Well just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse up pops William Gallas to open his enormous mouth and spark a raft of headlines which we really didn’t need. In an interview which appeared in the Associated Press and spread like the plague to every news service on the planet Gallas criticised his team-mates, described in-fighting in the squad, questioned (with a straight face it seems) the bravery of his colleagues and generally started the kind of shit storm we would stand back laughing hilariously at if it happened at any other club. Maybe he was trying to motivate others but if that’s what it was meant to do then it will have failed miserably. And while some of what he spoke about has some merit the more you read what he said the more it appears that his motivation was entirely personal and not for the benefit of the club. I think the point he made about players being ‘warriors’ and ‘brave’ is a good one. However, when it comes from a man who chickened out of a challenge at Fulham and cost us the goal which lost us the match it’s a bit hard to take. Still, the point itself is valid. His point about how well paid the young players are might have them resting on their laurels is a good one. I spoke about this on the blog earlier this week. That if your pay is not dependent on your performance then you’ll get lazy and I think that’s a real issue in the squad. But any decent points he had to make were made useless by some of the most astonishing and unprofessional comments ever made by an Arsenal player, let alone an Arsenal captain. Let’s go through some of them. Talking about an incident that happened in what appears to be the Sp*rs game this season he said: When, as captain, some players come up to you and talk to you about a player … complaining about him … and then during the match you speak to this player and the player in question insults us. There comes a time where we can no longer comprehend how this can happen. I am trying to defend myself a bit without giving names. Otherwise I’m taking it all (the blame). It’s very frustrating. I’m 31, the player is six years younger than me. You can speculate yourself but the consensus is that he’s talking about Robin van Persie. Now firstly, players argue all the time. At every level of football they do it, it’s normal. But these fights are generally forgotten once the match is over and certainly weeks later it does nobody any good to bring it back up again. Whoever the player in question is they’re going to be pissed off today and it’s not good for the squad to have to relive old arguments. Secondly, you have to question Gallas’s motivation here. Why is he making this public? From what I can see it’s not to try and heal any rift, it’s so he can stop himself being blamed. And it smacks of paranoia. He’s had his critics this season, I’ve been among them, but when you’re the captain of a side, the most experienced defender and you’re part of a defensive unit that is shipping goals all over the place then you have to expect some criticism. I don’t think anyone blamed Gallas for anything that wasn’t his fault. The goals against Fulham and Bolton in particular stand out due to the way he shirked responsibility. So he has rightly been criticised in my opinion. Thirdly, this kind of stuff should just never have been made public. The papers, radio and TV are loving this. At a time when the club is suffering on the pitch more than it ever has under Arsene Wenger you need everyone to pull together, not for one loose cannon to start stirring things up like this. You wouldn’t expect this kind of thing from an inexperienced youth player so far a 31 year old international and captain of a club like Arsenal to go public like this is just 100% wrong. His motivation was clear to see again when he said: I have to win something this year. I have to win something, Arsenal has to win something. The fact that he said ‘I have to win something’ first tells you all you need to know about the man, I think. Then when asked if he would still be at Arsenal next season, he said: We will have to see. We don’t know what will happen between here and then. Inspiring stuff from the club captain, don’t you think? I have maintained from the start that I thought Gallas was a bad choice of captain. From the way the announcement was made (Gilberto finding out via the internet that Gallas had been picked ahead of him) the whole thing has been an unmitigated disaster, in my opinion. Yes, he did well enough up until Birmingham last season but it’s easy to be the captain of a winning team, a team that’s full of confidence, flying through games at home and in Europe. It’s when things go wrong that you get a measure of someone’s ability as captain and when things went wrong Gallas was found wanting. Big mouth strikes again, time to go GallasThe Birmingham game should have been enough to tell Arsene Wenger he was the wrong man for the job. Yes, we all get emotional but it was dereliction of duty so epic, so juvenile, that a change should have been made this summer (if not immediately). You look at the cringeworthy team-talk against Chelsea when a clearly disinterested and uncomfortable squad squirmed at his attempts to gee them up. That he didn’t have the wherewithal to get Sky’s TV cameras out of the way as he did it is another example of his complete lack of self-awareness. He just isn’t a captain and I suppose it’s not really his fault. He’s been asked to do a job that he is just not suited for. He has tried, and failed, and