Tommy Martin: Officer material in short supply at Arsenal
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been stood down as Arsenal captain. Photo: Nick Potts/PA
Roy Keane once observed that the captaincy of a great club was like a brand in itself – a brand within the brand, he called it, something distinct and individual yet representative of the institution.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the captaincy of Arsenal Football Club.
Earlier this week Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang became the latest man to be relieved of football’s zaniest armband, after he demonstrated his innate leadership qualities by committing a third breach of club discipline in the space of a year.
Previous captastrophes included Granit Xhaka, whose heroic fighting spirit led him to challenge a chunk of the Emirates Stadium to a scrap. His predecessor, Laurent Koscielny, honoured the position by downing tools until he got a transfer to Bordeaux, then gleefully ripping off an Arsenal jersey in a social media promo for the French club. All were inspired by the godfather of modern Arsenal captaincy, William Gallas, who staged a sit-in protest after a game at Birmingham City, slagged off his teammates in public then joined Spurs.
Still, Per Mertesacker was nice.
In many ways, the Arsenal approach to captaincy is the logical conclusion of the modernisation process begun by Arsene Wenger in the late 1990s. Just as Wenger revolutionised players’ diets by replacing booze and bets with pasta and broccoli, so too has the old-fashioned aura of the Arsenal armband gone the way of the North Bank terrace.
No longer the preserve of sergeant-major-types like Joe Mercer, Frank McLintock, and Tony Adams, now the Gunner-in-chief must be as flakey as the latter-day club he represents. To think that the modern lot are successors to characters like Adams, whose personal demons did not prevent him leading with distinction across two very different eras, or Patrick Vieira, the embodiment of the Invincibles in grace and majesty.
If Keane was right and the captaincy of a club is a constituent entity whose values speak to the greater health of the whole, then nothing encapsulates the sense of drift and lack of responsibility at the heart of modern Arsenal than the shenanigans over the owner of the armband.
There was an element of lazy punditry in the often-expressed opinion during the late Wenger era that Arsenal’s problem was a lack of leaders on the pitch. When you’re getting battered 8-2 at Old Trafford, no-one’s going to look much like Captain Fantastic. But there was the sense that, like many powerful rulers in their dotage, Wenger’s tolerance for strong dissenting voices began to wane and a preference for compliant minions took hold.
As the legendary manager grew ever more obsessed with building a team of rinky-dinky attacking midfielders, so the captaincy was thrown about almost absent-mindedly to less-than-steely characters: Gallas, a 21-year-old Cesc Fabregas, Robin Van Persie and the peripheral Thomas Vermaelen, for example.
Not a big problem, in and of itself. Plenty will argue about the relevance of the modern captaincy. We are long past the days when Keane and Vieira set the tone by growling at each other in the Highbury tunnel. Modern players require data-based tactical instruction, not spittle-flecked bollockings and someone to organise a whip-round for the bus driver.
But in the post-Wenger era, it is almost as if Arsenal have fetishised the abdication of responsibility. Unai Emery appointed a five-captain supergroup consisting of Koscielny, Petr Cech, Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Ozil (!!), and Xhaka. The following season Emery put the matter to a vote, with Xhaka emerging as the choice of his first team peers ahead of Aubameyang, Héctor Bellerín, Alexandre Lacazette, and Özil, a ballot paper hardly dripping with officer material.
When Xhaka was stripped of the armband after his exchange of pleasantries with fans in 2019, Emery appointed Aubameyang as successor, the Arsenal captaincy now beginning to resemble the position of drummer in Spinal Tap. Mikel Arteta inherited the Gunners’ answer to Gerald Ford, leaving him in situ until this week’s events.
Aubameyang, ink freshly dried on a new £350,000-a-week contract, had shown his dedication to setting standards by reportedly turning up late on multiple occasions, including for the team meeting ahead of the North London derby in March this year. The captain was dropped that day and his latest infraction was the final straw. Bunking off to Paris midweek (admittedly with club permission and to visit his sick mother) he once again arrived back late. By the evidence of Instagram, he mourned his loss of station by getting a tattoo.
So far Arteta has passed up the opportunity to lay down a marker, to appoint a dressing room lieutenant to help marshal the troops up the Premier League table. In this as in many other areas, his mini-Guardiola credentials shine through. As with Pep at Manchester City, Arteta has a “leadership group,” a sort of coalition government rather than the absolute monarchy of Keano’s day.
“Having the leadership group is something that has been tremendously helpful because then you get different voices,” Arteta said this week. “It is a really multicultural dressing room that needs a lot of attention and different feelings and different languages, they all have to be involved and I’m comfortable with that.”
Arteta’s council of elders includes Lacazette and Xhaka, with Kieran Tierney, Gabriel and Aaron Ramsdale among those also reported to be chipping in. It seems like a sensitive and enlightened way to run a modern dressing room, except that this is Arsenal. Unlike with City, who had Vincent Kompany and then Fernandinho as first among equals, or Liverpool with Jordan Henderson, at Arsenal it’s not clear where the buck stops within the squad, if at all.
Perhaps they could get Roy in for a talk. Recently, the Sage of Mayfield explained how he spoke to the English rugby team before their departure to the 2019 World Cup. As part of the Q&A session, Owen Farrell asked him what made a good leader.
“I gave him the advice I would give anybody who is trying to lead,” Keane explained. “Be a decent human being, be on top of your own game, and don’t be an arsehole.”
There’s a brand for you.
