KEN EARLY: Gunners hit a new low
So we can see that Barcelona average the highest percentage of possession of all teams in the top five leagues (69%, if you’re interested), Liverpool have the most shots per game (19.3), Real Madrid are offside more than anyone else, Greuther Furth commit the most fouls, and so on.
It’s just as well that we are now measuring and comparing the little details of the leagues with each other to create these diverting pieces of information, because if you step back and look at the big picture the thing that impresses you about the top five leagues is how over they are.
The only one of these countries that still has a meaningful title race is France, where petrodollar Paris Saint-Germain have yet to prove they can withstand the psychological pressure of being massive favourites on the run-in. In Italy, only four points separate leaders Juventus from Napoli, but nobody believes Napoli will make it a contest until the end. In England, Manchester United are 12 points clear of Manchester City. In Germany and Spain, the gap between the leaders Bayern and Barcelona and the second placed teams is 15 and 12 points respectively. The leagues are only two-thirds of the way to completion and they are already over.
This shrinking of domestic competition raises the stakes in the Champions League. It will be a disappointment to any of the teams currently running away with theirdomestic titles to finish the season having won thedomestic title alone. Increasingly, for the biggest clubs, the only rivals worth beating are based abroad. European success has assumed disproportionate importance.
The 29 matches of the Champions League knockout rounds are now the only stage on which we know for sure that the really big clubs aren’t faking it.
The weekend just gone saw English football take a break from league matches to fit in some cup matches that some people give the impression they would rather dowithout. Luckily for Arsenal they no longer have to feign interest in this season’s FA Cup after being defeated by Venky’s Blackburn Rovers.
The Arsenal fans (like the golfer Ian Poulter) who complained that losing to a lower-division side for the first time in Wenger’s reign represented a new low were mistaken. Nothing that happens in an FA Cup match can be a new low because the big clubs have agreed that the competition no longer matters. Getting knocked out of it is not much different from losing a pre-season friendly.
Arsenal under Arsene Wenger are now about getting into the Champions League. The manager is as explicit about this as he can afford to be, suggesting at last autumn’s AGM that qualifying for the tournament was “a trophy”. In retrospect, that may have been the moment when the tipping point was reached with regard to Wenger’s reputation.
Arsenal have consistently won the trophy of Champions League qualification but it has been a trophy that has brought them little but pain. Nobody remembers Champions League group matches, the glory of the tournament is all in the knockout matches. Arsenal have won only six of the 20 Champions League knockout matches they’ve played in the last six years. A win a year is all the fans have had to get excited about, though Arsenal’s constant disappointing participation in the competition has been more profitable for the players and staff, many of whom are paid as though they were at a really successful club.
There is no point writing another column about how Arsenal have lost their way under Wenger. By now everyone is familiar with the arguments. It is plain now that years of steady decline have left the team worse than the Bruce Rioch side Wenger inherited. That Arsenal at least had the George Graham defence, Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp, and something of a winning culture to go with the drinking culture. The current team has no discernible culture at all.
This week Arsenal will face a Bayern Munich side that has suffered their own catastrophic failures in recent years, losing two Champions League finals in three years, one of those at their own ground, and losing two leagues in a row to Dortmund, a team with less than half of Bayern’s budget.
Unlike Arsenal, Bayern seem absolutely committed to doing something about it. Rather than repeat the same behaviour and expect different results, they have instituted several major changes. They replaced their sporting director Christian Nerlinger with Matthias Sammer, broke their transfer record to sign Javi Martinez from Athletic Bilbao, and despite record-breaking league form this season, they appointed Pep Guardiola to take over from Jupp Heynckes in June. This is a club where failure has consequences, and if they defeat Arsenal to reach the quarter-final draw, that will be something for Arsenal’s board of directors to think about.
