard to talk about the defeat yesterday. Indeed it is even difficult to know where to start. It isn’t even the fact that we lost a game yesterday, that would be trivialising the entire situation. There has been so much tension over the years of terrible transfer dealings of top of mediocre performances. The tension of eight years without a trophy coupled with a grand total of £0 being spent this transfer window has come to a head and the bubble has well and truly burst. I have 10 questions I would like to ask our manager. 1. Don’t you think its about time we stopped blaming the referees and bad luck? Did you break a mirror Arsene? Did breaking a mirror give you 7 years of bad luck? That’s ridiculous right? The referee was horrendous yesterday, he really was, I get that. There were question marks on both spot kicks and the cards handed out were also ridiculous, I get that, but isn’t this just part of the game? Referees will be bad, but they can only influence a game so much. If you are playingwell enough the referees influence won’t be so great and they will be less talked about. The poor performance and lack of depth of the team were the main reason for the shocker against Villa yesterday. To blame the referee yesterday is kind of like saying that you didn’t study at all for an exam, the examiner put 1 question in the entire exam outside the syllabus, but you blamed the examiner’s mistake for your failure, not the fact that you could have passed the exam regardless. We did have a much better team than Villa on paper, like you alluded to in your post match press conference. We had 4 shots on target yesterday. I don’t care what you say but that’s terrible, especially given we are at home. Barring the first 20 minutes or so, we were largely anonymous and allowed Villa to dictate and counter. I don’t mean to make him a scapegoat as Rosickywas one of our better players yesterday, but missed two sitters in front of goal. If he puts those in it could have been very different. Its about taking the chance and taking responsibility for theteam. Even though we didn’t play well yesterday, it onlytakes a world class player a moment to create something out of nothing, a moment of brilliance to change a game. With a player like that we can still win games when we aren’t playing well and take the referee out of the game. Why can’t you see that? You can’t blame 8 years of without winning a trophy on bad luck and bad referees. It is about you establishing a squad worthy of winning things, with depth and world class players, which you time and again refuse to do. 2. What is the problem with getting Cesar, Williams and Fellaini? I can understand why it is taking so long to get someone like a Suarez or a Rooney. They are bigmoney transfers and those tend to drag out a lot. I will give you the benefit of the doubt for those ones, but why on each have you not signed any of the above players? Two of them are available on the cheap and are what we need, and in Fellaini’s case, the £23m release clause, which by the way, you’ve let expire, is a small price to pay for what he can add to the team. Fellaini in particular, or someone like him is someone we desperately need. There’s no excuse not to have signed the three players mentioned above. 3. Why can’t you see that we need to sign players? It may seem like stating the obvious, but the fact that we haven’t bought anyone is wrong on many levels. On the most basic level we have sold over 25 players this window. While I appreciate you got rid of most of our “deadwood”, how does it make sense on any level to get rid of over 25 players and add in just Sanogo? On the most basic level, this is -24 and is just wrong. It is like you can’t add up or something. Then there’s the deeper level, whereby the players we have aren’t enough to compete for titles. We have a good squad but need those added world class players to bridge that gap. Think about it, this is the same team. Nothing has changed. The same team that lost to Bradford and Blackburn last season. How on earth can we expect improvement from the same team? Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I hate to say it, but if you think we can do better than last season with the same players, you are insane. Let’s not forget that our rivals are improving, and Tottenham, yes Tottenham have signed quality players this window. We beat themby the skin of our teeth in May. I hate to say it, but they are in a much better position this season. I know what you are going to say, that this squad is the same one that went on that great unbeaten run at the end of last season, but that’s a bit besides the point. All that means is that the squadis a good one, capable of playing some good games, playing well for part of the season, but has too many bad games. It doesn’t change the fact that we need to sign many players to get that consistency. 4. Don’t you think that your ‘value for money’ principles are ultimately flawed in today’s transfermarket? Shouldn’t you just accept the market reality? The transfer market isn’t the best place at the moment. Big players like PSG and Real Madrid for example have unlimited money and because of them, things cost much more than what they should. For example we pretty much had a deal done for Higuain for £23m, which is what I think he is worth too, but Real Madrid wanted more money (£31m) at the last minute. PSG bought Cavani for £55m off Napoli, and Napoli with all that extra cash paid £37m to Real Madrid for Higuain. I also heard we bid £30m for Cavani. I get it Arsene. I really do. Higuain is worth about £23m and Cavani about £30m, they aren’t worth the prices that were paid for them in the end, but what are you going to? This is the market and youhave to accept this reality. Due to your stubbornness we missed out on both these players. I’d forgive you if we didn’t have the money to buy these guys, but we could have comfortably afforded one at the very least. 