Arsènal (36 page)

Being 27, Arshavin was a few years older than the usual Wenger acquisition. (Older still Mikael Silvestre had only arrived towards the end of the previous transfer window because of the manager's inability to bring in the quality defender he sought.) The two new faces were a tacit admittance on Wenger's part that he had relinquished too much experience too soon, and that – in Arshavin's case – creatively, he needed more quality and imagination. The side was in the midst of a lengthy unbeaten run in the league and FA Cup, but this was largely down to stemming the hitherto regular concession of goals, and the team worked hard to grind out results. Yet the new found solidity – William Gallas, relieved of the captaincy, played some of the best football of his Arsenal career – came at a price, as the appeal of Wenger's past teams was fast becoming a memory and a three-match sequence of 0-0 home draws in January and February produced boos at the final whistle. Lacking the inspiration of the still indisposed Cesc Fabregas, the team had seemingly run out of ideas going forward. Eduardo briefly returned and looked threatening, but was soon injured once again, whilst the other forwards were simply firing blanks. Former captain Tony Adams felt “the current forwards are not natural finishers” and those in the stands could only concur and reminisce about the likes of Thierry Henry and Ian Wright.

Fortunately Arshavin made an immediate impact. Whilst the understanding with his new colleagues was predictably somewhat lacking, on the ball he nevertheless began to live up to his high-class reputation. The impact he had was similar to that of Dennis Bergkamp, in that there were lengthy periods when it would seem he might as well not even be on the field, but then the few minutes in which he became prominently involved were frequently devastating. His presence buoyed his teammates, and it made a refreshing change to witness a true communicator talking constantly with those around him, who signalled his intentions when moves broke down so as to make a repeat error less likely. His evident maturity highlighted the lack of nous in a squad that leant too heavily on the younger element. Tony Adams emphasised what had been missing: “When I came into the team, I had players with great experi ence around me, telling me, ‘Don't do that there, do that, get that ball away', I don't see that in this current Arsenal team. I don't see people saying, ‘Oi you Cesc! Don't do that there, you get your arse up there.' I don't see the experienced players at the club, and it's got to come from somewhere.” Perhaps Arshavin drove the point home to the manager.

However, experienced and talented though Arshavin undoubtedly was, many observers felt the money could have been much better spent elsewhere. For some reason Wenger had departed from the successful physical ingredients of the past. Where was the pace and power that hitherto was a prerequisite for the midfield and defence? Commenting in
The Daily Telegraph
after yet another 0-0 draw with Tottenham in February, Alan Hansen suggested it was Wilson Palacios (who Tottenham bought from Wigan) rather than Arshavin, who Arsenal needed. “He [Palacios] is a ‘not got the ball' type of player, whereas Arshavin is not”, the most oblique football-speak, but presumably Hansen meant someone who worked hard, tackled robustly and was combative for 90 minutes.

Luckily, Aston Villa started dropping points at the kind of rate no one could have foreseen. Under less pressure, and with Arshavin in the side, Arsenal gradually began to improve, eventually putting together an unbeaten sequence of 21 Premier League matches. However, the first 13 results in the run featured eight draws. In a season when Liverpool only suffered two defeats but still failed by four points to claim the title, wins were the currency that bought success, and Arsenal simply could not register enough of them.

Still, progress in cup competitions is about avoiding defeat, and going through to the last four of both the Champions League and the FA Cup stimulated some long overdue optimism. The improved defensive statistics suggested that the team had become much more difficult to beat than they had been a few months earlier and there was a genuine belief that what at times had seemed a nightmare season could have a positive denouement. Unfortunately having already played in the competition for his previous club, Arshavin was ineligible for the Champions League, so the FA Cup appeared to be the best chance of the first trophy after four barren seasons. (Even the Carling Cup would have been welcome, but Wenger had long since made it the province of his fringe players, with the likely failure to come out on top.)

