Arteta, who art unproven

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Oof, what a mess. I saw a few comments after the defeat to Brighton that this was as bad as they’ve seen Arsenal play. I’m not so sure that’s true: memories have a knack of morphing over time, or fizzling out altogether.

I do vaguely recall a game – early in my Arsenal-supporting days, towards the end of the Don Howe era – against Birmingham City that had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It was devoid of anything. It was a vacuum. If I’ve just dragged up a memory that you’d happily consigned to infinity then please accept my humble apologies.

You won’t be surprised to hear it ended utterly, splendidly goalless.

The end of the George Graham era was similarly turgid. It was a time when Martin Keown had a go in midfield, ably supported – or at least willingly supported – by Ian Selley and Dave Hiller. At least I think that happened. I’ve consigned it to infinity.

It was a time when Glenn Helder seemed like a knight in shining armour who might drag us single-handedly from drifting towards the relegation zone.

The so unsolid crew

So we’ve been bad before, but there are differences. Back then, we were if nothing else solidly set up. We just didn’t, to put it bluntly, have enough good players.

Now, we have plenty of good players. I’m reassessing this statement with every passing game, as some of them perhaps aren’t as good as we thought they were, but we still have a lot of talent (enough to have got us to a European final, and to within an agonising point of fourth last year).

Yes, we have a lop-sided squad, a central defence in name only and a midfield that can’t score goals. We lack structure badly. But the Brighton and Norwich games showed me that, for the brief periods when we got our dander up, there’s life in the old dog yet (with apologies to the mixed metaphor police.)

Missing with confidence

Confidence is a real problem – probably the biggest. They’re rock bottom in that regard, and unhappy as a result. It’s tricky to fix. There’s been no new manager bounce yet.

The optimist in me thinks that every training session will make a difference. There needs to be a clarity of message so that the team doesn’t flit from one system to another. And when small incremental improvements happen, there will be small, incremental improvements in confidence. Some of the issues in this squad are so systemic that whoever takes over permanently might not be able to make an immediate difference.

Wanted: feather ruffler

Who will it be? There’s a lot of talk about Arteta again, but why would he be any better prepared than Ljungberg? Is the ‘Pep factor’ that much of a differentiator – or is it his personality that get people talking about him as a future manager? Neither he nor Freddie have experience at this level.

Some of the issues lay at the feet of the players. Arsenal seems unhappy and a bit cliquey. There are some big characters in there who we’ve tried to move on, but can’t. Whoever comes in will need to be able to command respect and make some very difficult decisions. Which is why, maybe, it will end up going to someone more experienced at managing big names – someone like Allegri.

We have a very tricky fixture list that may prolong the agony. But with my optimist’s hat back on (at a jaunty angle, naturally), with a few more weeks of a new message and with the fresh winds of the new year, things will pick up again. 

It feels like we’re starting from scratch on so many levels. Structurally, defensively, in terms of personnel. It’s needed to happen for a while, but it would be nice to come out the other end of it sooner rather than later…

Arsenal’s noise, Arsenal’s Moyes

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Into the international break we stumble, with plenty to ponder. 

When a football club’s a happy ship the dressing room leaks dry up and ambiguous words matter less. But Arsenal’s not an especially happy ship: it looks seaworthy from the outside but it’s not running at full steam and the captain’s up in the crow’s nest frantically scanning the horizon.

We’ve had the board cack-handedly standing behind their man, then we subsequently had an acknowledgement that things need to improve. We’ve got unhappy players and the fans are increasingly apathetic. 

Some of this could have been avoided with better management, but most of it, I suspect, would have ended up being water under a bridge had results and performances been going our way. They’re the thing that keeps a club happy, and we’ve not got either right now. Everything is magnified.

If we work on the assumption that Emery is – for now at least – going nowhere, the next thing is to wonder how to get a song out of the choir (yes, I got bored of the nautical analogy and now I’ve gone to church).

Confidence is down and nothing Emery’s tried in the league has made his side anything other than timid and plodding. When was the last benchmark performance in the league – Utd at home in March? This malaise has been going too long for it to be a blip or a dose of dented confidence.

