Arsenal is a hot talking point in sporting circles at the moment for all the wrong reasons.
True the Champions League and FA Cup are a thing of the past for this season;
True that they are hanging by the tips of their fingers to fourth place and are likely to slide down even further;
True there has been a bit of a goal drought blamed on bad form, tired legs and the Arsenal curse: injuries.
But the real malady is not as simple as that.
The ethos of the manager’s vision for the team has always been to cultivate and nurture young players from within, or to buy them cheaply from the continent and do the same thing. This makes sense. However, seen against the current background of ‘moneyed’ teams these days, where players are being bought for exorbitant amounts, Arsenal has quite simply fallen behind the times.
Roy Keane said after the Sunderland game this past weekend that this Arsenal team is quite simply the worst team that he has ever seen. He is partially right. I think that they are not the worst team that we have ever seen, but that they are playing the worst football that we have ever seen for quite a long while.
In part, the club is a victim of its own success. Famed for their fluid passing game and prolific scoring ability, when things start going wrong, the club is instantly criticised.
Economic problems being experienced in this country at present also play a part. It is not disputed that fans, and especially Arsenal fans, pay a lot of money to follow their team and at present with their team slumping, there is the temptation, real or imaginary, to stop attending games.
Unfortunately, many fans that I have spoken to feel the same way. Arsenal needs its fan base more than ever right now, yet the loss of faith is understandable.
When any football club isn’t doing well, a sense of doom pervades. Speculation becomes rife, rumours abound and bad results are predicted, and the wholesale sale of players in the ‘next transfer window’.
But the nub of the problem is that Arsenal, like all other football teams, is first and foremost a business, and therefore the rules of business apply. To succeed, it needs to win games in order to fill seats.
Empty seats are bad business, and bad business leads to harsh, often unpopular decisions being taken at the top level. Desperate times call for desperate measures, which are often taken because of knee-jerk reactions, hot heads and even hotter tempers.
The manager must start listening more, and moaning less. It is not a question of him leaving the club. He has done a magnificent job over the past 13 years, and will continue to do so.
He should, however, heed the criticism that is being levelled at both him and the club, take it on board, and do something about it, because by definition, no fan wants to see his team keep losing. When the thinking becomes how much the team will lose by rather than win by, its time to drastically change tactics.
But how fast and how effective these changes will be made, is anyone’s guess.
Its not the changes therefore, but the mindset that must change. Only when that happens, do I think that the true Arsenal will appear again.
image: © Ronnie Macdonald
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