At Stamford Bridge a week or so ago, came evidence of what most of us suspected. Arsenal, when confronted by one of the game’s powerhouses, continue to be something of a soft touch. Even before the Gunners kicked off at Stamford Bridge, former Chelsea boss Glenn Hoddle had used his Sunday newspaper article to highlight the glaring chasm that has existed in Arsene Wenger’s team since Patrick Vieira left nearly a decade ago.
Referring all the way back to his time as a player under Wenger at Monaco (between 1987 and 1991), Hoddle cited the importance to that side of Marcel Dib and Jean Philippe Rohr, both deployed by the French manager as imposing holding midfielders.
During his time in the Principality, Wenger was responsible for the purchase of Emmanuel Petit, then a left midfielder or full-back, but a player who he would later take to London to combine in a formidable engine-room partnership with Vieira. That Arsenal’s boss, even before he was officially appointed to the role, advised the club to recruit Vieira, and followed up with the capture of Petit eight months after taking the job, illustrates the stock he once placed in having players of the highest calibre to fill those vital midfield anchoring berths.
Vieira, following Petit’s departure for Barcelona in the year 2000, was left to carry much of the load in the centre of the park. When the opportunity came to buy Brazil’s World Cup winning defensive midfielder Gilberto Silva, though, Wenger pounced; in the process adding a valuable asset who would go on to become integral to the last really potent, successful Arsenal team.
A title winner, as part of the fabled ‘Invincibles’ side of 2003/2004, key to the team that won the 2005 FA Cup and then crucial as the Gunners made it all the way to the final of the Champions League in 2006, Gilberto became a firm Wenger favourite. It is all the more curious, then, that the same manager appears so reluctant to provide his current raft of skilful, fleet-footed attackers with a solid base from which to inflict maximum damage on opponents – the strongest of whom, find Arsenal all too easy to bully and dominate.
Arsenal’s latest felling by one of the Premier League’s big-guns surprised nobody. The unit that, last season, was blitzed on its travels by Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Everton has not been lent by any of its summer additions, the tougher, steely edge for which it has been crying out.
Even as Wenger’s team was starting this campaign with an unbeaten six game run in the league, with the Chilean livewire Alexis Sanchez bedding in as Arsenal’s latest exciting, forward thinking acquisition, the familiar failings were all too obvious.
Slightly fortunate to beat Crystal Palace, thanks to Aaron Ramsey’s 90th minute winner, on the season’s opening day, a week later the Gunners were being run ragged by Everton. The fightback from two goals behind to secure a draw at Goodison Park perhaps offered some hope that a more resolute version of last term’s Arsenal side – the one that was more prone to collapse, than to finding a stirring riposte upon encountering such a setback – was evolving.
This, though, is an Everton team that, this time out, is yet to locate any of the fluency and relentless high-intensity drive of Roberto Martinez’s first-term in charge. After further draws with Leicester City and Manchester City, Wenger saw his side slip two goals behind in a Champions League tie at Borussia Dortmund.
Jurgen Klopp’s bustling, rampaging Germans didn’t afford Arsenal room to breathe, completely overwhelming a team whose deployment of Mikel Arteta in front of their back-four was exposed for the complete folly that it was.
With Mathieu Flamini filling the deepest-lying role in the Londoners’ subsequent European tie, a home clash with Galatasaray, it was the Gunners’ who were running riot. The Turkish visitors, though, horribly vulnerable to the undoubted strengths of Wenger’s side – pace, vision and imagination – would conceivably have been handpicked by the Frenchman as the perfect opposition against whom to bounce back from the humbling in Germany.
Galatasaray, disorganised and without any midfield clout, left space all over the pitch for the likes of Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazorla and Sanchez to weave a collective spell. A shambolic three-man defence, meanwhile, repeatedly invited Danny Welbeck to gallop in behind it – which he did in telling style, contributing a hat-trick towards his new club’s 4-1 win.
Four days later, across London, Welbeck’s hard-running was a far more thankless enterprise. This is a Chelsea defence that bears all the ferocious, dogged hallmarks – and immense pride in keeping clean-sheets – that typified Wenger’s trophy winning Arsenal teams.
That Blues back-four of Branislav Ivanovic, John Terry, Gary Cahill and Cesar Azpilicueta does, though, benefit from the colossal protection afforded it by the monstrous Nemanja Matic. The Serb’s arrival at the Bridge in January can be pinpointed as the moment when Jose Mourinho really started to place his stamp on the second-coming of his Chelsea stewardship.
Matic’s presence allows Cesc Fabregas, sitting beside him, the freedom to concentrate on utilising to phenomenal effect his wonderful passing range. In front of that genuinely world class duo, Mourinho, like Wenger, can choose from a selection of intricate ball players – all of whom invest a huge deal of industry into their performances. Diego Costa, the spearhead for this Chelsea masterplan, scored the goal that killed Arsenal off on Sunday. Its execution said so much about the enormous gulf that exists between these two teams.
