In Wenger we trust?
Wenger fumes ……….
Can we get any more redundant? When has Wenger not fumed because the game was not to his liking?
“Blackburn’s main purpose every time was to stop the goalkeeper and not go for the ball. I cannot understand why the referee did not stop that.”
What was he expecting? Blackburn play Arsenal style ball hogging? They were going to target Fabianski because they had rolled tape on him all week long and seen a goalkeeper with the confidence of a minnow when it came to dealing with set pieces. A weakness that could be exploited. It is called tactics.
Someone prepared would have expected that. But this naive, simple minded belief that clubs play to some high minded standard seems to be a unique Wenger trait. Here we have Sam Allardyce under no illusions:
“We beat them fair and square,” he said. “We did identify the goalkeeper as a weak link and tried to play on that, putting in plenty of crosses and putting him under pressure, but you are allowed to do that. The referee gave some fouls that perhaps weren’t, and missed some that possibly were, but we caused them problems in that area. If you play on your opponents weaknesses eventually they will be exposed.”
If Martin Atkinson did not fault Blackburn for crowding out Fabianski in the first instance, the chances of him doing so the rest of the game were remote. Asking the referee for protection is so effete. When did we become that?
I am trying to think if Jens Lehmann would have taken Blackburn’s guff without landing a punch or two. They would have given the German a wide berth. In Wenger’s earlier years one rolled out names like Steve Bould, Martin Keown, Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit, Edu, as a bunch who would have taken matters into their hands. There was a square jawed pragmatism to those Arsenal squads.
Unfortunately, the more recent pie in the sky approach has devolved into something far more adverse for the club.
Wenger’s tactical nous never seem to make for adjustments. It operates on one size fits all whether we play Chelsea, Liverpool, Stoke, Blackburn, or Barca. We never get caught in the details as a result we get caught out. Unlike Inter who recognized Xavi for the danger he was and hounded him into making mistakes, we had brain fog.
Didier Drogba kills us time and time again. Do we adjust? No. I see repetitions of the same mistakes over and over and over again. Cheap goals. One, two, three, a dozen, how many? Each year at this time, we have injuries that pile up. And every two years one of our players suffers a horrible career threatening tackle. They don’t-like-it-up-’em meme gets played out ad infinitum. As opponents far better prepared and mentally focused flourish against us.
Yet, for those more optimistic, we always finish in the top four, get to the CL quarterfinals comfortably. So we must be doing something right. But at this stage all that good feeling engendered has dissipated in the face of such dissolution. Does anyone remember that bright August afternoon when we took Everton apart, 6-1? The world was Arsenal’s oyster. The pundits were abuzz.