‘The season of surprises’ ended for Arsenal on Sunday, 15th May with a 4-0 demolition of Aston Villa. The result was not something extraordinary as Aston Villa were the first team to be relegated from the Premier League this season and were absolutely awful in both their performances on the field as well as in the boardroom.
One of the founder members of the Barclays Premier League, Aston Villa are without any doubt a club with great history and fame and it was very upsetting to see them go down being poor throughout the entire season even though it was more of a question of ‘when’ given the insanity and delusion by which the great club was being run by Randy Lerner.
Pretty much everybody expected the Gunners to beat Villa at The Emirates and end their season with a win. At the end of the final whistle, the players and fans seemed to be happier than expected and it was not because they won their last game of the season scoring four goals against an opposition who were relegated with their main striker scoring a hat-trick after enduring a barren spell of 15 games without scoring. It was because their rivals Tottenham Hotspurs finished their campaign with back to back losses and getting demolished at St. James Park against 10-men Newcastle United, a team which has also been relegated along with Aston Villa and in turn allowing Arsenal to finish in as the runners-up for the current season.
It seemed to be absolutely impossible at one point but Tottenham’s collapse at the very end of the season, where they failed to win any of their last four games and collected only 2 points, made it possible. Arsenal ended a season of missed opportunities in the second position and even though they would feel like it was a chance wasted, ending the season above their bitter rivals was some consolation for the Gunners.
The season was an anomaly in many ways and for many reasons. Underdogs and potential relegation favourites Leicester City winning the Premier League crown, Chelsea, the reigning champions, hopelessly languishing near the relegation places under Mourinho, Tottenham challenging for the Premiership title, West Ham United fighting for the top 4 getting the better of teams away from home, Aston Villa looking like an amateur team playing without any interest, Manchester United being erratic, goal shy, inconsistent and many more. All the above-mentioned aberrations were witnessed in this season but barring a few, on careful analysis, most of the above-mentioned events seemed to be normal or likely to happen.
A busy summer and an eventful start
Chelsea made a horrible start and even though it can be argued that given Jose Mourinho’s 3rd season syndrome, the team was never expected to perform as badly as they did. From the start, the unprecedented touchline bust-up of Mourinho with the Chelsea team doctor (former) Eva Carneiro certainly made matters worse inside the dressing room and it affected the team’s performances further on the pitch.
Manchester United had a busy summer transfer window bringing in some big name players and bolstering their squad even further. Midfield maestro Bastian Schweinsteiger, one of the best defensive midfielders in the league the season before, Morgan Schneiderlin, talented Italian full-back Matteo Darmian and Dutch sensation winger Memphis Depay, were all bought in the summer. January saw the arrival of the next big thing in French football in the form of Anthony Martial for a colossal amount. The total transfer fee spent by United this season has been a mind boggling £103.6m. With that amount of money spent and having a manager of the caliber of Louis Van Gaal at the helm, United were expected to challenge for the title this year.
Manchester City, champions of the 2013-14 season, bolstered their squad too and spent a staggering £152.1m on new recruits. Players like Kevin de Bruyne and Raheem Sterling came to Etihad alongside Nicolas Otamendi. City showed intent and were amongst the favourites for winning the title.
Tottenham, under Pochettino, were a side more compact and organized. They spent a considerable £53m to mount a serious challenge for the top four spot. Elsewhere, Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers and also had a busy summer. The Reds spent £82.6m, investing in players like Benteke, Firmino and Nathaniel Clyne to mention a few, in order to finally take the club where it belongs, i.e. amongst the Premiership’s elite and in the Champions League. Arsenal, on the other hand, recruited only Petr Cech from Chelsea for £10m and later in January bought Mohammad Elneny from Basel for £5m.
