Six months ago Arsenal were in contention for four trophies ? the collapse that followed defeat in the Carling Cup final raises big question marks over the manager
Not many neutrals can be enjoying the anguish of Ars�ne Wenger, excruciatingly visible as his team lost their first home league fixture of the season against Liverpool on Saturday. The Frenchman has brought so many good things to English football that all lovers of the game can consider themselves permanently in his debt but what an almighty mess he finds himself in just now.
Every team, however well managed, sometimes encounters unexpected trouble. Just under two years ago Sir Alex Ferguson, to whom the constant replenishing and regeneration of his squad is an article of faith, found himself suddenly so short of cover for his central defenders that he was forced to select two midfielders, Darren Fletcher and Michael Carrick, in the positions normally occupied by Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. They coped so well that they could hardly be blamed for United's eventual failure to defend the title. But the problem currently afflicting Arsenal ? exemplified by the need to play a full-back out of position, to bring on a teenaged centre-back for his first-team debut and to select two players known to be on their way out of the club against Liverpool ? appears to be more systemic, an outbreak of chaos created by something more profound than an injury crisis and with long-term implications.
Six months ago Arsenal were in contention for every trophy going. The nature of the collapse that followed defeat in the Carling Cup final, however, put question marks against every aspect of the way the club is staffed and run. If it seems a little facile to identify the cause in a single incident, then sometimes the logic is not entirely specious (see Roman Abramovich's fateful decision to send Ray Wilkins packing last November). And maybe the tackle that broke Eduardo da Silva's leg on 23 February 2008 was the moment at which Arsenal's fortunes began to take a turn for the worse.
Wenger's team had gone to the top of the league two weeks earlier and the Brazilian-born Croatia striker, having finally established himself in the first team over the Christmas period, was scoring freely as Arsenal looked on course for their first title in three years. After a transitional period which saw the dispersal of the 2003-04 Invincibles and the move to the Emirates, the club's destiny seemed firmly under control.
Only a year earlier, after all, Wenger had gone to Anfield with a team including the teenagers Justin Hoyte, Johan Djourou, Armand Traor�, Cesc F�bregas, Alex Song, Theo Walcott and Den�lson, and beaten Liverpool 6-3 in a Carling Cup quarter-final. The future seemed to be in safe hands. Although an injury to a single player should not derail an entire team, Eduardo's misfortune disturbed Arsenal's equilibrium in a way that Wenger seemed unable to correct. Defeated only once in the league up to that point, they took just 19 points from the season's last 11 games, dropping to third place behind Manchester United and Chelsea.
Less obviously, the manager was making a significant change to the philosophy of his team by relegating Gilberto Silva to the bench. A quietly important midfield guard since 2002, Silva made only a dozen league starts that season, was overlooked as captain in favour of the more volatile William Gallas and left in the summer. Wenger seemed to consider him too old at 31 and too deliberate in his distribution to fit in with the principle of rapid ball circulation embodied by his youngsters. How Arsenal could do with some of that deliberation now.
"If I have shown one thing in the last 15 years," Wenger said on Saturday, "it is that I have bought good players." Wojciech Szczesny, Thomas Vermaelen, Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey attest to the manager's continuing ability to identify and develop young talent. On the other side of the scales we find an assortment of rejects and survivors, including Den�lson, Traor�, Nicklas Bendtner, Marouane Chamakh, S�bastien Squillaci, Carlos Vela, Abou Diaby, Fran M�rida, Jay-Emmanuel Thomas, Henri Lansbury, Craig Eastmond, Kerrea Gilbert and even Song, who have not measured up to Wenger's hopes and the fans' expectations. What was once his strength has become his weakness, and it is not something likely to be fixed in the next week.
Let's roll back on corporate language ? going forward
I have a friend who is collecting examples of the redundant verbiage that litters public life in the 21st century such as when some politician describes an urban riot as "totally unacceptable", meaning he or she has no idea what to do about it. The BBC2 comedy series Twenty Twelve, so justly praised by my colleague Martin Kelner in yesterday's paper, is adept at skewering this habitual evasiveness and you have to wonder if Debbie Jevans, the director of sport for the London Olympics, has ever watched it. Asked about competitors' criticisms of the BMX course during the test event, Jevans said: "We will listen to the feedback from the athletes. We will take on board what they say, we assess that and then we make decisions going forward." The use of "going forward" is widespread in corporate life but who makes decisions going backward? One simple improvement to the BMX event would be to raise the standard of the commentary. On Friday, when the competitors were making individual time-trial runs, the opportunity to tell the spectators something about each of them was completely ignored.
England need tougher Test to secure place in history
For all the pleasure to be derived from England's ascent to the pinnacle of Test cricket, no one can pretend that, as a competitive event, the series against India has been anything other than a severe disappointment. Sterner challenges are required before we can be sure of the true standing of Andrew Strauss's team. And only then will we know whether history is likely to view Strauss and Alastair Cook as an England opening partnership in the class of Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Hutton and (Bill) Edrich, or Boycott and Barber. As an incurable optimist I suspect the answer will be yes.
Castiglioni, a past master on looking to the future
Claudio Castiglioni, who died last week, aged 64, was an Italian businessman and motorcycle enthusiast responsible for reviving and exhuming several famous makes, among them Ducati and MV Agusta. He knew that the secret is not to recreate the glorious past but to build on it.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/aug/22/arsene-wenger-arsenal
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