In the cold light of day, what do you do when you know your team is not good enough? As a fan the options seem to be to either rage furiously against everything about the club you love, or to plead patience and claim there is more to being a Gooner than trophies.
As a player, you either let your morale drop and don’t show the fight that is needed, or you up your game and fight for everything until the very last minute.
And as a manager you either bury your head in the sand and stick to your masterplan, or you admit mistakes and make changes.
For the fans, the performance last night seems to have caused more and more to take the first option. For varying reasons Gooners have come to expect a better set of players on the pitch, and have grown accustomed to the fact that better players has brought success. It is hard to persuade them otherwise, as it is undeniable that Arsenal means a lot to them.
The players seem to be polarising as well. Van Persie is fighting for all he is worth (a cynic may say this is to do with a new contract he is playing for). Song/Denilson (for all there failings) continually stand up to be counted. Then Adebayor/Diaby and many others just seem to not care. I know that others will disagree, but it is the consistent poor level of performance from players that concerns and maddens me most.
And Wenger has made his position clear. He will not change anything about his team. We arguably have some solutions within our squad (Vela and Wilshere for the wide positions – how much more screaming do fans need for these to do be put in ahead of Eboue in a position he clearly hates playing in). But Wenger won’t use them. There ARE options in the transfer market. Wenger chose not to make the move in the Summer when the options were more plentiful and cheaper, so he has to live with the fact that he has made his bed. But he is refusing to lie in it. If Bolton can talk to Veloso for £12m is it not worth us at least trying this?
I am not saying that transfers will guarantee us anything. But it at least shows a realisation within the club that the status quo is not good enough.
Some stats I have been peddling on the comments board show that we have cut our seasonal net spend from £4.9m in the 12 seasons to 2004 to £0.5m since then. To me this is a symptom of a commercial decision within the club not to spend money. This is at odds with the continual PR releases from Hill-Wood and the rest that we have money to spend. SO either they are lying, or Wenger has made this decision himself. I hope that it is not the latter, as I have too much respect for Wenger. And if it is the former, then I do question the ability of the current board to run Arsenal.
The other solution, is that perhaps we are simply the only club in England to believe that the recession will have an impact and are cash-hoarding for the future to create a position of strength. Sky’s 31% increase in profit probably guarantees at least one more batch of sky-high TV money for clubs. Funding issues are becoming more and more public for Liverpool, and to some extent Chelsea, and there is a possibility a club in the premiership will go bust.
Until they do, the Arsenal plan of frugality will simply appear overly cautious, and it is a sad situation if we simply have to sit and hope another club goes bust to justify our current frustration.
Not sure this makes any coherent argument, but there you go. Ultimately large mistakes have been made in the Summer, and so far again in January. These decisions have not yet justified themselves, and are unlikely to this season. Will anyone have the courage to accept they were wrong, and how much will Arsenal suffer before that happens?
Answers on a postcard. Or the comment section would be cheaper – that’s certainly the Arsenal way………….
