Video: On The Whistle Monaco reaction – “Why do I do this to myself?”

17 comments March 17th, 2015

Ah dear.

Arsenal 1-3 Monaco: On our never-ending naivety

21 comments February 26th, 2015

A despondent Arsene Wenger had finished giving his press conference, when a voice cried out from the back of the room to ask if he would mind answering one question in French.

Wenger stood at the head of the media lounge. He didn’t respond, but nor did he depart, so the voice went on. What, it asked, was the most disappointing aspect of Arsenal’s performance?

You didn’t have to be fluent to understand Wenger’s answer: “notre naïveté”.

Naive is a word that has become synonymous with Arsenal. As a bit of a test, I ran it through the search engine on my own blog. Here are the most recent uses:

“We all know that Arsene Wenger isn’t going anywhere until 2017. With that in mind, we have no choice but to demand more from the players. They can’t hide behind his diminishing reputation. They might not like it, but this is their mess too.  It’s never just one thing, and Wenger’s tactical naivety does not fully excuse theirs.”

Then:

“However, neither of those can match the humiliation of losing 6-0 at Chelsea. The tactical naivety Arsenal showed in that game is what makes me a little concerned about the length of Arsene Wenger’s new deal.”

Then:

“Wenger was comprehensively outmanoeuvered by Roberto Martinez at Goodison Park. In a game in which a point would have been a good result for Arsenal, it’s tempting to call Wenger’s tactics naive. However, considering how long he’s been in the game, one has to revert to an altogether more damning adjective: negligent.”

I gave up at that point. Not even I am so morbid as to dig deeper in to the mire.

However, you might see what I’m getting at. Naivety ought to be a temporary thing. It’s a state of being characterised by a lack of experience or sophistication. That should get better. It should be fixable. And yet here we are, approaching the end of a decade of defensive guilelessness. We’re a team caught in arrested development.

Google “how to stop being naive” and it’ll tell you the process can be accelerated by having your heart broken. Well, that one doesn’t seem to have worked for us. The painful lessons keep on coming, and we keep on ignoring them.

What happened against Monaco approached the absurd. Going 2-0 down was bad enough, but to concede a third having dragged ourselves back in to the game was madness. The craziest part is that I wasn’t even surprised. How many times have we seen Arsenal carelessly chase goals, only to be sucker-punched?

This latest horror show arrives days after we came inches from surrendering a 2-0 lead in the final few minutes at Crystal Palace. The further away it gets, the more that Manchester City win feels like an anomalous result against an out-of-sorts side.

Arsenal will re-qualify for the Champions League, but last night was a reminder of why it’s unlikely to get significantly better than that any time soon. You can look at our annual top four finish as a remarkable piece of consistency. Alternatively, you can see it as a staggering lack of progression — evidence that the teams of the second half of Arsene’s reign have been chronically hampered by an unworldliness the manager seems powerless to fix. We’re good, but unless something changes we’ll never be good enough.

It’s all very well for Arsene to accuse his players of naivety, but he is the man charged with educating this squad. If naivety is the problem, better coaching is surely the cure.

Video: On the Whistle reaction to Arsenal’s crushing Monaco defeat

1 comment February 25th, 2015

My god that was bad. Video here.

Video: On The Whistle reaction to Galatasaray – “Did we learn anything new about Lukas Podolski?”

1 comment December 9th, 2014

On The Whistle video reaction to an enjoyable win over Galatasaray. Bring on Monaco.

Taking it a game at a time

Add comment November 28th, 2014

Well, that was much more like it. Borussia Dortmund might be struggling in the Bundesliga, but they remain a team packed with individual quality. A 2-0 win is undoubtedly something to celebrate.

A lot was made of the difference between our performance against United and Dortmund. In reality, I think the biggest differentiator was the opening goal. Had we not scored in the first couple of minutes, there’s nothing to say we wouldn’t have gone on to attack with the reckless abandon we did against United. Had we gone behind… well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Nevertheless, it’s still good to focus on the positives, of which there were many. Arsenal’s main stars were the understudies: Emi Martinez and Yaya Sanogo shone in the absence of Wojciech Szczesny, Olivier Giroud and Danny Welbeck. Sanogo’s goal does not thrust him in to regular first-team contention, but it does get both a monkey and the fans off his back.

Arsenal being Arsenal, the elation didn’t last long. Within minutes of the full-time whistle, Arsene Wenger had confirmed injuries to both Sanogo and Mikel Arteta. The following day, news broke that Jack Wilshere had undergone surgery that will see him miss the next 3 months.

It’s hard to feel surprised by a prolonged Wilshere lay-off anymore. It’s like death, taxes or Robbie Savage saying something stupid: it just happens and there appears to be little anyone can do about it. It was a poor challenge from McNair, and few would have survived it unscathed. However, I do wonder if Wilshere’s tendency to hold on to the ball too long invites such clatterings. His bravery on the ball is admirable, but costly. Something for him to contemplate during his lay-off, perhaps.

The Wilshere news rather pulled the rug of positivity out from under our feet. I suspect that’s a feeling we may have to get used to this season.

Personally, I’m just taking it a game at a time. With the Premier League title beyond us, it’s already tempting to view this as season as a write-off. That’s a horribly depressing outlook. I find the only way to avoid that is to embrace the present and try to enjoy the ride. Go from game to game, savour the wins, and keep your eyes on the immediate foreground rather than the horizon. There may not be anything for us in May, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aspire to deliver some memorable moments along the way.

Next up, West Brom.

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