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Arsene Wenger
1/3/07 |
| It’s
been a tricky, and somewhat unlikely few weeks for Arsene Wenger,
one of the most impressive football managers to have worked in this
country in recent times. Fined heavily for his spat with Alan Pardew
at West Ham, then banished from the dugout in the game against Portsmouth,
the man who has long been seen as the epitome of the urbane, suave,
if occasionally short sighted, intellectual is suddenly getting himself
a spikier reputation. As with pretty well everything else in the game these days, there’s far more hype than substance to these latest shenanigans, but it also underlines the fact that things are not going quite as well as Wenger and the Arsenal army would have liked in this first season at the Emirates Stadium. After the magnificence of their run all the way to the Final of the Champions League last season, expectations were high this term, but with their foreign legion of a team, they have suffered as much from the World Cup hangover as any team, Wenger’s rotation of his squad, his apparent disagreements with Henry and his willingness to blood even more youngsters underlining that he detects a staleness from his team at times. He has taken plenty of flak for choosing to play an exclusively “foreign” side, but he always responds that his job is to win games for Arsenal. And when you watch one of his sides in full cry, frankly they could come from Mars and you’d still be thrilled just to watch them. Coming to terms with the new surroundings at the Emirates has not helped either. Ultimately, the vastly increased capacity and the revenue it will generate will be extremely beneficial to the club, but just at the moment, it means that players are not comfortable in their surroundings, haven’t yet adapted to its idiosyncrasies. That, more than any deficiencies in the team, has cost Arsenal the chance of challenging for the title this term. Five draws from nine home games is completely unlike their form of recent years. Turn four of those draws into wins, as they surely would have done at Highbury, and they’d be within striking distance of Chelsea and Manchester United. As it is, a three way title fight is going to have to wait for another year. One of Wenger’s crowning achievements at Arsenal has been to manage the transition from Highbury to their new home, still maintaining standards on the field while off it, the move has denied him much needed funds, a problem exacerbated by the Abramovich effect. It’s a long time since the Gunners made a sustained splash in the transfer market in the style of Chelsea, United or Liverpool, which is rather like fighting with one arm tied behind your back at that end of the game, so to reach that Champions League Final was a monumental achievement. And they did it playing the Wenger way. Pace, strength, movement, technique, tactical nous, these are the hallmarks of the sides that he has built for Arsenal, not worrying about the inexperience of youth if the talent, the heart and the soul is present. Selling Vieiria looked like the work of a madman. When Vieira lined up opposite Fabregas in the Champions League, it looked like the work of a genius. That’s what Wenger can do, that’s the vision he has, that’s the way he understands the game. He believes that Arsenal are just a little fine tuning away from becoming a title challenging team again. And if he believes it, I don’t think anybody should be inclined to argue. Not even Jose.
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