For me, I’d rather this side went down all guns blazing than  gazing at its shoes trying to ‘hold their own’. Emery doesn’t set his sides up to attack enough – he seems at his heart to be too cautious. He seems – fairly or not – out of his depth and it’s hard to escape the feeling that he’s the post-legacy-manager fall guy.

We know we can’t defend: Emery’s tried all the combinations known to man short of dusting off Dixon, Winterburn, Keown and Adams and injecting them with the elixir of youth. He hasn’t improved that side of our game and we can only assume that, by now, he isn’t able to. But look at what we have up front. We have two of Europe’s best strikers in Aubameyang and Lacazette, we have a £72m Pepe who’s improving and creating (when not being dropped), and we’ve got a somewhat reinvigorated Ozil returning to the fold. We have two attacking full-backs now available. If there’s one area of our game we should be able to improve, it’s the attacking third. 

Emery needs to be more bold. He needs to play to our strengths and throw caution to the wind. Despite the words of the board, he must know his job is precarious, so now’s the time to rip up the Emery manual and go for it.

We have the perfect opportunity to do this with our next features – Southampton at home followed by Norwich away. I can see us winning both narrowly, but why not use them as a springboard to try something more adventurous? To play at a higher tempo, and more directly? It’s not as if top four is particularly realistic anymore, so what’s holding him back?

Narrow wins are wins, of course, and god knows we need some of those. But scraping a 2-1 won’t tell us anything we don’t already know or make some of the ‘noise’ go away. Going at it with both barrels – even if it goes a bit wrong – would indicate a change of tack and it could just drag us out of our lethargy. 

Just… go for it.

It’s the wrong trousers, Granit.

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Arsenal 2-2 Crystal Palace

With impeccable timing, I was attempting to follow the Arsenal game yesterday on a train. What is it with mobile coverage on trains? You can spend billions shuttling humans at 200kmh between two cities but for the vast majority of the journey my phone had just the one sausage (technical term), rendering even Arsenal.com’s audio coverage impossible. The dulcet half-Paris, half-London accent of Jérémie Aliadière flitted into my ears only intermittently. It’s an amazing thing.

Maybe it was for the best, as it turned out, because just when Emery wanted nothing more than to change the narrative of recent weeks, about a trillion things blew up in his face. It’s now going to be a busy week for the club’s PR crisis management team.

I can’t really comment on the performance for the above-mentioned reasons. By all accounts, it was far from our worst game of the season, though our defence and lack of creativity continue to be insoluble problems for Emery. 

But like the Spurs match last season, which had a contentious penalty and some argy-bargy to light the fuse, this match had VAR, blowing a two-goal lead and a quite astonishing hoo-haa with Xhaka.

No crackers, Granit

The Xhaka thing is the hardest to put back into a box and pretend it never happened. On a human level I feel for him – that kind of vitriol is deeply unpleasant, especially for someone who through no fault of his own is our club captain. It’s not helpful at all, and I’m not sure how its knock-on effects will be anything other than deleterious. 

The bottom line is that he clearly shouldn’t have done what he did, irrespective of the boos that led to it. It was hot-headed and unbecoming of the Arsenal captain. For some, if this kind of reaction leads to him moving on, they’ll maybe consider it a price worth paying, but it would sit uncomfortably with me. I like to think we’re better than that.

VAR from the madding crowd

I support VAR in principle, but if the decision that led to Sokratis’ second goal is the way it’s going to be interpreted, I say cancel the whole experiment now. It was set up as a foolproof way of correcting a referee’s or a linesman’s wrong decision, but while it’s pretty mathematical for things like off-side, for other things it’s still too reliant on opinion. There’s no communication, it takes ages and it’s replacing one subjective assessment with another. It’s simply not accurate or fair enough in its current form and it’s ruining matches for the match-going fan.