Unexpectedly, the team selected for the first visit to the ‘new' Wembley Stadium (where all FA Cup semi-finals are now held) to face Chelsea saw an astounding omission, namely Arshavin, who was relegated to the bench. Arsène Wenger subsequently attempted to justify his bewildering decision to forego the services of an experienced international in a rich vein of form. “I knew for the team that the [FA Cup] semi-final was a very important step [in order] to go through in the Champions League, and I knew that Arshavin wasn't available [for that]. In my calculation,” he reasoned, “it would give the team the confidence to beat Chelsea, and [knowing I could] bring Arshavin on if needed, the team could then go on in the Champions League and know that it could win big games. It didn't work like that, and that was the only reason [he didn't start], not that he wasn't good enough.”

Arshavin may have appeared with the score at 1-1, but only for 15 minutes. What the manager effectively did was to use the FA Cup semi-final as a dress rehearsal for a European encounter ten days later, demonstrating how little store he put by the competition. The supporters on the other hand, saw their best hope of a trophy carelessly squandered. They would have loved to have returned for the final, four days after the conclusion of any Champions League commitments, and believed any victory over Chelsea would have been no distraction to their European ambitions. Further, the long-term kudos of winning the FA Cup arguably compares more favourably to reaching a Champions League semi-final.

“Winning the first trophy makes such a difference,” confirmed Tony Adams. “You get confidence that you're a winner. It changes your mentality.” As it turned out, defeat in the 2009 FA Cup semi-final – with or without Arshavin – was poor preparation for the competition Wenger valued more. Arsenal lost 2-1 due to defensive errors with keeper Lukasz Fabianski, Emmanuel Eboue and Mikael Sivestre all culpable. Significantly, not one of the back five – Almunia, Sagna, Gallas, Djourou and Clichy – who had played in the previous meeting of the two sides (a 2-1 away win at Stamford Bridge) was present.

William Gallas was the key absentee, sidelined for the rest of the season due to injury. The inability to defend competently without him reflected poorly on the depth of the squad. In the 21 appearances Gallas made after being deposed as captain, the side conceded 13 goals. After his injury, 16 were yielded in the 11 remaining games of the season including four against Liverpool at Anfield. Three days after the FACup exit, Arshavin, as if to make a point about his minimal involvement at Wembley, had four attempts and scored with all of them. The scoreline might as well have read: Goals conceded by Arsenal's inept defence 4, Andrey Arshavin 4. What was worse for the travelling support was that their team looked to have won, going 4-3 up just seconds before injury time. A year on from their Champions League elimination on the same ground, the defence showed that it had not learned from the experience, and succumbed to an injury-time equaliser.

Another idiosyncratic managerial decision was to tinker with the formation at such a crucial stage of the campaign. Departing from the habitual 4-4-2 which had served him so well over the years, different formations were tried with players deployed in unaccustomed positions, such as Van Persie as a lone striker and Bendtner wide on the flanks. It was as if by the use of wacky tactical innovation the manager was attempting to camouflage the inherent deficiencies in his personnel. He experimented with a 4-2-3-1 formation, Cesc Fabregas playing as a shadow striker behind the target man (normally Emmanuel Adebayor) with two holding midfield players behind him. If it was an attempt to shore up the defence, the results were questionable, and there were doubts it made the attack function much better with Fabregas seemingly less influential than when played deeper. Of his new role, Fabregas said, “I've always faced the goal; looking backwards it is a little more difficult but I am learning a lot.” Some might say if you are learning in semi-finals, the price to pay for the lesson may be progress to the final itself.

When Arsenal travelled to Old Trafford at the end of April for the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, the same back four – Sagna, Toure, Silvestre and Gibbs – who lined up against Liverpool were named to face Manchester United. With no Arshavin, they were played off the park, fortunate to only lose 1-0, largely due to an excellent display from returning keeper Manuel Almunia. They had progressed to the last four courtesy of knockout stage wins (via a penalty shoot-out) against Roma and an injury-ravaged Villarreal. At Old Trafford they were exposed as pretenders to United's crown of European champions. The manager was either unwilling or unable to explain the poverty of their performance and could only say that, “you will see a different Arsenal at The Emirates”. Samir Nasri played as one of the holding midfielders in both games, despite only filling the role on two previous occasions, leading to suggestions that the manager was simply trying to find a formation in which he could field the maximum number of his more creative players. Wenger attempted to justify the decision by explaining “it's important to have possession, and I thought the combination [with Song] could create chances”. Unfortunately, there was little evidence of that.

