Lacking leaders after a weekend of misery

CONSIDERING the scenes of an increasingly tormented Arsène Wenger writhing in anguish on the touchline these past few weeks, I’m sure if he was a four-legged filly someone would’ve had the kindness to put him out of his misery.

Each passing week, our manager looked as if he’s buckling under the weight of his responsibility.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only Gooner at the Reebok wishing someone would put me out of my misery. Thinking about this postmortem of our dead parrot season, I realised I could probably forward a previous piece from the penultimate month of any of the past few seasons.

It’s not exactly rocket science. You only had to look at the Gunners reaction to going 0-1 down just before the break, to appreciate the crucial missing ingredient amongst Arsène’s talented troops. The worst thing is there are some signs of those staunch, game-winning character traits in Wilshere and Szczesny.

Yet watching the Gunners trudging back to the halfway line to restart the game on Sunday, with no-one turning to shake their fist at their team-mates to demand that defeat to Bolton was unacceptable, the noticeable thing was there was absolutely no communication amongst the players.

I worry that with no big personality on the pitch to encourage these youngsters, the flowers of their fervour will be defoliated before they’ve ever had an opportunity to truly blossom.

How long can such kids be expected to want to sweat blood for the Arsenal’s cause when the more phlegmatic demeanour of the much higher salaried colleagues suggests it doesn’t matter nearly enough?

Masochist that I am, I watched a replay of the highlights on the box and for a brief moment it seemed extremely thoughtful of the BBC’s commentator to issue a Gooner-related warning: “Scenes which some viewers may find disturbing and some strong language... tragedy unites a club and its community.” But then I realised I’d rewound the Sky gadget all the way back to the beginning of the drama about the Munich air disaster that was on just before.

Such a “heads-up” was no less appropriate, as supporting the Arsenal has begun to feel like being stuck in an eternal loop of M Night Shyamalan horror movies, with the same plot, blood and gore and the same inevitable tragic ending.

I’m not an advocate for wholesale change. I don’t know about all those whose seats at the Emirates cost several thousand more, but at €1,130, my season ticket seems blinding value for a guaranteed pitch to watch the best football entertainment on the planet.

But we continue to lack the crucial catalyst of genuine leadership that inspires the camaraderie of a truly great team.

Aside from our on pitch frailties — the absence of some sergeant-major who could drill our defence to the point where they’d be terrified to show their face in the dressing room is desperately missing.

When it comes to a miserable lap of dishonour at the last home game of the season, does a board which seems to focus more on the business of football than the football itself (with their willingness to spend more on club level refurbishment than the transfer market) really believe we Gooners will be raising the rafters chanting?

The back of this particular camel broke after blowing a two-goal lead in the midweek derby match to discover I’d dropped my iPhone outside White Hart Lane. No sooner had I hung up from calling to request the phone be blocked, than my Ma was on the phone.

Someone had found my phone and called “Mum” in my contacts.

Apparently, on seeing my Arsenal screensaver, the lad who picked it up had said “it belongs to a Gooner, we better give it back”.

The odds of it being picked up by a fellow Arsenal fan, amongst 30,000 of the enemy, were incredibly long. Such honesty deserves far greater reward.