Emery bored 

I’m no fan of Emery and I doubt he’ll be here next year. He’s struggling to fix all aspects of our game and the fans know it. Arsenal feels like a suit that’s just a bit ill-fitting for him. All that being said, I’m not sure how much I want us to be the kind of club that moves people on every 18 months. I do value a bit of patience and I try to stand back and see the bigger picture – hard as it may be to do that right now. All of which is perhaps a cack-handed way of saying I’m torn as to the next steps. I suspect though – and this is just a guess – that the board will wait until the summer to see if he can come up with the right formula. 

It’s all-consuming conversation at the moment, though and it’s getting in the way of everything. 

Overall, a bad day at the office for all, I think. Is it good that we’ve got Liverpool so soon after yesterday’s mess? It may be… but only if we win. And that pressure is essentially what Emery’s up against now. He’s being judged on every decision, performance, result, tactical approach, selection, interview. Sometimes fairly, sometimes not, but there’s very little leeway. Maybe that’s the way it should be – or maybe that makes his job to all intents and purposes impossible. 

Get the hell out of stodge

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Sheffield Utd 1-0 Arsenal

As Arsenal became less competitive in the second half of the Wenger era, we could at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that we continued to play football that was incredibly easy on the eye. Yes, we lost some power and became more brittle, but we were still capable of some breathtaking football. 

Towards the end of his reign, that silky football also began to go, and before long, so too did Wenger.

I don’t know what I was expecting with Emery, really. Someone who could strengthen our defence, for sure. Someone who’d re-integrate some the power alongside panache – the calling card that marked Wenger’s early years. (As an aside, if I was given the opportunity to ask Arsène just one question, it would be related to that. Why replace powerful players that struck fear into the opposition with smaller, more technical ones – and why persist with it when it clearly didn’t really work?)

I expected him to make us more competitive and to get us back into the Champions League. He could argue that we’re still well placed to push on and achieve that, and I have no doubt that the board will look at it that way too. But what I wasn’t really expecting when he joined was for us to be playing like we are – to be less sure of what we’re doing, less dangerous and just as watery at the back. Not just occasionally, but more often than not.

Truth be told, it’s hard to see any improvement in our league performances at all, and it’s even harder to get excited by the piecemeal, straightjacket, safety-first football that we too often play under him. While I too have been clinging onto the difference that Bellerin and Tierney might make, I’m not sure it’s fair to expect those two to kick-start a renaissance in how we play as a team. 

I know this sounds spoilt, and maybe we were, for so very long, far too spoilt. But I think it’s a big problem for Emery because while the results have mostly been OK, we’re never far away from tripping up, and the way we’re playing is shapeless, predictable and – yes – dull to watch. We have an excellent squad, in my opinion, significantly remodelled in the summer. They’re capable of playing far better football than this.

I just don’t see where the *click* is going to come from at the moment (in the league – the Uefa and Milk Cups have been oases of calm, albeit against easier opposition). This should be a team high on confidence, but they look as timid as mice. When we do win, it’s tight, and often a bit lucky. A proper thrashing in the Premier League (dished out by us, to be clear) seems far away right now.

Hats off to the Blades by the way – a poor performance is never wholly Arsenal’s fault – who were more aggressive and solid than us, and made the most of their chances. They deserved the win. Good luck to them.

But as for us? Emery has a lot of work to do to convince us all that the team’s heading in the right direction, and not just in terms of results. And if he doesn’t, I suspect he too will be gone in the summer.

Wheezing up to third

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Arsenal 1-0 Bournemouth

There’s a subtle difference between doing some pottering around yourself on a Sunday and watching someone else potter around on a Sunday. And by god, did Arsenal potter around in the second half yesterday. Shall I say potter again? Potter.

I’m not sure why. The first half was OK, and Luiz found time to be dangerous at the other end of the pitch by scoring his first goal for Arsenal (“a little flick of those locks,” said the commentator on Arsenal.com). Aubameyang rasped one past the post and Pepe curled one over. 

But the second half? I’m not sure if they ran out of puff, ran out of confidence or ran out of ideas, but it was tough going. And I suppose in that respect it was a good job we were playing Bournemouth. They’re no slouches but you couldn’t help but wonder what a more dangerous side could have done to us in that second half.

