Life is certainly not black and white, and as I am becoming increasingly confused and bemused about goings on at Arsenal I am finding it impossible to see things with much clarity at the moment. Le Boss has been defending his captain:"We did not play well as a team, everybody knows that and William is no more guilty than anybody else"
William is the club captain, I'd argue that he should be more responsible than any other player for the motivation of his troops. Le Boss has also been talking more about the defeat:
"When you have an away game, it can happen that you are caught for 20 or 30 minutes. But I know my squad is good, my team is good, our spirit is good. We are intelligent enough to know we did not play well , but we know as well we have the needed quality to respond."
“Your desire is to play well and win. No matter how much experience you have, if you don’t play well you have more chances to lose than to win.”
Arsene is a great manager, however some of these comments betray a slightly twisted perspective on events in my eyes. We were not caught for 20 or 30 minutes, we were poor for virtually the whole ninety. Experience can sometimes be very useful, obviously having a team of geriatrics is not a good idea, but having too many inexperienced kids without the old heads can sometimes reduce one's chances of getting the win.
I would have rubbished articles like this a few months ago, however having seen several experienced players leave without being replaced, I am starting to agree with certain strands of the logic used. I genuinely expected some experience to be brought in this summer and now it sadly looks as if it won't be happening.
In my opinion our squad is most definitely not 'strong' in certain areas, bringing in Silvestre and getting rid of the dedicated big Phil seems to be something that is rather incomprehensible to many others as well as I. Arsene is no God, he's proven himself to be a rather handy manager over the years, so much so that his mistakes have been remarkably rare. However I can't help but notice that he's given us a few good reasons to begin to doubt him of late, the Gallas captaincy, our inability to defend simple aerial balls, our obvious weakness in the centre of midfield, Eboue as a first choice right midfielder, to name but a few.
I hope Arsene proves me wrong. It has also been pointed out to me that maybe our finances are not quite as solid as the club would have us believe, there is precious little evidence behind this rumour though. No matter how hard I try to ignore these doubts about Arsene, they simply will not go away. I have enormous respect for the principles that he adheres to, the beautiful football and fair play. However practically I just think we look too small and too weak to win the Premiership this time around, we can still out football anyone on our day, but do we really have the ability to keep clean sheets and grind out one nils on those bitterly cold November nights up North?
