I’m absolutely furious. I’m also incredibly disappointed and depressed. A six point deficit is in no way insurmountable, yet the defeat against Stoke has done something to me. It has extinguished any lingering hope I had that our team is/was capable of winning the Premier League title.
No-one doubts the intermittent quality of Arsenal’s play, but the team simply does not have the required balance between attack and defence, panache and pragmatism, exuberance and maturity, to mount a credible league campaign.
There will be many more mouth-watering displays before the season is out, but these will be punctuated by a sufficient number of spineless no-shows to ensure that we again finish outside the top two or three.
Why so glum? you may ask. Where’s the faith? Well, I have to say, I don’t really do faith – I leave that to religious zealots and the hopelessly deluded. Technically I’m an agnostic, but practically speaking I’m an atheist. When all of my senses tell me one thing, I tend not to believe the opposite. I want to believe we can win the Premiership, but all my good sense convinces me otherwise.
We clearly have a problem in defence and there is no reason, other than blind faith, to believe this will change. Everything I’ve seen thus far tells me that without fresh personnel, Arsenal will continue to struggle defensively. Our manager appears to believe it is only a lack of concentration that has cost us, but this only begs the question: why? Do the players not care?
It is hard to imagine any of the other teams in the top four switching off so spectacularly as to concede a two goal lead in the final five minutes of a game. Indeed, our shortfall this season has been so pronounced that there is even the suggestion that the top four is becoming a top three.
Of course we are better than the middle tier of teams, but are we still entitled to place ourselves alongside Man U, Chelsea and arguably even Liverpool? As much as it pains me to say, I don’t think we can. We are looked upon as a soft touch and we are no longer feared away from our home turf. The fact that Fulham, Hull and Stoke can all say they’ve beaten the Mighty Arsenal suggests we’re not so mighty after all.
The only words of sanguinity I can offer are that I don’t think we are far away from re-establishing parity. The team does not require a massive overhaul; the nucleus of a great team is there. To make the step up the manager need only invest in three key areas: goalkeeping, central defence and defensive midfield.
These problem-areas are hackneyed topics of conversation within the Arsenal fraternity, and it says everything about the manager’s unshakable faith in his own admirable yet perhaps unworkable philosophy that we are still talking about it. Hopefully this latest defeat will have convinced even Arsene that something must be done in January; otherwise we may see something far worse than just poor results.
My greatest fear is if the ambition of certain players is not backed up with hard investment, the promising crop that Wenger has nurtured may start to fracture. It would be a great shame for Arsenal and for football generally if the Fabregas Generation never fulfilled its undoubted potential. Please, Arsene, don’t let this happen. Don’t let blind faith prove our undoing.