Insert Emery musings here

I’m far from the first person to wonder what to make of us under Emery – why we do what we do and what the masterplan is. But think of it from an Arsenal top brass point of view. He has one job this season (a job that will in all likelihood decide his future at the club): getting back into the Champions League. So long as we’re in the running for that, all grumbles about the brand of football will be ignored. There’s no way in the world he’s going anywhere sooner, short of Arsenal collapsing to tenth and looking incapable of competing. But we’re not doing that; far from it. We’re third and he’s fulfilling his brief.

This is especially true as we don’t even have our full squad. Tierney and Bellerin taking over from Kolasinac and Maitland-Niles/Chambers is just a matter of time. The return of Holding and the return to form of Chambers give us options in the centre too and may – may! – help Luiz and Sokratis focus.

So yes, I too wish there was more rampaging, and we were slicing through sides once we’ve got our noses in front, but outside the cups we’re not quite clicking. We’re hanging in there – one point behind City – and from an aesthetic point of view, we just have to hope the right system and the right first XI emerges that takes us up a notch. 

In the meantime, it’s grind-it-out time. We’ve got a great crop of young players, and they’re being given time. We’ve got an increasing amount of options all over the pitch. The ingredients are there. Just… but…. hmmm.

But onto more important matters

Ok, who’s messed with the bloody clocks? Either I’m extraordinarily unobservant (quite possible – actually, very possible) or have the stadium clocks started counting up to 45 minutes rather than down? If so, why? There’s a whole blog post that can be written about this, I suspect. It could be the tip of the iceberg and unearth yet more abuses of football tradition. It could make me as an investigative journalist. 

Or, it might just be that a) the clocks have always counted up and I’m as thick as a brick, or b) that it’s been happening ages and therefore I’m as thick as a brick. 

The young, the new and the repaired

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Arsenal 5-0 Nottingham Forest

I meant to post this earlier today but there were some technical gremlins… not that anyone will notice as it’s been so long!

It was a rare foray into the League Cup for me. But it ended up being rather more enjoyable than I’d anticipated, in part thanks to five good goals, in part because of Arsenal’s raft of young players and prodigal returning defenders, and in part due to the sweet miracle of a clean sheet.

Oh, and in part thanks to tickets in the east upper that cost just £10 for my kids and £20 for me. On the odd occasion I sit up in the gods, it always reminds me how much more of a grasp you get of formations and tactics, as opposed to being at about player chest height in row 8 of the north bank where I normally sit. There, things are a bit more 2D. I’ve been on intimate terms with the pitch since 1994, so as far as I’m aware we still play 4-4-2, knock it up to the tall striker (he’s got good feet for a big man) who’ll head it down to the little man for a goal. Things were better then, etc etc *looks at news, gawps*.

£5.70 for a pint of Hells (a marked improvement, even if the half-time beer queues remain stubbornly unfixed) is, regrettably, London prices, though for £5.50 you can get a pie too. I didn’t want a pie but for -20p, what’s a man to do? Have a pie, that’s what. Look after your pies and your pounds will look after themselves and all that.

Anyway, I’ve lost my track already. 

It was really fun. You often get games where someone new or returning is in the first XI and you try to keep an eye on them, but yesterday there were multiple narratives running simultaneously, so it was hard not to flit between them all. There was new boy Kieran Tierney, hailed like some kind of hero, who really caught my eye with his pace, ability to take men on and the kind of crossing that promises good times ahead. I’d bring him in now, frankly, though there may be fitness / match fitness reasons why that won’t happen.

Then there was Holding (you know), who was back looking assured and bagging himself a goal. There was Martinelli, whose happiness, joie-de-vivre, smile, boundless energy and killer instinct contrasts markedly with me. In my defence, I am in my late 40s. And not a footballer. And a miserable, battered cynic.

Bellerin, another returning hero, was lauded onto the pitch then provided an assist for Joe Willock. Reiss Nelson got his first ever goal. Chambers was aggressive and played with real intent – in two positions. Smith Rowe got clonked in the head but it was good to see him too. Overall, there were all sorts of things to be happy about, truth be told. Even Ozil was there, and I thought he was pretty creative to be honest, but that was some kind of world-class trudging he did when he was subbed off. He needs a bit of what Martinelli has. Don’t we all.

