Wenger beaten if he refuses to learn lesson

THE art of winning is in learning from losing.

The Tipperary hurlers understand this. In the 2009 All-Ireland final Brendan Cummins pucked the ball back out within 20 seconds of Henry Shefflin’s game-changing penalty only to find himself within another 20 seconds picking the ball out of the net again. Twelve months later when Richie Power blasted to the net, Cummins made sure to walk all the way behind and around his goal before restarting the game, giving his team a full half-minute to catch their breath and refocus. For all the sympathy and admiration their heroic performance in 2009 garnered, Tipp themselves identified they hadn’t been clinical enough in front of goal and that Kilkenny had beaten them on the hook-block count they had prided themselves on winning.

But what hurts instructs and what cost Tipp the 2009 final won them the 2010 version.

Munster felt they’d been overly-cautious in the 2002 Heineken Cup final, almost playing not to lose rather than to win. When they got back to Cardiff in 2006 they vowed to leave nothing behind from the off, kicking for the corner and going for their try rather than taking the penalty Biarritz were willing to concede.

Munster won because they’d lost — or at least learned from that loss.

That’s the tragedy of Arsenal. There is no shame in not winning titles but there is in not learning.

The manner in which they’ve imploded this season is depressingly similar to how they blew up in 2008. For long stretches of that first season without Thierry Henry, Arsene Wenger’s young side played devastating football. But, just like this season, it all turned on a game against Birmingham City.

It’s a day best remembered for Eduardo’s horrific leg break and the histrionics of William Gallas following the concession of a late penalty, but you’d have thought the circumstances that led to that spot kick would be at least ingrained in the players’ psyche.

Deep into injury-time, Arsenal were 2-1 up when a seemingly harmless ball rolled towards the left side of Manuel Almunia’s box. But Gael Clichy switched off before overcompensating by bundling Stuart Parnaby over, allowing James McFadden to slot home with the last kick of the game.

You’d have thought Arsenal would vow never to lose a lead in such circumstances again.

Yet on Sunday Emmanuel Eboue committed an almost identical mental error to that Clichy did three years earlier.

The Groundhog Day vibe was compounded by the reaction of Wenger. Last Sunday he blamed the referee for playing too much injury time, just as at St Andrew’s he lashed out at Mike Dean for awarding a “dodgy penalty” and the free-kick that led to Birmingham’s first goal.

It might be below a philosopher like Wenger to take instruction from Rocky Balboa but there’s a lot in what the Philadelphia slugger says in the franchise’s sixth film. “It ain’t how hard ya hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward... That’s how winning is done! But ya gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!”

Wenger is better than all that finger-pointing at Kenny Dalglish and Andre Marriner; he remains one of the bravest and best men in world football. But he has also remained in the same state of victimhood that marked Arsenal’s meltdown in 2008. When his team drew 1-1 against Liverpool in the league that season as well, Eamon Dunphy quipped that his exasperated sideline antics were like something from a John Cleese sketch. Liam Brady beside him baulked at that, defending his boss at the Emirates on the grounds “any manager is entitled to show his frustration”, but Brady was wrong. Mike Krzyzewski, coach to the US Olympic basketball team and the hallowed Duke University programme, once described leadership as about putting on the face your team needs to see. Too often on match day Wenger has failed to provide the required face.

Three years ago we also identified that Arsenal’s biggest failing in 2008 was how they fell down on what the business guru John Maxwell calls the Law of the Edge — that the difference between equally talented teams is internal leadership.

When Roy Keane spoke to the Cork hurlers in 2006 he said his gauge of a team-mate was whether or not he would want him lining up behind him as he stood in the tunnel in Highbury alongside Vieira. That was the litmus test; would he want to go to battle with you in the war that was United-Arsenal?

That was once the challenge and the constitution of Arsenal and it’s one Wenger must aspire to reclaiming by posing the question Keane used to do. For titles are won by leaders more so than by footballers, and either you cultivate them or you sign them. Arsenal fans can only hope as Stan Kroenke’s dollars roll in that the penny has finally dropped with Arsene Wenger.

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