The quietness. It’s so loud. In its quietness, of course.
According to various reports in The Sun (not linking) and The Express (won’t link because of auto-playing video), there was something of a team meeting at the training ground this week. Some might call it ‘crisis talks’, some might call it ‘group therapy’, some might call it ‘Trevor’. What it’s called doesn’t matter a jot though.
Apparently Arsene got the players together and told them to believe in themselves, told them he loved them, cherished them, respected them, wrote ocassional poems about them (mostly sonnets but sometimes a baudy Limerick – “There was a lad called Chamakh, who was really quite poor in attack … erm … “There once was a small guy from Russia, whose father was not a drug pusher, that was John Terry’s father … har har” … etc), and that they all needed to pull together like never before to ensure we salvage something from this difficult, trying, obnoxious season.
I do like stories like this though. A ‘team meeting’ becomes big news because there seems to be a perception that they go out, do training, run about a bit, and never speak about stuff anyway. You can be quite sure that the team have training ground meetings when things are going well and they have them when things are going badly. Of course the ones when things are going badly are a bit more ‘inquesty’ and perhaps a touch more ‘finger pointy’ with a slice of ‘What the fuck was that in the last game there [player who didn’t quite deserve the Limerick that was written for him]?’, but they do happen.
Famously, in Arsene’s first full season, there was a team meeting which many people think took place after a 3-1 defeat to Blackburn at Highbury, but reading back through Tony Adams biography, it happened before that. We’d just lost twice in a row, 2-0 to Sheffield Wednesday, 1-0 to to Liverpool, and it was Pat Rice who suggested the team and the management get together.
They did, the senior players had their say, looking for more from players like Overmars and Petit, for example, and even though the next game was won (away at Newcastle), the Blackburn defeat followed. Interestingly, Tony had this to say after it:
The next day I looked in on the Arsenal website and was horrified by the comments. ‘Tony’s playing rubbish,’ it said. ‘It would be a shame if it were to end like this’.
I felt really angry. What was all this? Even if it does end like this, they have had good value from me. ‘They’re a fickle lot, these fans’, I thought. I felt really down.
This was 1998! The parallels between then and now are obvious (in terms of the circumstances), and if Tony Adams thought comments on the internet were harsh back then, imagine what he’d be subjected to nowadays. It’s all well and good saying players should have a thick skin because they earn £xx,000 per week but they are just human, not unfeeling robots. While you can legitimately ask whether or not some players are doing enough to dampen down some of the criticism, nobody is that strong that they’re not affected in some way by boos from their own fans.
What happened after the Blackburn game back then was Tony being given three weeks off to go see a fitness specialist in France, and the team got its shit together in a big way. Whether that was down to the meeting or not, it’s hard to say, but I’m sure it played a part. However much a player respects a manager or the shirt or the club he’s at, the people he least wants to let down are those he’s playing alongside.
If there were some harsh words spoken at the training ground this week, if some fingers were pointed behind the scenes rather than in the full glare of the watching public (as some seem to think is acceptable), then it would be no bad thing. It’s a workplace at the end of the day, if the poor performance of somebody else is affecting how well you can do your job, wouldn’t you say it?
Players have to be accountable, to the manager, to the fans, but most of all to each other, because once the whistle blows they’re the ones that matter most for the 90+ minutes that follow. If a midfielder needs more movement from the forwards, say it. If a defender wants more protection from midfield, say it. Only by demanding the best from others can you get the best from yourself. And we need those players, the ones motivated to do that, to stand up and let the others know what needs to be done.
I often say that football is a game of fine margins, and we can talk tactics, style, game plans and everything else till the cows come home, but sometimes what a team needs to find is some character. At the moment we seem a bit meek, a bit compliant, a touch brittle and seriously lacking in self-confidence. We need to be a bit more Arsenal, to remember that we’ve got a cannon on our chests, to show a bit more fight, a bit more pride, and if the players are behind the manager then let’s see it.
The problems we have can’t be solved 100% overnight. Even bringing in new players wouldn’t make things right straight away, although I still maintain it’d be a help. It’d be nice if there was an easy, one-step, no fuss solution to what’s going on, but there isn’t. And before anyone says ‘New manager’, there’s no guarantee that would do the trick either, especially when Stan appoints John Gregory.
Let’s hope that we’ve enough players in that squad who want to turn things around, who will have said their piece and that those they’ve said it to have enough balls to respond, instead of sulking. We showed we had something about us when we went on that run from September to December. With so much at stake between now and the end of the season, it’s time to show it again.
Till tomorrow.