Ivanovic tigerishly nicked possession at the cusp of his own box, with Azpilicueta – tucked in to form a narrow back-four – picking up the pieces. The exceptional Spanish full-back quickly found John Obi Mikel – brought on as an additional defensive shield with the game poised at 1-0. When Mikel shifted things on to Fabregas, the midfielder hit a glistening pass from deep that split Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker to find Costa steaming through on goal. Two touches later, the game was, effectively, over.
The whole move reeked of a ruthlessness that Wenger’s modern day sides just do not possess. When the Gunners had Fabregas in their ranks his individual brilliance shone bright but, too often, he was let down by the absence of a Matic type figure around him; the player who would afford him extra offensive license.
In 2008/2009, the first campaign following Gilberto’s sale to Panathinaikos, the likes of Abou Diaby (in fairness to Wenger, the player who, but for an incomprehensible run of injuries, might have eventually proved a worthy successor to Vieira), Alex Song and Denilson brought some stability to the Arsenal midfield. For sheer quality, though, that team was already patently becoming light in a vital area. Embarrassingly overrun by Manchester United in a Champions League semi-final and overpowered by Chelsea at the same stage of the FA Cup, the Gunners were seeing their former contemporaries streak into the distance.
Jack Wilshere’s emergence in 2010/2011 did engender flickering belief that the gifted local tyro could be the stimulus for a fresh era of glorious achievement at the Emirates Stadium. One particular European victory over Barcelona saw Wilshere, Fabregas and Song dictate terms to the Catalans’ revered tiki-taka maestros.
Nevertheless, there was no escaping the reality that the combative nature which characterised Wenger’s earlier teams – epitomised by men of the ilk of Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Ray Parlour, Vieira and Petit – was long gone. Barca overturned a first-leg deficit to win that Champions League tie. During the same season, the Gunners, unthinkably, twice threw away two goal leads against Tottenham Hotspur – losing 3-2 and drawing 3-3. Even more remarkably, a 4-0 half-time advantage at Newcastle United was tossed away: the Geordies battling back for a 4-4 draw.
Yet, Wenger has remained unmoved. Tomas Rosicky, Nasri, Andrey Arshavin, Gervinho and Cazorla are just some of the slight, silky forwards brought in during the second half of the 64 year-old’s reign. When he has loosened the purse-strings – after enduring sustained and ferocious criticism from his club’s supporters for a perceived reluctance to spend – Wenger has lavished the big bucks on Ozil and Sanchez; arguably more of the same.
All of that attacking talent cannot compensate for having to field Arteta as the midfield ‘enforcer’ against Dortmund – or indeed, the deployment of the fading Flamini in the same role against Chelsea. This isn’t to lambast those two individuals. Arteta is a terrific footballer, carved from the same mould as Andrea Pirlo – albeit, not quite on the Italian superstar’s level. When Pirlo sits in front of his defenders, though, spraying passes at will, he is accompanied by energetic colleagues, stationed either side of him and doing all the ugly jobs; the chasing and the harrying.
That thankless task is one that Flamini understands. In fact, he performs it more than satisfactorily against all but the very best opposition. With Eden Hazard, Andre Schurrle and Oscar ceaselessly inter-changing in threatening areas, however, not to mention Fabregas, Ivanovic and Azpilicueta bombing on from their own half, it requires much more than the 30 year-old Frenchman’s efforts to stem the tide. The former Marseille player, teamed in a Gunners midfield three at Chelsea along with the more creative-minded Wilshere and Cazorla, didn’t stand a chance.
The imminent return to fitness of both Ramsey and Theo Walcott will bring Arsenal added vitality, goal-getting potential and, in the latter’s case, express pace. Neither player, though, will provide a solution to the ongoing problem of their team’s total lack of any midfield authority.
That void in Wenger’s side has been an issue for too long to suggest that the manager simply hasn’t been able to identify the right man to fill it. That, in turn, begs the question of whether Wenger remains the right man to manage Arsenal.
If the Gunners are content to qualify for the Champions League each year, while having a fair tilt at the knock-out competitions, then the answer is yes. By most standards, of course, that would represent a fantastic return. This, nevertheless, is a club currently punching below its weight. For all the good that Wenger has brought to his part of north London – and English football – he has to take responsibility for his team’s inability to consistently compete at the top end of the Premier League.
Arsenal don’t need a boss who is spoiling for a physical confrontation with Mourinho, they need a boss capable of building a team to compete with the Portuguese’s latest immense on-field construction.
Paul McNamara has just published ‘The More We Win, The Better We Will Be‘, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a non-league football club that offers the unusual opportunity of viewing an entire football season at one club from multiple viewpoints. To follow Paul on Twitter, please follow this link.