Arsenal have suffered a hat-trick of humiliations in the current Premier League season. For a team blessed with the superstar arrival of Mesut Ozil, with the emerging box-to-box sensation that is Aaron Ramsey and with the intuitive defensive partnership that Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny have, for the most part, enjoyed, it seems almost unfathomable that the Gunners team, who had performed so admirably for the majority of the season, could have repeatedly been found lacking not just once, against Manchester City, but at Liverpool and versus Chelsea, on Saturday. Andy Gray had more when speaking to talkSPORT earlier in the week: It seems incredible to talk about a man like Arsene Wenger as being naive but I honestly think sometimes he must be. The likes of [Sir Alex Ferguson] Fergie, [Jose] Mourinho and [Carlo] Ancelotti would go into games and think, right, first thing you have to remember is to defend, to be tight early on in the game. Arsenal just go into games and play, whether it is home or away, with an openness about them. It seems naive. The weekend was a classic example. Seven minutes in, they were so, so open and they are 2-0 down and fighting an uphill battle. The mind casts back to when Francesc Fabregas was sold to Barcelona in 2011 and the Spaniard, who had blossomed under the tutelage of Wenger for eight years, commented within months on the differences between the way Arsenal approached opponents and how Barcelona do. article continues below To paraphrase the now 26-year-old, Cesc explained that Wenger set his team up in only one way - the Arsenal way - regardless of whom the weekend (or midweek) opposition was. At Barcelona, this was markedly different as the team would sit down two to three days ahead of matchday and, as well as training ground exercises and drills, there would be lectures and seminars based on tactical training and what tactics would be implemented against their opponents, their strengths, how to combat them and how to exploit their weaknesses. It is not just an ineffective one-size- fits-all tactical strategy that has found Arsenal out at points throughout this season, as the club have also suffered an exhaustive injury list. While this may seem unfortunate, there have been far too many muscular injuries sustained for it to be coincidence, especially when one considers a: it repeatedly occurs to Arsenal players every season and b: it is Arsenal who are continually at the top of the injury league. Currently in first place in the injury league, Arsenal are without Koscielny, Ryo Miyaichi, Ozil, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, Ramsey and Abou Diaby. All of them are muscular problems and, as alluded to by one renowned fitness coach, most could have been prevented. Raymond Verheijen, speaking on the Off The Ball football podcast and as previously reported on by Here Is The City, said last week: In the last few weeks, [Arsenal] again had several muscle injuries so based on that, I decided to go back on my timeline on Twitter because I remembered that I addressed this injury problem at Arsenal several times in the last four or five years. Every time Arsenal in general, and Wenger in particular, [have injuries], they talk about bad luck and external factors [but they] must look in the mirror. There is some incompetence but as long as you dont understand the problem, then in reality you are unconsciously incompetent and that is the worst form. Wenger is working with the same people for ages already and that is probably one of the reasons why they are not able to solve their problems. Wenger launched an internal inquiry into the injury issue, yet as this is a long-running problem, surely this should have been more of a priority… a preventative measure rather than a reactionary one, however, only the latter has become a leit motif during the Frenchmans reign in England.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 07:02:41 +0000
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