Arsenal’s lack of investment and deserved criticism towards Wenger
Arsene Wenger, despite much protests, didn’t buy a single outfield player in the summer and while everybody else were crying out for reinforcements the manager trusted his own judgment and refused to splash the cash citing the lack of quality players available as the potential reason behind his reluctance to buy in the transfer window. One thing must be noted here and that is, Arsene Wenger made it clear that he thought that it was not overly necessary to bring in players as our squad strength was pretty considerable and he was also very specific about the kind of players he wanted to buy if the opportunity came. He mentioned all along that the players should be the ones who will improve the squad, adding quality to the team and not make up the numbers.
While it can be argued that given the possibility which has now taken the form of inevitable regarding the fact that Arsenal players will suffer injury blows and miss a considerable chunk of their season, Wenger could have done with a couple of players as a stop gap to get his team over the line when others got injured but the manager refused to do so. Arsenal finished the season second to Leicester City.
It was truly a disappointing campaign for Arsenal according to many pundits and experts and even some fans. The argument put forward was Arsenal will never get another season where the top teams all fail together giving them a free passage to the title. For me, as an Arsenal fan and someone who try to take into account all the possibilities behind an outcome, this season has been a disappointment without a doubt and for the first time in Arsene Wenger’s reign at Arsenal, this year is the year where we can say that Arsene Wenger truly failed to perform to his ability as a manager. Ending the season without any piece of silverware (Community shield is ignored as we won it but I am absolutely sure had we lost it people would have pointed out our failure to win it even though it is not counted as a major trophy) has been a real disappointment.
Our failure in the Champions league (as usual for a while now), Capital One Cup and Barclays Premier League and also the F.A cup definitely demands criticism. We were favourites to win the F.A cup three times in a row but we failed to beat Watford at home which for me was the biggest disappointment of the season and with the kind of start we made to the season being top of the league in January, we blew our chance to win the Premiership with a string of bad results against mid-table club.
Punditry gone wrong in the case of Arsenal?
Strangely, keeping all the above reasons in mind, for some time now, I have been amazed to see the kind of fallacy and hypocrisy with which most of the pundits go on about analyzing the game in the studios of various shows like Monday Night Football (MNF), Football Today, BBC Match Of The Day, Fletch and Sav etc. In all of the shows, one thing seems common always and that is the bashing of Arsenal. According to almost every pundit, Arsenal is the club which does nothing. They never mount a serious title challenge, they never win trophies, they are the most likely to drop out of the Champions League places, they celebrate coming 4th etc.
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It is true that Arsenal and Arsene Wenger’s criticism of failing to win the Champions League is just, nevertheless it must also be noted that in all those years since 2005, Arsenal were eliminated in the round of 16 for the sixth consecutive year in 2016 bowing out to eventual winners of the competition twice in 2010-11 and 2012-13 seasons. Arsenal were unlucky more than once in the Champions league with decisions going against them at key moments just like the Robin Van Persie 2nd yellow at Camp Nou when Arsenal were leading the tie. Nevertheless, bad decisions alone can’t be the reason behind the disappointing European campaigns over the years and it is true that Arsene Wenger and his team have failed to perform consistently in the Champions League and I myself am one of the biggest critics of Wenger on that front. However when it comes to performances in the Barclays Premier League and other cup competitions, I resent most of the time what the pundits preach.
Let’s take an example of Paul Scholes to start with. One of the greatest ever players to play for Manchester United and in the Premier League, Scholes was a midfield maestro, Manchester United’s talisman, and a legend. When Paul Scholes commented on September 2014 that Arsenal are a million miles away from winning the Premiership despite being only six points adrift of the no.1 spot it felt like the words of a rival fan rather than a football expert. Arsene Wenger, when questioned about the remark, stated that if six points translate to a million miles then he is unsure what a point translates to in terms of distance.
Scholes also belittled Arsenal saying that they become happy by winning the F.A Cup and coming 4th which can’t happen at United. After the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United found it extremely difficult to keep up their levels and finish their season in the top 4. Despite investing a huge amount of money and bringing in players the Red Devils finished the following three seasons since the departure of Ferguson in 7th, 4th, and 5th place respectively. I wonder what would have been the mood at Old Trafford if they had finished 4th and won the F.A Cup! United defeated Crystal Palace in the F.A Cup final to win their only piece of silverware this season and they looked happy as they rejoiced on their achievement.