5. Why are you so tight? I’m sorry for lack of a better word, but continuing on from the above, why don’t you just pay what the other team wants? It might not be value for money, but the fact is we did not get Cavani or Higuain. That is the result. That is what matters. Nobody will remember the extra £8m you had to fork out for Higuain, they will remember that you did not sign him. If you signed Higuain, I guarantee you that I would be writing this blog wearing the new away kit with his name on the back of it, and so would many who are reading this. If you are so concerned about money, those jersey sales alone would have made the £8m back. If we were a mid-table club with no money, I’d full sympathise with you that you didn’t get these players, but we aren’t so I can’t forgive you for notspending the extra money. 6. Why do you always wait until you are forced to make transfers? What is it with you? You do know that you can sign a player to strengthen your team at any time right? That’s what champion teams do. This creates a thing called depth, I’m not sure you are familiar with it? You have one established player at the club, and then you buy a player of equal or greater ability who plays the same position. They compete with one another, push each other and both improve, which can only help the team. If one is injured you have a great quality player to bring off the bench. Yet the only time I’ve really seen you take any real action with regards to signing quality players is when we have an injury crisis or when we get spanked. Take for example the 8-2 defeat to Manchester United, which sparked you into action to bring in 5 players on the last two days of the window. Thiswas the same window in which we lost two very influential players in Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. Wouldn’t it have made sense to replace them, with players of equal quality before they left? Isn’t that just common sense? Now that we’ve lost to Villa in this fashion you might actually buy someone I suppose. Gibbs got injured and Santos left, which forced you into getting Monreal in January. Why wasn’t someone signed earlier? Why did it take an injury(from an injury prone Gibbs which you should have known) for you to be sparked into action? 7. Why don’t you see that your players are so injury prone and cannot be relied upon? As much as I like guys like Rosicky, Gibbs, Diabyand Wilshere to a small extent, they all are injury prone crocks. Injuries aren’t bad luck, they are thea reality in football and they will happen no matterwhat you say. It is the responsibility of the manager to ensure that there is adequate cover and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it was inevitable that an injury was around the corner. I appreciate that you wanted Diaby to replace Alex Song, and for Wilshere to replace Fabregas long term, and on paper these aren’t bad ideas, but you didn’t bank on them getting injured, which was a huge gamble that didn’t pay off. You lack of activity in the transfer market has shown how vulnerable we can be. This is probably the worst window because given the multiple injuries we got yesterday and our already thin squad, we will struggle to even field eleven players, let alone a quality team. 8. Why don’t you realise the terrible pattern of the inconsistent seasons in recent times? Why don’t you sign world-class players to help reduce the inconsistency? This happens year after year, and nothing changes. In the last five seasons we had a good chance of winning the title in three: 07/08, 09/10 and 10/11, before the following late season collapses: In 2008 we led by five clear points before that infamous game at Birmingham. Things were never the same after that, we threw away the title. It was 19 points out of a possible 33 at such a crucial time in the season. In 09/10 we started the season very well, an opening day 6-1 win at Goodison Park was followed with a great 3-0 result away to City. We were right in the mix for the title around that same dreaded February time, the month we hit the self-destruct button, again. Instead of charging towards the title, we again had several draws withmid table opposition, and the knockout blow came when we lost to Wigan and Blackburn. 17 points out of a possible 30. Title gone. 10/11 began similarly and we were in the runningfor all four trophies at the end of that dreaded month again, February. After that League Cup collapse against Birmingham (again), we choked again. We let a 4 goal lead against Newcastle slip. We couldn’t buy a win in the Premier Leaguefor rest of the season. 12 points out of a possible 33. Absolutely shocking. That’s the form of a teamtrying to avoid relegation not a team trying to win a title. We somehow finished fourth after looking the goods for the title. Every other season since 2005 we had such a poor start we were never in the title hunt. We recovered but the end result was the same, too little too late. I don’t expect us to win a title every year, but those three years in particular, the way we threw it away was just shocking. Every team has bad times, I understand that. I understand that a lot of big teams even have bad seasons, but eight bad seasons? Not learning from the same mistakes? It’s déjà vu. Same problems over and over. 9. Do you care about profits more than the performance of the team? Don’t need to say much here, but its obvious given everything that has gone on. The worst thing was the Q&A Gazidis had where he said wehad financial muscle to spend in this window. The cynic in me and most others is that the comment was only made so that people would renew season tickets, and there was no real interest in actually investing in new players. 10. Do you honestly believe that a world class player will sign for us by the end of the window? I’m being honest here. I am not blaming you for not trying, it is clear you are pursing Suarez and the like, but just think about it. If you were a world class player, would you join Arsenal? Would you have any confidence that the team who played yesterday? Would you think they have any chance of qualifying for the Champions League against a tough Fenerbache side? You can talk about all you like about getting worldclass players, but do you honestly believe someone like a Rooney would want to join us after this?
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:34:02 +0000
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