Hats off to Forest fans for travelling in such numbers, though their team barely showed up. The official attendance was 53,160, but that was suitably generous – there were large swathes of the upper tier empty, but given the biblical rain and travel problems, it was a good effort by all.

Overall, it was hugely enjoyable and offered welcome shelter from the wailing and angst that accompanies the structural chaos of our Premier League campaign. Some of these players must surely now be contenders for Man Utd away. When you think of it that way, the potential change afoot in the Arsenal first XI is really exciting.

And I still don’t *really* know what a Carabao is. 

Ooh ooh Tierney add-ons

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So there I was in the shower, thinking about the permutations of Arsenal’s summer transfer needs. Oh come on, we all do it!

I was considering the ongoing saga of Kieran Tierney (is it a saga? Perhaps not yet) and I was ruminating on the way Arsenal were proposing to structure a deal (yes I am this boring in real life). By all accounts Arsenal are offering an up-front fee and a bunch of sweeteners contingent on various things happening.

And then this headline came to me, and it made me laugh – probably just me, I know. Normally, you’d think of something to write, write it, *then* think of a suitable headline. I’m flipping the norms here by thinking of the headline first, then writing nothing.

Have a good Sunday.

The pessimist’s guide to Arsenal’s away run-in

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Anyone who knows me, or has read this blog over the years – an admittedly dwindling band – will know that I’m not one of life’s natural optimists when it comes to Arsenal. It would be fair to say that breezy positivity does not drip from my every pore. Mine deep enough and you will find some glistening nuggets, but if there was a new goldrush, and boundless confidence was the lucrative prize, folk would not hop onto their horses and head west to me.

It’s a defence mechanism of course. Expect something less, then when it happens you’re OK with it, because you’d steeled yourself already. Should something good happen, the high is that much better. It’s a lose-win or win double-win situation [needs more work – Ed].

That’s why, now that we’re at the business end of the season and for the first time in a few years we’ve got something to play for in league terms, a certain pragmatic pessimism kicks in. I know there are plenty of you out there who beam confidence about our away run-in, and I admire you, I really do. But I also know there’s a hefty percentage of anxious types who – even if they’re confident-ish – don’t want to jinx our run-in with needless chest-puffing.

This is for you.

Everton

I know we’ve beaten them a fair few times away over the years, and hit five past them last season at Goodison Park, but Wayne Rooney was really annoying when he was about 12 and scored against us and who’s to say something like that won’t happen again with the latest Everton wonderkid *checks Everton squad just in case*? We also lost there two years ago when Ashley Williams handed us nul points with an 86th minute header. They’ve only lost one from five.

Banana skin rating: 🍌🍌🍌

Watford

Watford used to be our bogey team, and I still haven’t forgiven them or John Barnes for beating us at Highbury in the FA Cup quarter-final in 1987. I’m not a bitter man, you understand, and nor do I hold grudges, but I’m still sour about that all these years later.

Oh, and we lost there last year with another heartbreaking late cave-in.

Banana skin rating: 🍌🍌🍌

Wolves

Have you seen Wolves! They’re a bit ropey away from home but they’ve literally nearly beaten practically everyone at home. They’d put four past Real Madrid if they were in the Premier League, probably. They’ve beaten Utd twice, Liverpool, Chelsea and we were lucky to get a 1-1 at the Emirates. Plus, I remember completing Wolves in my Panini ‘79 sticker book, and I’ve had great respect for them ever since. I’m concerned that Steve Bull might put us to the sword.

Banana skin rating: 🍌🍌🍌🍌

Leicester

Even I’d have been positive about this one earlier in the season, but since Brendan’s taken over there’s a regrettable air of confidence around Leicester, and they’ve now won four league games in a row. We can’t rely on Bergkamp to magic up the perfect hat-trick, which is a blow. It’s entirely possible that they’ve never forgiven us for robbing Alan Smith off them too.