Winning a trophy is always a great achievement and the players are entitled to celebrate but that never means that the club is content with only that. There is no club in the world, let alone somebody with the history, record and stature of Arsenal, who will be happy with winning one trophy and missing out on another. Just like the Manchester United players, Arsenal players celebrated after winning the F.A Cup two years in a row but that never meant that they were happy with finishing 4th in the league even though last year Arsenal finished 3rd in the Premier League table.
This past season, United lost out on the top 4 and as the current table suggests, United 15 points adrift of league leaders Leicester City are certainly in Scholes own words more than a couple of million miles away from winning the league again and certainly not more likely than Arsenal but somehow it feels listening to him that Arsenal have less of a chance than his former team in winning the trophy. It has been proved over the years now that maintaining your level in the Premiership is one of the hardest things to do. Arsenal under Wenger has been the master of consistency and surprisingly gets mocked for that. Arsenal’s true motive and goals are always distorted and misinterpreted by the pundits who state that Arsenal are happy with the 4th spot.
Recently Wenger, in a press conference, remarked that finishing in the top four is not the aim of Arsenal but it is the minimum requirement which so far the manager has fulfilled for a stunning 20th year in a row. He said that he never gets happy by finishing in the top 4 but gets frustrated every time he fails to win the league, as the amount of work he does is a lot more than finishing in 4th position. The players of all the clubs, except those who get relegated, exchange greetings and love with the fans at the end of the season as a tradition which gets translated into over joyous celebrations by certain experts cynically which is never the case.
This season, as I have stated earlier has been one of disappointment for the fans and the players as Arsenal failed to win any silverware but on the final day Tottenham’s capitulation at relegated Newcastle meant Arsenal finished the season in the 2nd spot and above them for every year since Wenger took charge. It looked highly unlikely at one point as Spurs were mounting a serious title challenge on Leicester and were even favourites for many to win it. In the end, they finished a point behind Arsenal but I was really surprised to see how so-called experts failed to point out player fatigue and the manager’s decision of not resting players as the main reason behind the Spur’s collapse.
When Arsene Wenger played Alexis Sanchez at the start of the season after returning from an injury the experts crucified him. Alexis Sanchez, a player who wants to play every match for 90 minutes rarely wants to get rested and has had several arguments with the manager on the same issue. On selecting a player coming back from injury, Wenger told us clearly that he first listens to his medical staff and then asks the player about his condition, about how he feels and then takes the final decision. It is unlikely that Wenger would have thrown the Chilean into the sharp end without his approval and knowing Alexis he would have absolutely insisted for game time which if denied, would have meant an unsettled and unhappy star player in the dressing room, not ideal for the team by any means. Even after admitting that he made a mistake by insisting and trying to play every game without a rest was a mistake which led to his injury last season, Alexis had stated about training ground arguments with the manager over his game time and even left the stadium after being substituted against Norwich this season, something which reflects the level of maturity of the player rather than his passion to play football.
Nevertheless, Wenger was vilified by sections of the media and the pundits for his decision whereas I never heard any one of them having a go at managers like Jose Mourinho, Mauricio Pochettino or even Claudio Ranieri for overplaying their players. In the 2014-15 season, Mourinho won the league with Chelsea and he barely rested any member of his team including Captain John Terry who played every match of the season barring the final 6 minutes of the final game when he was substituted. The players never got injured and Jose was touted as the genius.
Same was the case with the Spurs boss who when asked about player fatigue in the 2nd half of the season, remarked that his players are not tired at all. They are fit and they want to play every match. Only when Spurs lost their way in the final stretch, some did actually very meekly bring up fatigue as the reason. Interestingly, after Pochettino’s remarks pundits actually termed him as the genius every manager should be like. They were going gaga over his motivational tactics, about how by saying they are not tired at all he has eliminated the idea of being tired from the player’s minds and how it is important to have that perspective mentally. I was amazed! Listening to them was like thinking that for a person, tiredness is only a thing you perceive in your mind, it has got nothing to do with the body at all!
