I had the oddest dream where I was staying at a hotel owned by Steve Bould, but rather than the luxury resort the brochures said, it was actually a front for his melon-rice factory (this is rice with melon mashed into it).
He had all kinds of orphans and unfortunates that he lured in off the street to work in an underground warehouse, and the waitress wouldn’t give me any breakfast because it started at 9.20 and I was in the dining room at 9.15. I ended up eating a packet of ham I found on the counter but it had that kind of rainbow sheen off it and tasted crap.
I think it’s allegorical. Steve Bould made the players produce the melon-rice of defending while Arsene Wenger smiled and appeared on the front of the glossy bumph, perhaps with Hervé Villechaize beside him. I’m going to leave this one here before dated references alienate a large chunk of my readership, but speaking of defence there are stories this morning about Thomas Vermaelen and his future.
I think they’re natural enough, given the way his season unfolded. I’m not sure I believe Manchester United are after him, they have a plethora of centre-halves to choose from and unless Moyes is going to start collecting them like George Graham did it seems unlikely. But questions about what might happen to him seem fairly reasonable.
I think it’s too simplistic to say that dropping him and bringing back Koscielny was the answer to our defensive problems. I think that certainly helped, but there was a lot more to it than that. The team in general was much more switched on defensively but of course it helped that we didn’t have somebody at the centre of the defence making errors and getting caught out of position as regularly as Vermaelen was. And on that, I think he was just doing the job he was being asked to do, to be aggressive and quick and win the ball high up the pitch.
The problem was he wasn’t winning the ball as often as he should, and we found ourselves exploited when play broke down and one of our centre-halves was miles out of position. To be fair to him, Koscielny, as good as he has been over the last couple of months, got caught in exactly the same way against Newcastle on Sunday. There was a moment when he chased an opponent up the pitch, without Arteta to naturally drop back there was a large gap, and only for a slightly over-hit through ball and some quick goalkeeping from Szczesny we might have paid for it.
But there’s little doubt that Vermaelen’s season has been a disappointment. With hindsight it’s easy to say he was the wrong choice for captain, at the time he was van Persie’s ‘deputy’ and the progression seemed natural. The problem is it made it more difficult for Arsene Wenger to address his form, which was iffy right from the start. Indeed it’s easy to forget that Koscielny had a poor first half of the season too and one of the worst decisions Arsene Wenger made was to drop Mertesacker and play the two similar centre-halves together against Chelsea.
I think that game convinced Wenger it had to be the BFG + 1, and it was Vermaelen who got the nod. Maybe it took too long for Wenger to address the Belgianphant in the room, but then it took him too long in general to realise that this team could not play the way he wanted it to, the way that his other teams had played in the past. When the focus switched from going out to win while trying to play creative, flowing football to trying, first and foremost, not to lose, then results improved. Vermaelen was the highest profile casualty of that.
So what now for him? Unless he’s completely and utterly lost the confidence of the manager, then it’d be good to see him stay and fight for his place. Looking at the final whistle picture on Sunday, he looked like someone who was thoroughly behind the team, and he doesn’t strike me as a stupid guy. He knows fine well that his form was poor and when the guy who replaces you comes in and plays as well as Koscielny did then you have to wait for your chance to present itself again.
Wojciech Szczesny got lucky, Fabianski’s injury opened the door for him to return after just a handful of games, but the understanding that Mertesacker and Koscielny formed was as good as anything we’ve seen from an Arsene Wenger team in a long, long time. It means that it’s going to be a challenge for him to get back into the team, but I think it would be good to see a footballer rise to that rather than seek the easy way out with a move. We’ve seen how healthy competition for places can be, it improves players, raises standards of performance and, ideally, keeps them high, and the consequence of that is a better team.
Plus, over the course of a season there’ll be injuries, tiredness and suspension, all things which will open the door, and it’s then down to the player to give the manager a difficult decision to make. Wenger showed with the Vermaelen/Szczesny situations that he’s not averse to making a tough call if he feels it’s for the benefit of the team, so we’ll have to wait and see if the Belgian is up for the fight.
The other consideration, however, is the fact that Arsenal do need a centre-half this summer. Djourou is likely to move away on a permanent basis, Squillaci is gone, and Ignasi Miquel seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. United have a squad with Vidic, Wonky-face, Smalling, Jones and Evans in it, and over the course of a season three centre-halves is not enough. You’re one injury and one suspension away from an unnatural solution, and this season has shown us how important stability in that area of the pitch is.
It might depend on the calibre of player he brings in as to what happens with Vermaelen. If it’s a signing which significantly knocks him down the pecking order then he may well feel his only option is to go somewhere else and play. And if that happens, if he’s leaving because we’ve made our centre-half selection better via the transfer market, then I’m ok with that too. I’m all for what makes the team better for next season, but maybe signing a good centre-half and keeping Vermaelen is the way to go.
Revolutionary, I realise, but hey. Right, that’s about that for this morning, back tomorrow with an Arsecast through which we can relive that wonderful final day of the season.
Until then.