The lack of an away goal meant Arsenal had to keep a clean sheet in the return leg, or win by two clear goals if United scored. The manager's words – “the team will produce a magnificent performance and we will qualify” – came back to haunt him as the gulf between the two sides saw the visitors kill the tie stone dead by scoring twice in the opening 11 minutes, due to a defensive slip by 19-year-old reserve left back Kieran Gibbs and Almunia's inability to get his hands to a Ronaldo free kick from 40 yards out. United eased up, and won the match 3-1 at a canter. Gibbs's opposite number, Patrice Evra described the tie as “11 men against 11 kids. That's what made the difference. We have much more experience than them. Football is not only to play attractively with the ball.” Tony Adams concurred, though his remedy bordered on the extreme. “I don't think Ronaldo got kicked until it was too late. You make a point of it. I would have told every one of them to take him out in the first ten minutes. Four yellow cards, job done.” And Alex Ferguson had a different view on longevity to his opposite number. None of the ‘old guard' from the generation that came through in the mid-1990s started the game, but the importance of their being integral members of the squad is undoubted by Adams, who sees a comparable absence as a weakness at Arsenal. “What you've not had is a continuity from all the old players,” he states. “We all retired one by one and then [the team] fell away and the difference between Arsenal and Man United over the last ten years is that they've had some continuity. Scholes, Giggs, Gary Neville, they've had those kind of players. The timing's been a lot better. In the past there were players around who could teach the young guys. I don't see that now.”

Wenger's dream, some would say obsessive quest, was over for another year. To add insult to injury, any lingering hopes of overtaking Chelsea to take third place in the league petered out by collapsing to their London neighbours the following weekend. The manager described it as “a strange game, down to the disappointment of losing to Manchester United in the Champions League”. The 4-1 defeat at home brought the 21-match unbeaten league run to an end. Wenger was able to find some comfort from the statistics, asserting their sequence without defeat “was the longest in the league this year”. But in truth the only other ‘big four' side they had faced in that time was Liverpool. Without Arshavin (unavailable due to illness) Arsenal were incapable of landing more than a solitary strike against Chelsea. As if the manager needed any further reminder about the underlying problem with his team, it was the third occasion they had conceded four goals in the league that season.

Arsène Wenger had placed great store in the mental strength, intelligence, resilience, character and desire of his young squad, and frequently used this language to describe them. There was little evidence of it as one defeat after another ensured their campaign fizzled out in anticlimax. As in 2008, when the 2-2 draw at Birmingham presaged a collapse in the league and European elimination, so a year on, the FA Cup semi-final upset was soon followed by an abrupt end to their Champions League ambitions. Fortunately, they were at least safe in fourth place, on account of Aston Villa's even more dramatic loss of form.

By the season's end, Arsenal had scored as many goals (68) as champions Manchester United, but conceded 13 more (37). A year after finishing four points behind the title winners, they now found themselves 18 points adrift. The facts left no doubt as to where the team's problems lay. “The team lacks balance,” says Tony Adams. “Defensively, it needs toughening up. If Wenger wants to attack with his fantastic full backs, you need some stability in the central areas, you don't need the midfield bombing on as well. If you've got so many players who think offensively, you're never going to get them to think defensively.” Frank McLintock commented succinctly, “As individuals, the defenders are good but they don't perform as a unit.” Adams continues, “You challenge these [opposing] players and see how good they are, you put them under pressure. Some of that mentality and power is not in [Wenger's] team at the moment and when I talk about balance it's not only defensively/offensively, it's height and stature as well. The people who come inside, the people who want to run, the people who need to defend – he's got to get that right and he knows that.” But Arsène Wenger was never going to go public on his failings, and his reticence did not endear him to all, however good his intentions with regards to bolstering the self-belief of his players.