For a manager whose Modus Operandi is based on the ‘Bielsa School’ of gameplay, the first and foremost thing to worry about would be the player fatigue in the 2nd half of the season. According to the words of the pioneer Marcelo Bielsa himself, ‘If my players were not Humans, I would have won every single game’ a statement which highlights that it is nearly impossible for a human being to keep up the levels of high intensity of the Bielsa press for an entire season. Leicester City created history this season by winning the Premier League title beating their nearest rivals by 10 points.
On their way to the title Leicester used the minimum number of squad players in the season and even though their early exits from the other cup games helped them on that front using virtually the same starting eleven for almost the entirety of a season is just unreal and shocking at the same time. More so, when the name of the manager is Claudio ‘Tinkerman’ Ranieri. If any of the players in Mahrez, Vardy, Kanté or even Fuchs got injured the story would have been different but they didn’t which brings up the question of a lot of other possibilities. Certainly there’s a lot more going on than the Cryo-chamber at the King Power. The foxes won the at the end which quashed any doubts about the lack of rotation or players not getting adequate rest but in all fairness the managers mentioned above should’ve been criticized for not managing their players rightly if Arsene Wenger gets criticized for it but it just never happens.
This season, Arsenal players and fans were strongly condemned for celebrating finishing above their London rivals, otherwise known as St. Totteringham’s day. The justification for Tottenham’s shockingly poor performance at St. James Park was the absence of Moussa Dembele and Eric Dier in midfield which allowed them to be run over by a team which was already relegated. Arsenal had to do without the likes of Santi Cazorla, Jack Wilshere, Mikel Arteta, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Francis Coquelin, Aaron Ramsey and Thomas Rosicky for prolonged periods of this season. That’s the entire midfield! Still Arsenal managed to play good football and finished higher than Tottenham, the team who according to many pushed Leicester for the title more realistically. Still, they somehow come to the conclusion that Tottenham had a wonderful season and Arsenal had an awful season.
Pundits like Alan Shearer talk about a strong mentality and leadership and I immediately think of his time at Newcastle where despite having the strong mentality they surrendered the title to Manchester United in 1996 and again the next year. Shearer stayed there for the rest of his career but he couldn’t consistently take his team to Europe with all his leadership attributes and strong mentality. What does this leadership mean? Does it win you matches and games and championships? For me, the answer is very hard and certainly not one which can be generalized.
Leadership, on the pitch, may translate to somebody taking charge of the proceedings, talking a lot during the game, barking out instructions or organizing the defence during the set plays but ultimately it all comes down to execution. Mathieu Flamini is perhaps the perfect example of this. Flamini is always the one who screams at his teammates and has a lot of things to say to his compatriots but when he is needed for the job, his execution falls way short of expectations and certainly below the level of his animated gestures and chatter which is translated to leadership by the pundits and experts. I would settle for a player who is silent but effective in his execution of gameplay rather than a talkative one who falters while giving a pass or making a tackle. Ultimately, the team wins by virtue of its efficiency in the opposition’s half in attacking and its own half in defending and not by talking.
There are pundits who really seem to know their trade during the analysis namely Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher. Their analysis seems always so insightful and it appears that they have the answer to all the problems as they tell the managers the dos and donts of football week after week. Strangely when Gary took over at Valencia, he was even worse than the managers he had previously criticized as being disappointments. It goes to show that real-world football management is a completely different story altogether.
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The stark difference of how a manager thinks and how a ‘know all’ pundit thinks was perhaps the most evident in this season’s first episode of MNF where Roberto Martinez graced the studio and analysed the games of game week 1 alongside Jamie Carragher. While analyzing the matches of various teams, Carragher was keener on criticizing the decisions and player movements or even the formations of the teams during the match, Martinez kept on explaining the logic and reason behind the aforementioned things citing the outlook of the manager and his thinking with regard to the specific opposition. I was taken aback and was overly impressed with the analysis. Just the sheer way of thinking by which Martinez analysed and countered the apparent mistakes termed by Carragher was wonderfully insightful.
