Who Is To Blame?

        It is early December, almost mid-way into the football season. The Barclays Premier League seems to have found it’s worthy contenders and Arsenal doesn’t feature in those (once again)! Doesn’t the above picture send alarm bells ringing? At least since 2003(since I started following Arsenal)I have never seen Arsenal being 10th at this point of the season. This has been a VERY POOR start to a season according to Wenger standards as well. This is the LOWEST POINTS TALLY FOR ARSENAL AFTER 15 games under Wenger!

Arsenal's Form Guide- Not Impressive!

        After the hard-fought 1-1 draw against Man City at the Etihad, it’s been a terrible downhill for Arsenal. What has followed is-
Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea (EMIRATES)
West Ham 1-3 Arsenal (UPTON PARK)
Norwich 1-0 Arsenal (CARROW ROAD)
Arsenal 1-0 QPR (EMIRATES)
Man United 2-1 Arsenal (OLD TRAFFORD)
Arsenal 3-3 Fulham (EMIRATES)
Arsenal 5-2 Tottenham(EMIRATES)
Aston Villa 0-0 Arsenal (VILLA PARK)
Everton 1-1 Arsenal (GOODISON PARK)
Arsenal 0-2 Swansea (EMIRATES)

It means P:10 W:3 D:3 L:4 GS:15 GC:14. Points = 12/30. And it’s not that Arsenal has been unlucky not to win, Arsenal’s performances have been consistently poor. Arsenal were lucky to get a victory even against a hopeless QPR(remember Arteta’s slightly off-side goal). It could probably have been a different story in the North London derby had Adebayor not got sent-off!

       To be very honest and frank(straight from the heart)Arsenal does NOT currently seem like a Top 4 contender let alone Championship contenders! I have enlisted some issues which according to me are reasons capable of explaining Arsenal’s current woes(in decreasing order of their impact on crisis creation)-
1)MR. ARSENE WENGER- Some of the Emirates faithful have gone from “Wenger Knows Best” to “Wenger, You don’t know what you are doing” and some even going to the extent of saying, “#WengerOut”. Okay, He created the club; he created the best playing philosophy at Arsenal, etc. Agreed! But currently I am of the belief that Arsene doesn’t have solutions to the problems at hand. His claims of a 4th placed finish being equivalent to a “Trophy” give a feeling that Arsenal fans and the team share different ambitions!

I accuse Wenger of the following-
     i)TACTICAL RIGIDITY-This according to me is the major drawback of Wenger. He has not experimented with different formation, has never tried to mix things up. I think there is NO PLAN B in case PLAN A(the intricate passing game)fails. Even when he chose to play without a striker against Swansea(which he should never have)he stuck to the same formation with Gervinho playing as the striker! The stubbornness of Arsene Wenger to tweak his tactics(Example-He could have played with a False-9 against Swansea if he had planned to give Giroud a rest)is one of the reasons why we are not looking threatening in attack. Arsenal’s play has become too predictable and hence other managers have been able to study and deploy counter-tactics which are preventing Arsenal from creating good goal-scoring opportunities. All of this due to Wenger deploying the same tactics time and again. That’s where great Managers come into the picture who learn to change with time, change with opposition.

     ii)POOR TRANSFER POLICY- The age-old accusation held against Arsene Wenger is his inability to hold onto the club’s best players. Also he is a very thrifty customer when it comes to buying established World Class players. I agree he has usually made pretty good signings(this year included too)but they are not equivalent to the outgoing talent, i.e., INCOMING TALENT << OUTGOING TALENT. Also as he is unable to keep his best players the new signings act as replacements (who’ve got big boots to fill) and not as supplements to strengthen the team further. Hence that causes a lack of good back-up talent (especially at GK, LB and CF).

Not yet replaced- Missing him!

2)LACK OF QUALITY BACKUP- I personally don’t think we have the depth in our squad required to seriously challenge for the title(as was pointed out at the beginning of the season to me by my friend and fellow Gooner, Ayush Shah. You were SPOT ON!). The fact is simple, every year we lose our best players and replace them with usually half decent but inferior replacements. The result is a gradual but inevitable diminution in the quality of the team. We virtually don’t have a 2nd keeper, 2nd Left-back and a 2nd striker! Also we don’t seem to have another player like Cazorla who can seem to create magic out of nothing. Hence Cazorla is forced to play every game. Cazorla and other players like Arteta, etc. have been playing 2 games a week for the past 2 months. Due to the lack of good backup these players are forced to play in spite of them being jaded and them having heavy legs. This could be a reason as to why these players are not able to give their best week-in week-out.

Do these players deserve being Arsenal FC backups?

3)PLAYERS- The lack of commitment as well as confidence of the players is showing on the field especially when Arsenal don’t have possession. Arsenal players are not closing down the opponents often as should be the case in our kind of play. The players are not showing the kind of bite and fight required from champion teams. Players don’t seem eager to regain possession which is of paramount importance, tactically speaking. Arsenal is the kind of team which loves to enjoy the lion’s share of possession and dominate the game, creating several goal scoring opportunities just by keeping a lot of the ball. Especially against Swansea the lack of urgency to regain possession was evident.

Possession statistics show a 'DIFFERENT' Arsenal than I know of!

Also some very key players seem to be terribly out of form. Our own talismanic Thomas 'Verminator' Vermaelen has been pretty out-of-sorts. The ever-reliable Vermaelen is making one mistake too-many. Probably the pressure of captaincy is not bringing the best out of him. Lukas Podolski too is not able to stamp his authority on the game. He, sometimes seems to be lost in the game. To make matters worse, the young Aaron Ramsey who needs to regain a lot of lost confidence is played out of his natural position because Wenger is too stubborn to tweak his tactics!

We want you both to regain confidence. We need you'll!

4)BOARD-The club can be characterised, in my time as a fan, as regularly building a decent team only to demolish it through lack of ambition, investment call it what you will. It seems as if Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger don’t seem to be on the same page. Wenger had identified Hazard, Mata, Lloris, etc. much before they got sold for hefty sums. They did not adorn an Arsenal jersey just because the board supposedly pulled out of these deals at the last moment. Wenger publicly make a statement that is now one of his most famous as manager of Arsenal. “Imagine the worst situation – we lose Fabregas and Nasri – you cannot convince people you are ambitious after that”. It’s true, you cannot convince people you are a big team if you constantly lose your top stars. But this wasn’t Wenger talking to the fans; he’s talking to the board itself. I’m convinced that he was making a sly dig at the board.

Culprits? I would prefer David Dein instead!

So those are the problem areas which I have identified and I believe are the root causes for Arsenal’s consistently poor and embarrassing performances in the last month! That's NOT the ARSENAL I RECOGNIZE AND HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH!

(P.S.- Please discuss your views on the above. Do let me know if you agree/ disagree with my point of view. Also I would love to know what according to you are the reasons for Arsenal’s consistently poor performances!)