Premier League Nonsense

Poor results, players showing no heart, the decline of a great team with a manager seemingly impotent to halt the slide and unrest in the support. Welcome to the Arsenal 1973. Or 1983. Or 1995. Or 2012.

Take your pick. What’s happening at the Arsenal is nothing new and neither is the apparent malaise in the higher echelons of the club.

For some unknown reason the Arsenal seem unable to dominate English football in the way first Liverpool and latterly Manchester United have done the last 40 years or so. Arsene Wenger is just the latest manager to find that the Arsenal hot seat does get very hot after a while.

After winning the club’s first ever League and FA Cup double in 1970/71 there were those predicting the club would go on and dominate English football for a long time to come. They didn’t of course. The following season they finished 5^th in the table and lost to Leeds United in the FA Cup Final despite adding record signing Alan Ball to the squad.

A year later they brought in old school centre half Jeff Blockley to replace inspirational skipper Frank McLintock, oh how we need him on the field now, sleeves rolled up cajoling and threatening his team mates to show some spunk for the badge.

McLintock epitomized the Arsenal style in a way that Tony Adams later emulated but no one has come close to since. He was not a one club man, signed from Leicester City, but he was a captain in the days when captains rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in. literally.

Once, in a European game with Lazio in Rome things got out of hand on the field and there were some afters later in the car park between the two sets of players as Arsenal lads jumped into help their own. Can you imagine that now? They would be so wrapped up in their oversized headphones and texting their agent they would know nothing until the poor victim posted something on Twitter or Facebook. Then they would do nothing for fear of misplacing their ‘man bag’.

Back to that 70s side. Blockley was no McLintock. Older fans compared him with Ian Ure; today Blockley is recalled whenever fans recall the worst centre halves in the club’s history and a younger generation compare the hapless Sebastian Squillaci with him. He most certainly was not the man to replace a legend and restore past glory. The manager, Bertie Mee obviously realized that too late and brought in Terry Mancini, a balding, aging defender from QPR.

That said it all. Players like Peter Storey, Bob McNab and George Graham, mainstays of that double side, were moving on and their replacements were of a much poorer quality. North Bank hero Charlie George fell out with the club and was sold to Derby County. Half the double team had gone within three years and the club, apparently skint, turned to youth. Players like Brendon Batson, Brian Hornsby, Wilf Rostron and John Matthews were expected to leap from the youth team to fill the gaping void and none did though one young Irishman,Liam Brady did starting breaking into the first team around this time.

Mee eventually quit in 1976 after two relegation struggles had seen support whittle down to less than 20,000 for home games. In came Terry Neill who set about spending money to try and recapture the desire. In came the prolific Malcolm MacDonald from Newcastle United along with his former team mate Pat Howard, as well as players like Steve Walford and Kevin Stead. MacDonald scored for fun but suffered from injuries while the others just faded away making no impact on the club or its fans.

After four cup finals straddling the 1970s and 1980s, just one was won, fans were getting ever more frustrated as the club lurched from mediocrity to nothingness. Brady flourished as did two other young Irishmen who came through the ranks, David O’Leary and Frank Stapleton. Alan Sunderland and Willie Young were brought in to do a job but Arsenal under Neill were never challenging for the main prize, the title.

As the club grew more desperate so did the signings. Peter Nicholas came in, a tacking midfielder who surely replicated Brian Talbot. A striker was signed, Clive Allen, only to be swapped for a defender, Kenny Sansom. That was the Arsenal under Neill.

In 1982 big money was spent. In came England international Tony Woodcock and promising forward Lee Chapman while later in the season silky midfielder Vladimir Petrovic came in to add some flair fans had not seen since Liam Brady had been sold. Indeed, Brady’s departure, plus the controversial sale of Stapelton to Manchester United convinced many that Arsenal had become a selling club and the new signings did little to generate any enthusiasm among the fans with attendances failing to increase by any large amount.

It took the arrival of Charlie Nicholas to restore the feel good factor at Arsenal. Ok, he was ultimately a failure, he had no pace and couldn’t head the ball, but at last fans had found someone they could identify and in the early days of the season attendances did increase.

The Charlie effect though soon wore off and after a League Cup upset at home to Walsall, they lost 2-1, Terry Neill was sacked. The dismissal hadfollowed weeks of disquiet among the support with fans dividing into two camps. One lost thing Neill should go, another lot that he should stay. Grim times on theNorth Bank as the divisions evolved into pushing and shoving with the occasional slapping going on. Having lost the fans Neill’s days were numbered and in came Don Howe for a couple of years.

But it was George Graham who eventually put the swagger back in to the Arsenal and he did it promoting good young players like David Rocastle, Michael Thomas and Paul Merson. At the same time he made Tony Adams, who had made his debut under Neill in 1983, captain and he set about using his knowledge of the smaller clubs signing players like Perry Groves, Lee Dixon and Alan Smith.