It occurred to me that only when you are a manager or worked as one you are fully aware of the innumerable things which act simultaneously for and against the team when they go out to the field and during the game. An understanding which almost all the other personnel who haven’t worked as managers are unaware of. Now, the next question which very recently came to my mind was if Roberto Martinez was such a genius and insightful man in the true sense why he got the sack at Everton failing to reach the heights he achieved 2 seasons ago?
The answer to that is consistency and execution. Consistency is the hardest thing to achieve anywhere and despite the best efforts of the manager sometimes the player’s execution can let him and his team down. Last season Arsenal absolutely hammered Manchester United in their new 3-5-2 /3-4-3 formation at the Emirates but United won the match with a 2-1 score line. United had one shot on target and scored two goals! For many it would be a laughable statement to say that Arsenal dominated United fully and lost the game by a 2-1 score line but Ronald Koeman, another talented young manager when asked about how his Southampton will be countering the threat of a highly flexible 3-5-2/3-4-3 of Manchester United was quick and abrupt to remark that Arsenal showed us the way of how it is to be done. Seems quite astonishing really for an average football fan but these things highlight the difference with which the managers view the game and its tactics differently from the alleged fans and pundits. It must be said that Southampton also lost their tie against Manchester United, thus highlighting for yet another time the importance of execution in a football match in order to win games.
In modern football punditry is one of the most disappointing aspects of a match programme. It’s very rare to find unbiased and knowledgeable views on the game from most of them. There seems to be a certain template which is repeated in almost every shows and while some are hell bent on proving their insanity to the rest of the world showing that a good/ great player doesn’t mean a good/great expert, some others appear out of their depths by trying to make loose comments in a bid to appear unbiased.
In all these shows, when there is a talk about Arsenal there’s something which one can pretty much expect to hear every time and that is the criticism of Arsene Wenger as a manager. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that he is above criticism or he doesn’t make mistakes. Arsene makes mistakes every year like every other manager in every other league, there should be criticism but not always on the fronts of his transfer business and tactical game management or even player rotation as each and every time a lot of events need to be taken into account.
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Wenger has shown that he is not afraid to splash the cash when quality players are available. Also, Manchester United and Manchester City has shown us that just buying players is not the solution. Arsene Wenger has proved that he is one of the most effective and innovative managers around for 20 years now with his management. Be it introducing a new regime and diet routine for players to buying and consulting StatsDna, rebuilding the team under a small budget much lesser than his rivals and yet keeping the team competitive despite losing his best players on transfers or somehow managing to keep the team spirits high after repeated disappointments during the barren spell of 9 years, dealing with heartbreaks and even the presence of disruptive figures of William Gallas and Emanuel Adebayor in the dressing room alongside losing key players for prolonged periods through injury.
Arsenal have never finished outside the top 4 and that is a tremendous achievement which some of the Liverpool, Manchester United and even the Chelsea fans are getting to realize now. All along his tenure, Arsenal have captivated audiences across the globe with their gameplay and fluid passing football. Arsenal have created their own identity and brand of football which inevitably brings a smile on to the faces of the neutrals and those who watch their game much similar to the likes of Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund, whose games attract most of the neutrals. We need constructive criticism and I would like to see more like Roberto Martinez analyzing the game rather than some bunch of half-wits trying to accomplish their own agendas. A Football expert should be one who will give the answers to the questions alongside pointing out the flaw in the answers put forward rather than only asking the question.
It is gradually becoming a necessity and evident that we need someone like an Arsene Wenger amongst the so called Pundits and experts too. One who will lay down his views clearly in front of us, think innovatively, analyse the game from a new angle, bring a smile onto our faces with his methods and above all be consistent. Thus, it is proved that everything related to football depends on the two keywords and they are ‘Consistency’ and ‘Execution’ be it playing football on the pitch or analyzing the game once it is over inside the studios.
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