The best news to emerge from the Emirates during this difficult season was that in December of Wilshere signing a new-long-term contract, along with other British tyros, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Carl Jenkinson. These players are proof of potential at Arsenal, but hope for the future isn’t at the top of the agenda for the club’s frustrated fans. It isn’t only those on the terraces – who as we have been reminded again recently, pay the highest prices in the country to watch their team – that must be desperate for new arrivals.
There was one occasion at Stamford Bridge on Sunday when having chased and harried across the Chelsea back-four, Wilshere was unable to hide his exasperation when he turned to see no team-mate backing him up in his efforts. Without an injection of genuine midfield and attacking class, Arsenal could lose more than just the Champions League place which Wenger has so proudly guarded for the past 15-years.
Wilshere has started the last ten Arsenal matches (played over six weeks), a sign that Wenger is reverting to his habit of the then teenager’s breakthrough season of 2010/2011, in which the manager arguably overused his precocious playmaker, starting him in 44 games. That heavy-workload must have contributed to the stress-fracture injury which heralded the beginning of Wilshere’s 16 month absence. The player himself has to be wary of a similar fate befalling him again. He will be equally worried however, at the prospect of spending his peak years fighting a fruitless lone-cause.
If a glance around the field at the home team on Sunday might have offered Wilshere a look at a team with more riches of quality in depth than his own, even more painful for the lifelong Gunner and the club’s supporters, would have been watching the encounter between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United at White Hart Lane. Arsenal followers have revelled in their hegemony over their great North London rivals since Spurs last finished above them in 1995. That superiority was seriously threatened last year, but the unpalatable scenario was seen off, thanks largely to Van Persie.
With a seven point advantage, albeit having played a game more, it is looking increasingly likely that 2012/2013 will be the first time Tottenham will outperform a Wenger team over a campaign. Many reasons for that likely outcome were apparent against United on Sunday.
While Arsenal have sought to replace the injured Mikel Arteta with Coquelin, Spurs responded to the severe setback of losing the excellent Sandro for the season by re-introducing Scott Parker into their midfield. After a characteristically tigerish and responsible 75 minutes, the 32 year-old departed for Tom Huddlestone, a four-cap England international who would walk into the Gunners’ current midfield. Alongside Huddlestone on the bench were; Jan Vertonghen, one of the Premier League’s more impressive defenders this term, the technically blessed Gylfi Sigurdsson, and the returning Cameroonian left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto.
On the pitch United expertly nullified the threat of Gareth Bale. Their hosts however, found other routes of attack. Aaron Lennon was outstanding on the right, and displayed his evolving maturity and composure when calmly laying David De Gea’s loose punch across the area for Clint Dempsey to finish. The American posed the Red Devils countless problems through the middle with his movement and control, while his erstwhile Fulham team-mate Mousa Dembele gives Spurs a real authority and cunning in the centre of the field.
With an outstanding goalkeeper in Hugo Lloris, and Jermain Defoe developing into much more than just a clinical finisher, Tottenham suddenly boast a stronger unit than Arsenal’s.
Of course, Arsenal followers will find the prospect of their friends from the Seven Sisters Road having a group of footballers superior to that which exists within their own squad very difficult to stomach. What will hurt far more though, is that when a Tottenham team takes to the field their commitment and application is taken for granted. The same cannot be said about whichever eleven Wenger sends out at present.
It is a measure of Arsenal’s lowering stock that the comparison being made is with Spurs rather than Manchester United, against whom they once enjoyed such a fiercely contested battle for the top prizes under Wenger. Now, even the current non-vintage crop from Old Trafford are away over the horizon. The 22 point gap between the teams in the league table tells only a tiny part of the story. United continue to achieve on-field success and attract some of the world’s greatest players, and most achingly off all they can now lure the best Arsenal have to offer.
There are too many players at the Emirates who are happy to coast, and are not prepared to stand up and fight to reverse the club’s declining fortunes. The one man who is giving every ounce of his considerable ability and heart to the cause may soon decide, like Messers, Clichy, Fabregas, Nasri and Van Persie, that to maximise his talent – and to avoid premature burnout – he will have to leave his beloved Gunners.
It is certain that if Wilshere does reach that conclusion in the next couple of years, his suitors would include every pre-eminent club in Europe. That is a fact which speaks extremely positively for the future of his national team’s midfield – but would do nothing to ease what would be the most sickening blow yet for an already dissenting support.
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