Graham moulded a team in his own image and they became very successful. But he always mistrusted flair players. His methods worked as he won the ECEW in 1994 with players like Ian Selly and Steve Morrow at the heart of the midfield. It was the third cup triumph in 12 months but Arsenal fans were growing impatient with the football being played. Yes, it worked well in the cup but despite an Indian summer in 1992 when Graham’s team, boasting Anders Limpar, Ian Wright, Paul Merson and Kevin Campbell scored goals for fun, there was never another serious title challenge. Manchester United’s domination of English football was just beginning but Graham responded by dreiding Ferguson’s signing of Eric Cantona.

English football was changing and it was leaving Graham, and Arsenal behind. Cantona changed the mindset among many but Graham, stuck in his ways, proved stubborn. He would sign players like John Jensen, a dour, Danish midfielder, and Pal Lydersen, a Norwegian no one knew anything about. Jimmy Carter had failed to make the grade at Liverpool yet Graham brought him to the Arsenal.

In the transfer window of 1995 he finally splashed some cash. In came Glkenn Helder, Chris Kiwomya and John Hartson. None made any impact and weeks later, amid allegations he had taken bungs from agents, he was sacked.

Again Arsenal were rudderless. This time for 18 months as first Stewart Houstan then Bruce Rioch took charge. Then came Arsene Wenger and this time it was the Arsenal leading from the front. Wenger recognized the sea change in English football in a way that Graham never did. He loosened the shackles imposed by Graham and brought flair players like Anelka, Overmars, Henry and Pires.

For a while Manchester United and Arsenal shared the major trophies between them. Arsenal had become many people’s second favourite team and even the media said nice things about us. We were winning and we were winning well. Most un Arsenal like.

It was too good to be true. The building of a new stadium became a massive albatross round the club’s neck and forced a shift in policy. Wenger concentrated on signing promising young players many of whom plainly weren’t good enough. Yet, stubbornly, Wenger insisted his way was the best but results suggested otherwise.

There was a brittleness the club was unaccustomed to. Defeat against Old Trafford, the end of the impressive 49 game unbeaten run, took a long time to recover from. When Arsenal were on course for the Premier League an unfortunate injury to striker Eduardo and a late penalty saw another poor reaction with supposed captain William Gallas prancing round the field showing his disgust to the fans and the world.

Wenger seemed to treat the domestic cup competitions with contempt; perhaps little realizing winning one trophy, even be it the Carling Cup, would do wonders for the players’ morale. But he would brush off defeat in the Carling and FA Cup saying they weren’t important; what mattered was qualification for the Champions League.

The squad visibly weaked. Aleksander Hleb was no Robert Pires, and the focus moved away from lightining fast counter attacks to more possession football with a tall target man at the heart of everything. With frequent changes in the line up, and players often missing long spells through injury, the club seemed to be treading water at best.

Wenger would boast about how teams featuring players like Almunia, Clichy and Eboue were among the best teams he had ever built but the fans were starting to turn against him. They’re not mugs, they knew the players being brought into the team were not a patch on previous teams he had built.

There were rumbling among the support. That Wenger had lost his way, he could no longer motivate the players. For many, 2011 was the final straw. Losing to Birmingham City in the last minute of the Carling Cup Final. Of course Wenger being Wenger brushed it off, condescendingly saying it was only the Carling Cup. What mattered was the Champions League. We lost that as well and soon were left with nothing. Again. While Wenger blamed the pitches, the refs, the fixture list and anything else that came to mind. It was never his fault, the fates were against us was his opinion. The players, he claimed, possessed great mental strength.

Then came the disastrous pre season. All summer he claimed Nasri and Fabregas would not be leaving despite the mounting evidence they would. They did of course leave. In August. Meaning Wenger had just days to bring in some replacements. Then there was that 8-2 defeat against Manchester United; the latest in a long line of embarrassing defeats against our so called rivals.

Oh, and I forget to mention the 6 and a half % increase in ticket prices.

Inertia at the club. An unwillingness to face the facts and the results. A series of poor signings. Bad players onlong term contracts with high salaries that can’t be moved because no one else is daft enough to pay that kind of money for them.

It hurts to say that Wenger must leave after all that he has done for this club. Not everything at the club is down to him. That the club are a PR shambles isn't his fault; seriously, that Gazidis geezer coming out saying Manchester City are jealous of us?! Do these people know anything at all about football? And a new majority shareholder who promises we'll be seeing more of him yet is never seen again? That's another fine mess there Stanley.

There is no doubting players have let him down. Step forward Theo Walcott. If ever there has beena player everyone has willed to do well it is Theo. Yet time and time and time again he has betrayed the trust placed in him by his manager. He's a lucky young man, any other manager would have long ditched him.

Many fans wouldn’t mind so much if there was some effort from the overpaid players but there isn’t. The same mistakes are being repeated year n, year out. The lack of fight against both AC Milan and Sunderland showed that Wenger has surely lost the power to motivate the team. There is no mental strength in that dressing room like there is not much quality and there is absolutely no leadership. Wenger is deluding himself when says otherwise and he is bullshitting the fans.

# posted by Me @ 8:28 AM