Day three of the Introspectioning: this episode is called ‘The Grumpening’, starring Lukas Podolski and Tomas Rosicky.
The pair have spent most of this season on the bench despite the fact the team have been struggling. In fact, they’ve only started one game each and that was the 2-1 defeat to Southampton in the Capital One Cup. Other than that it’s been brief cameos at the end of games and only Podolski’s introduction at Anderlecht had any tangible impact.
Now they’re away with their national teams and obviously they’re going to be asked why things aren’t happening for them at Arsenal this season. First up Podolski, who told the press in Germany yesterday:
Of course I am not happy with my situation right now. I can’t be satisfied with that. It is hard when you can’t do what you love.
Pressed on why, his tetchy reply was:
I don’t know why that is, you’d have to ask my coach in England.
As for Rosicky, he seems a touch bewildered too, saying:
I’m not sure what’s going on. I understand that I am 34-years-old and that it probably plays a role whether I like it or not. That’s without a doubt. However, I’m not in physical decline. When I played for the national team against Holland I ran 12km and according to the tests at Arsenal I’m in the top five in terms of speed.
Of course I want to play, but there’s not much I can do about it. It’s purely the coach’s decision.
So, we have a situation where the manager has blamed fatigue for some of the mental lapses recently but seems willing to pick the same 11-12 players for every game. Only injury or suspension brings about changes. Now, they often say that when you’re going through a difficult time you should pick your best team and let them just get on with it, grind out some results to find some momentum and form, but if that’s what he’s been trying to do, then it’s not exactly working out right now.
There are also those who would suggest that neither Podolski or Rosicky have exactly done a lot when they have been given a chance, which I understand to an extent, but when a team is having as hard a time as we are it’s difficult to properly judge individual performances. Out of our squad just how many of them can you say have played well consistently? Even those starting regularly are having issues with form. And, as Podolski points out:
If you only come in for 8 or 10 minutes it is hard to get into the game. If you can’t play then you can’t say a guy’s not playing well or he has a crisis if you’re not given the chance.
I think the main issue is that the team’s change in system makes it difficult to fit them into the team. Rosicky, as we know, is an energetic number 10 who can, if asked, do a job on the right or left of a front three in pretty specific circumstances. But now Wenger has Alexis to do that job, to set the tempo of the game from an Arsenal point of view, and maybe he feels it’s hard to accommodate two players like that.
There’s also the continually developing and improving Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain having an impact too. He is the future, Rosicky is 34, and the England man has been one of the positives so far this season. With Walcott on his way back and the manager determined to get Wilshere and Ramsey into his midfield, Rosicky’s chances look slim.
As for Podolski, perhaps the recent 442-ish formation we’ve been playing offers a glimmer of hope. There’s an interesting snippet in Amy Lawrence’s Invincibles when Arsene Wenger is talking about reinventing players in different positions. He talks specifically about the German, saying:
I bought Lukas Podolski to be a centre forward or a wide player but after a while I thought he is only a wide player, not a centre forward. He can play behind the striker but not completely at the top. Sometimes you have to revise your judgement.
Nevertheless, the manager seems reluctant to use him as a wide player and even more reluctant to use him as a centre forward, as evidenced by the fact he used Sanogo on Sunday when we needed a goal. If you had to put money on either Podolski or the young Frenchman to score for you, I’d lump it all on Lukas, but the manager felt otherwise.
It’s also been pretty apparent for some time that the manager has real doubts about Podolski and how best to use him. His answer this season seems to be not to use him at all. At the beginning of the season, when he was competing with Ozil or Alexis for a place, then it’s easy to see why he was on the bench. And now, when the problems we have aren’t really anything to do with the attack, the manager is even more reluctant to use a player whose defensive awareness doesn’t match that of the forwards he might replace.
I think Wenger has been looking for consistency from what he believes to be his best XI for the most part. He hasn’t found it, for various reasons, and the issue now is that he’s got unused, discontented players on the bench who are always going to find it difficult to make a contribution when they’re thrown on and asked to have an impact on a game.
I don’t quite know what the solution is, to be fair. It’s hard to make a genuine case for either Podolski or Rosicky to start ahead of players like Alexis, Welbeck, Oxlade-Chamberlain. Perhaps they might look at Cazorla, a player who isn’t scoring but who lies second only to Alexis in terms of chances created in the Premier League this season.
The other question is will the introduction of either of those players make a significant difference to the way we attack or, more importantly, defend? I’m not sure you convince too many people of that, so while you can understand their frustration – as every player wants to play as much as possible – they’re probably going to have to get used to being bit-part players this season at best.
Till tomorrow.
