Wenger wrong to trust players
Just one thing didn’t ring true: “They wonder why they’re in the position they’re in.”
The wondering has long ceased. It might even be the wondering that Arsenal miss most.
Arsenal are Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, waking every morning to “I Got You Babe” but never, at the end of the day, getting Rita.
They are not Phil Connors on day two or day three either; they are on game 1001 and they know well what the following dawn holds.
It doesn’t make any difference how they mix things up. There is the Tease Tottenham approach, popular in recent seasons — the calamitous start, the threat of an end-of-days implosion, before the late surge.
This time, they dusted off the routine last seen in 2010-11; early prospects, ignominious collapse. Not many fell for it.
Most pundits don’t acknowledge the different patterns anymore; retrofitting every campaign as a blistering whirlwind of promise that burned in March flames, set by their rivals.
But they can be forgiven that much. Because after a while, it does all tend to blur.
The details don’t change much. The two-week injuries that turn career-threatening; the promises to sign top, top quality if it becomes available; the discovery of a strong boy who they have high hopes for; the days when they are ‘little bit naive’; the days, like today probably, when they play ‘little bit with the handbrake’; the days when they win 4-0 at home and intoxicate.
An Arsenal season is now a cliche.
The agitators for change will insist that Arsene — like Phil Connors — has abused the knowledge that his actions have no consequences.
Phil stole money and manipulated women; Arsene indulged the youth project. Phil drove drunk; Arsene threw the keys to his attack at Giroud, Bendtner and Sanogo.
It is around this part of the movie that Phil more or less shed his identity, didn’t know who he was anymore; depressed loner one day, crazed nihilist the next. Just as Arsenal lurched from defending for their lives at Tottenham to dancing out at Stamford Bridge without a care.
Though some fans, in their anxiety to begin a new chapter, will identify more with Phil when he starts chucking toasters in the bath.
Scholesy said he was sorry for the Arsenal fans. But there is that magnificent scene in Groundhog Day, when Phil is sat at a bar, in a bowling alley, muttering to himself, that reminds us not to feel too much sympathy.
“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and everything that you did was the same, and nothing mattered?”
The gloomy local beside him overhears. “That about sums it up for me.”
The seemingly pointless chase of the petrodollar clubs is a bit of a drudge for everyone, even if Brendan Rodgers, given a handy calendar, is having an impressive go.
But then Arsene, with his full team, wiped the floor with Brendan in November.
The clamour now, around Arsenal, is for a tactician. Somehow who will talk about the low block. Or the high block. Some kind of block. A man who will make petty gains. The kind of fella who might hook up with Andie MacDowell after a couple of weddings.
It would be a waste of everything that has gone before.
Arsene’s path to redemption is a little different to Phil’s. Acceptance saved Phil. With Arsene, acceptance came long ago.
“You have to make sure the players are under the impression that they are playing and struggling for themselves. Point them, in the right direction and then allow them to express themselves. If they do that, they can move mountains.”
His old philosophy; create the environment where his team will become as good as it can be. Beyond that; no short cuts.
Just trust them. In a way, there was something beautiful about how he sent them out at Stamford Bridge, without most of their best players, into a trap — a slaughter.
He trusted them. He was wrong. Again. He will dust them down and the third or fourth best set of players in the division will probably finish third or fourth again.
It took a bit of time for Phil to evolve after he was trapped; to spend his days saving people or playing jazz piano or flipping cards into a hat.
Arsene too has finally dabbled in new things; drilling the defence, signing €45 million superstars, maybe even winning FA Cups.
To find tomorrow, Arsenal too must try something new and spend the cash reserves to give him the best players.
He’ll trust them and they will finish where they should finish.
If Arsenal won’t do that; Arsene is also the best bet to ensure the Champions League music – as well as Sonny & Cher — is still playing when they wake up in the morning.
Either way, boredom isn’t justification enough for writing the ending just yet.
There is no known sales patter more effective than the intoxicating phrase ‘bad-tempered affair’ when it comes to persuading punters to tune into a sporting event.
The darts is no different, though anyone with a decent nose will detect the unmistakable whiff of bullshit.
The Premier League, at the O2 on Thursday, was good fun, as usual, even if there is a sense of glorified exhibition about it all.
Especially when you have fellas like Peter Wright (pictured above) — or Snakebite, as they want us to call him — admitting he has been chastised for not hamming things up enough.
This from a chap with a snake painted on the side of his head. We can presume Barry Hearn was ordering the ham.
Wrighty hammed it up on Thursday night all right, against Michael van Gerwen, gesturing and showboating. I talked to Ray van Barneveld this week (see pages 24 and 25), who said, of van Gerwen — in what seemed a compliment — “you don’t have to tell him things because he knows everything already”.
Young Michael took loud and vigorous exception to Snakebite, in the quintessential bad-tempered affair. Hearn probably didn’t even have to tell him.
You tend to suspect the worst with these lads, but the Nations League sounds like a bit of fun. If nothing else; we might even see a long-awaited transfer for that age-old GAA phrase; it’s only the league.
Signed up to play Gaelic football for Yorkshire GAA Club. As long as it keeps him busy during Soccer Saturday.
This is a thing now — jugglers getting stuck into each other. If Barry Hearn wants to step things up at the arrows… (Watch it: bit.ly/combatjuggle)
They are actually going to do this?
