How far into a season do you have be before you can start making conclusions about the season? With 8 games played we’re about 20% into this current one, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at where we are and make an assessment.
Here’s what we can say:
– Arsenal haven’t yet won a game away from home, losing three and drawing one. In two of those games, some players basically gave up.
– Arsenal’s goal difference is just +2.
– Arsenal lie 9 points behind the league leaders.
– It feels silly to make that point about being behind the leaders because this is not a team with any realistic hope of winning the title.
And isn’t that something to understand? Not that I was particularly confident but at least the start of a new season gives you that blank slate. The freshness that allows the optimism – regardless of how misguided it might feel. Despite what the head says, the heart rules. You think, ‘Maybe if we got off to a good start’ and ‘You never know in football’, but while it’s a game that will continue to surprise us, Arsenal are almost the exception that rule.
Because you do know. You know because if you’ve been watching you’ve seen it happen before. Right in front of your eyes. That’s how you know. What happens at the top of the Premier League table is now barely relevant for us, and we’re now almost more a meme factory than a football club.
Every thing that happens to Arsenal, or Arsenal fans, becomes part of the sideshow. Maybe people have been become immune to it, but I have to say I find it quite annoying. Take the Troy Deeney stuff, for example. He was invited on BT Sports after the game, and provided this damning assessment of us:
I’ve heard Wenger’s already blaming the penalty as the reason for why they lost. Well, I’m not going to be one to tell Mr Wenger about himself, but there’s a reason that they lost and it wasn’t because of one penalty. I have to watch what I say, but it’s having a bit of cojones, is what I’ll say.
Hard to argue with what he says. It’s what Arsenal fans have been saying themselves. The team lacks the backbone to win these kind of games. Not that they were always routine, but we usually had enough character to go with the quality to deal with teams like Watford and players like Troy Deeney.
However, I would question why he felt so free to be that dismissive of fellow players and another club. Did Sergio Aguero go on TV after his hat-trick at Vicarage Road and lambaste the Watford team and defenders? Nah. He didn’t, because he wouldn’t but also because he shouldn’t. I bet he wasn’t asked to either.
Arsenal are easy pickings though. And look, that’s our own fault. We are the ones who have made the mess that other people find so amusing. We have become this circus, this never-ending entertainment machine, for others to enjoy. Opposition fans, headline writers, TV producers, and bantz peddlers.
We have a terrible owner with terrible Russian rival giving us a cartoonish boardroom cold war; a manager who I desperately wish had gone out on a high after winning the FA Cup in May who can no longer create the consistency required to challenge for the title; star players who want out; a chief executive who reportedly wants things to change but is happy to enough to trouser the best part of £3m a year and hide in his office most of the season; and a collection of players who should be good enough to do at least the basics right but can’t seem to manage that half the time.
What are we? What is the so-called Arsenal way? What kind of football do we play anymore? For years you could see that there was a definite style. Arsene Wenger imprinted that on the club, from youth team to first team, and it was obvious. There was, perhaps, some comfort in that because you could see that even if things went wrong how you might fix it.
We play like this, this player isn’t good enough to do that, if we get a player better than him it would help us play like this.
But now? I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing on the pitch, or how we’re supposed to do be doing it. As I said yesterday, I don’t think there’s any point even thinking about the transfer market because one player or two players won’t transform us and won’t address the issues that run so deeply through the very heart of the club.
We’ll muddle on, we’ll win some games, we’ll see some improvement, and then something like Watford will happen again, or we’ll go to a big away game and get our arses handed to us, and then we’ll talk about how we have to learn from it and do better next time and we’ll do better in the next big away game and we’ll hope that it’s something we’ll take with us into all of those games and we’ll win another few games and score some nice goals and then there’ll be another Watford or another big away game or a home loss in a game we dominate but concede to their first shot on target and there’ll be banners and airplanes and headlines and memes and angry faces ranting and the seats at the stadium that are empty now will be joined by others and we’ll continue to trudge along and soak it all up because that is Arsenal now.
That is what we are. A thing for Troy Deeney to take the piss out of on TV.
Fuck that.
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Arsecast Extra with James coming up later. Any questions/topics for discussion, please send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog with hashtag #arsecastextra
