If I were giving today’s team-talk…
146 comments May 13th, 2012
At around 2.50pm this afternoon, Arsene Wenger will look out at his Arsenal team, and attempt to cajole just one more performance out of them. Fortunately, he’s a man steeped in experience, who will doubtless know just what to say to his men. The situation is clear: win, and third is ours. Fail, and we’re at the mercy of others, and quite possibly locked out of the Champions League. As supporters, we can only imagine what words we might summon up in such circumstances. Imagine it, and then write it down. Like this.
I’d start be spelling out what’s at stake. Champions League football is a massive thing for Arsenal. It maintains our status among Europe’s elite clubs, significantly boosting our reputation and our bank balance. That’s vital. It’s easy to say that you wouldn’t mind dropping out of it, but it’s less easy to accept the possible consequences. Falling out of the top four would make it far harder both to sign new players and keep our current ones.
Even putting aside our practical concerns, every player in the squad should want to be in the Champions League. Being a sportsman is all about pushing yourself as far as you can, and testing yourself against the best. As far as European football is concerned, the Champions League is that arena. The likes of Tomas Rosicky must recognise that they won’t get many more chances on that stage. At the other end of the spectrum, lads like Kieran Gibbs and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain surely know that competing at that level is vital to their development.
For a long time this season it looked impossible. Following our 8-2 mauling at Old Trafford I was roundly mocked for saying I still felt we’d finish in the top four. Chelsea’s success in reaching the Champions League Final has meant that even the top four did not provide the requisite security: it had to be third. And that, for such a long while, looked out of reach. Spurs were flying, until Bacary Sagna launched himself at the ball and powered home a header of such force that in that one moment it flipped the North London hierarchy in our favour.
Everything that followed – our tremendous run, Spurs’ collapse – was to try and claw us in to a position where third place was in our hands. We have attained that. We have ninety minutes in which we are masters of our own destiny. When fate contorts itself to hand you that kind of opportunity, you simply do not pass it up.
The mention of Spurs is important. As much as this is about European football, it’s also about local rivalry. Do this group of players really want to be the first to finish below Tottenham since 1995? Especially when it’s so easily avoided?
All we have to do is win one game. I’d make it clear to the players: we’re not asking them to run through walls. We don’t face a Herculean task. On paper, this is a game that Arsenal should win. We simply need to do our jobs. We need to be focused and switched on for ninety minutes, plus every second of stoppage time. We need to take individual responsibility for marking our men and tracking runners. West Brom have nothing tangible to play for: we have no excuse for not showing more desire in every fifty-fifty. The Baggies aren’t a hugely physical side, either. This isn’t a match in which we need to drastically adapt our game. We simply need to do what we spend every day drilling over-and-over again: touch, pass, move. If we control the possession we will create the most chances. And we have the league’s best striker on the end of them.
If we do the simple things right, we will win. And if we do we will be able to reflect on ending this traumatic season on a relative high. Defeat would bring a summer of uncertainty and cast a shadow over the forthcoming campaign. And, after what we’ve been through this season, the fans don’t deserve that.
The players must recognise that the supporters have stuck with this iteration of the Arsenal team through quite a lot in this long campaign. Early on, the majority of supporters recognised the limitations of the squad and realised that negativity was not helpful. Better Arsenal teams would’ve been met with jeers and boos for some of the performances we’ve seen this season. This term, everyone has stuck together to try and drag us out of a self-inflicted hole.
Now it’s time to reward the fans. To allow them to celebrate something – not a trophy, but something: a place on the European stage, and getting one over on a rival. It’s time to reward Pat Rice for 44 years of outstanding service to Arsenal with a good send off. It’s time to put down a marker for next season, and show that despite the loss of key players, terrible injury problems, humiliating defeats and plenty of bad luck, this club will not be broken. We are Arsenal, and winning this one game is well within our capacity. Keep focused, keep fighting, keep the faith, and get this done. Come on boys.
