So now what?
That’s a genuine question and one that’s very difficult to answer. If there’s some small crumb of comfort this season it’s that only Chelsea have been any good and the fact that this is a small crumb of comfort is actually quite annoying. Nevertheless, it’s true. Despite being in 8th we’re only 2 points off the top four.
Liverpool are a shambles, Man City are struggling, Sp*rs are Sp*rs, we’re level with Everton and it’s hard to see teams like Southampton, Newcastle and West Ham keep up their early form for the entire season. As poor as we’ve been none of the blows we’ve inflicted upon ourselves, and allowed to be inflicted upon us, have been fatal. Damaging, obviously, but you can’t throw the towel in. There are still 26 games to go, that’s 78 points. Quite how many of those points we might pick up remains to be seen but they have to be fought for.
However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that in order to restore confidence and put our season back on track (within reason), we’re going to have start winning games consecutively in the Premier League. This season we haven’t managed to win more than two in a row so it’s going to require some serious improvement. It’s difficult to see how we can make that improvement but it can be done.
Look at Newcastle, floundering at the start of the season with just one win between August 14th and Oct 4th and since then they’ve won five on the bounce in the league and beaten Man City in the Capital One Cup. A team and manager facing mutiny in their own stadium now looks confident, assured and capable again. It can turn around quickly, and in our case it has to turn around quickly.
For some no amount of points garnered or games won will restore faith in the manager, and that’s understandable. Their minds are made up and for them the only solution is change. Realistically, however, with Arsene Wenger just months into a three year deal handed to him by a board in thrall to him, that’s not going to happen unless things get a lot, lot worse and I would hope that people’s desire to see their team and club do well far outweighs their desire for a new manager.
Even if, and this is a big hypothetical, we had the kind of board who gauged the mood and would consider the removal of the manager mid-season, the question is who is there to replace him? People demand a ‘world class’ manager along with ‘world class’ players, but mid-season who is that man?
I totally understand there are people who want the manager out, but unless you have the right replacement then you face further difficulties. It’s not easy, especially with a legacy manager like Wenger whose control is such that it would take more than one man to do the jobs he does at this club. Man Utd faced that problem when Ferguson left and at the time it looked like a well thought out succession plan. Trying to do it in the middle of a season when most of the outstanding candidates are in jobs they’re unlikely to walk away from makes it almost impossible.
We’re in a weird position where it feels like the manager’s time is coming to an end, but that the same manager is the best option to take us to the end of this campaign. Let’s face it, it’s not as if we don’t have a track record of finishing in the top four when the odds seemed stacked against us, and Wenger’s experience in that regard could be crucial. He’s managed to get worse groups of players into the Champions League and if we get defenders fit, make a good go of things in January, and find a bit of form who knows?
Of course then we open up the debate as to whether or not top four is ‘good enough’, or ambitious enough, but when you look at how this season has gone so far that is, frankly, the best we can hope for. There’s no point kidding ourselves that there’s going to be such a thing as a title challenge this year, and that is both hugely disappointing given the summer spending and frustrating because of what happened in 2013/14. We did mount a challenge for the first time in years and although it ended badly it was enough to give you hope that with the right moves in the summer we could do it again.
Last season felt like progress. How could it not? A title challenge, a trophy, things we wanted for so long. We wanted the team to be competitive, it was. We wanted to get that trophy monkey off our back, we did. It was a step-forward. The issue now is that it’s been followed by a couple of steps backwards as we rediscover all our old bad habits and that only adds to the frustration. We were supposed to take confidence from winning a trophy, not this.
I guess if the manager had a time machine he would go back to the summer transfer window and not take the ludicrous, negligent gamble he did with regards his defence. It feels a bit redundant even talking about it, but to my mind an Arsenal team that wasn’t shorn of Debuchy (Sagna) and a fully fit Koscielny wouldn’t be having the issues we’re having right now. If it’s bad luck that Debuchy got injured, it’s nothing of the sort that we don’t have depth to cope, and we know Koscielny’s problems were ongoing before the window closed.
What was the thought behind the Jenkinson loan? It was suggested to me some time ago that there were financial issues at play (a dispute over bonus payments) rather than it being a purely footballing decision. I can’t say with real authority as to whether or not that influenced the decision to let him go but I’m told it played a part. And while I don’t think he’s ever going to be the best player in the world, would he not have provided a more solid right-back option, allowing Chambers to play centre-half in place of Monreal?
It’s a mess of our own making and it’s coming to back to haunt us. But back to the original question: so now what?
The only answer I can see is that we have to hope that things improve. That the manager improves, the players improve as individuals and collectively, and somehow we find some way of sparking this team into life. That’s all. There really is nothing else we can do. We can analyse, discuss, argue, whatever until the cows come home, but there is nothing else to do but hope. As fans what else is there?
Are they professional enough? Are they good enough? Can they come together and make themselves something more than the sum of their parts? Do they have the character to turn things around? In Amy Lawrence’s Invincible, Arsene Wenger talks about managing through difficult periods:
Very good managers minimise the time of crisis. Where one manager can lose five or six games, a very good one can lose two or three. The more you lose the more you are in danger to lose the next one. To stop a crisis quickly is one of the most important qualities.
It’s an often overused word, but this feels like something of a crisis. And it’s high-time for the manager to minimise it.
—
Finally for today, we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you, so if you have questions send them to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra.
And voting closes today for the FSF Awards, so if you could give Arseblog a vote for Best Blog that’d be much appreciated, and with other nominees like Amy, Lee Dixon and The Tuesday Club in there, you could do your bit for Arsenal related silverware this season.
Till tomorrow.