failed again, but he is not and never will be a captain. He doesn’t have the personality for it and his botched attempts at leadership are damaging the team. You then have to look at Arsene Wenger and his insistence in keeping Gallas as the man with the armband. He has to take his share of the blame for this situation. He has hinted at being aware of the poor performance of his captain as captain, talking about having ’11 leaders on the pitch’. But then too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say. Arsene has made mistakes in the past, poor substitutions, poor transfers, but I think the Gallas captaincy has been the biggest mistake of his Arsenal career. From the way it happened, which caused some turmoil within the squad who were expecting the well-liked and highly-professional Gilberto to be made skipper, to his continued backing of Gallas as both a player and captain when he has struggled with both roles. The captaincy has made it difficult to drop Gallas the player and it was Kolo Toure who made way despite the fact it Gallas’s form was worse. Former Gunner Perry Groves has given his reaction to the latest outburst from Gallas and says: Gallas has been an absolute disgrace. He has brought into disrepute all the great Arsenal captains of the past. Arsene Wenger has to take some responsibility because he is the one who made him captain. He should take the captaincy off him. Those are some seriously strong words and I don’t think I’ve ever heard such stinging criticism of any Arsenal player, let alone an Arsenal captain. I know people have accused me of having an anti-Gallas agenda and I will freely admit I don’t like him and have never liked him. But this is my blog with my opinion and I’ll always say what I think. It’s not an agenda, it’s just an opinion. I don’t know what kind of agenda you could accuse Perry Groves of having, beyond being, like all of us, an Arsenal fan who is upset at seeing things which should be kept inside the club so clumsily aired in public. For me this is the straw that broke the camel’s back with Gallas. The manager has to take the captaincy away from him. If the consequences of that sees Gallas leave then so be it. You cannot tolerate the captain of your club behaving in this way. To try and point fingers at a teammate so less blame will be apportioned to yourself is so selfish and cowardly it’s just not true. It’s like telling on someone else in school so you don’t get into as much trouble. That is not somebody who is thinking of what’s best for the team, only what’s best for himself. To reveal
the in-fighting, allowing hungry journalists to get their teeth into the ‘Arsenal in crisis/civil war’ stories does nobody any good. It’s simply not acceptable and I don’t know how Gallas expects to receive the backing of his teammates, the fans or the manager any more. No doubt we’ll hear something today about ‘I am fully behind Arsenal and blah blah blah’ or some comment from Arsene about how ‘William is a fighter’ so I’m expecting my intelligence to be thoroughly insulted. All I know is that if I were the manager of the club and my captain came out with that kind of stuff I would take the armband off him the minute I removed my fucking boot from his arse. The Gallas experiment has failed, Arsene. You thought you could make him a captain the way you made Lauren a full back or Kolo a centre-half but you couldn’t. You humiliated one of our most professional and loyal players to do it. You stood by him when every bit of you must have known he was the wrong man for the job. Change it now or this team is going to continue to suffer under his rudderless attempts at on-pitch leadership. He might be suspended for this weekend but give it to Cesc. It’s time to give the young man a chance. Maybe it’ll help lift him out of this funk he’s in. Maybe the team will react well to having a new leader. And when January comes, Arsene, think long and hard about what’s best for Arsenal Football Club, not what’s best for your little experiments and projects. More reaction from East Lower, Gunnerblog, Goodplaya and Goonerholic. In other news this morning we’ve been linked with a move for Belgian midfielder Steven Defour. Kolo Toure is added to the injury list for the Man City game, he has a calf strain. We’re already without Eboue, a suspended Cesc and, of course, Theo Walcott who will be missing for three months. Arsene’s response was much less volatile than I had expected. Now, time for this week’s Arsecast. I’d love to tell you this will brighten up your day but given the state of the team and the Gallas stuff it’s not exactly the most cheerful Arsecast of all time. I chat with the Man from East Lower about stuff and there’s some other gloomy stuff in there too. I just wasn’t feeling very funny this week (please insert your own joke about how I’m never funny anyway, it’ll save me the time!). You can subscribe to the Arsecast iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too. To download this week’s arsecast directly – click here (16mb MP3) or you can listen directly below without leaving this very page. Audio As well as that there’s a dedicated Arsecast hotline available all season long should you desire to make a comment, get something off your chest, share a song a chant or hilarious anecdote. Feel free to call it any time during the week, it’ll go to voicemail and you can leave your message. The number from inside the UK is 020 3286 6360 or from outside the UK it’s +44 20 3286 6360. And that’s that. It’s enough, eh?