Banana skin rating: 🍌🍌🍌🍌

Burnley

Another side that’s, somewhat frustratingly, reversed its run of poor form. I could wheel out some stereotypes about it being a tough northern outpost, if that helps? In my mind we’ve lost there every season but a cursory google tells me that in fact Sanchez (remember him?) slotted a penalty winner last season in the nine billionth minute. They should be safe by then which will either mean they’ll have one eye on Magaluf, or it’ll mean they’ll be demob happy and playing with all the freedom required. Either way we must avoid a Sean Dyche-shaped revenge job at all costs.

Banana skin rating: 🍌🍌🍌

—

So  there you go, fellow pessimists. Forewarned is forearmed.

Read my match report. It’s two days late and still no good.

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Arsenal 2-0 Chelsea

In this era of on-the-whistle posts and hot-off-the-press post-match podcasts, I’ve decided to  develop a niche around commenting fluffily about a game at least two days after it happened. It never harmed people in the olden days when they’d hear of news in far off lands weeks later, and it won’t harm people now. Maybe, just maybe, people scooped up so much simultaneously-published content after the match that it all garbled into one? And that they need a refresher now? That’s what I’m clinging onto.

Anyway, the match. Just when he needed a result, along came a re-invigorated Arsenal and a strikerless Chelsea. Perfect timing! How we needed that.

Fire the starting gun

It’s funny how the first 30 seconds or minute of a game can often tell you all you need to know about the game that’s about to unfold. When the game kicked off the week before, at West Ham, I distinctly remember an Arsenal player getting the ball within seconds and just standing there, almost motionless, not quite knowing what to do and under no pressure to do anything in any rush. Fast forward a week to the game against Chelsea and we were out of the blocks like the clappers. It set the tone for a superb first half that won us the game.

Better and brighter men than me (that doesn’t really narrow it down) will know more about the psychology behind that. How can two performances be so different? Was it the opponent? Some words of admonition from Unai? Change of formation and line-up? All of the above and more? Let’s just hope we don’t go full circle and start so timidly on Friday night, as I’m not entirely sure that will end well.

Laca verging (on the brilliant)

Hands up in the class who likes Lacazette? While I wouldn’t advocate the smattering – counted in the low seconds – of booing that appeared to accompany his substitution, it is a bit baffling, because he really is a hell of a player. Sure, he has fewer goals than Aubameyang, but his range is wider, and when he scores goals that combine silky skills with brute force, as he did on Saturday, my admiration for his overall excellence, hard work and team play goes up a notch or two.

Just be Kos

It was a fabulous performance from Koscielny, who looks like he’s edging back to his imperious best. And with him marshalling things, Sokratis looks more comfortable too. With all my fingers crossed and double-crossed, we really need to keep those two fit until the end of the season. They might not be perfect, and they’re certainly not the long-term solution – the former is in the autumn of his career, and the latter still gets a little too tight to people for my liking – but as a unit, on this performance at least, they’re the best we’ve got. Please stay fit.

Knee bother

I’m not one for conspiracy theories as a rule, but what with the moon landings definitely being fake, and the Earth being as flat as a pancake, I’m beginning to worry about our injuries this year. It seems incredibly bad luck to me to have two substantial knee injuries in one year, especially as both Bellerin and Holding were arguably two of our most improved players this season under Emery. Is it the way we train, or just bad luck? Add Welbz into the mix and you’ve got a rum old situation that’s clearly some kind of government cover-up. But I’m not one for conspiracy theories, as I said. So good luck Bellerin and Holding. Please no more long-term injuries. Thanks.

Not the crackliest

Obviously, all atmosphere analysis now uses the Spurs game as a benchmark, because that was right up there with the best in recent times. So given it was a 5:30 kick-off (some drink tends to help pep up the noise) and a Saturday, I must say I was expecting things to be a bit more raucous than they were. Perhaps there were gnawing nerves given some of our recent performances. There also weren’t the same circumstances that sparked up the derby. But still – just me or was it a bit subdued?

Right, that’s your lot in this first and probably last two-day-old match report.

Solidarity with all the part-time bloggers like me who can’t quite be bothered. Power to the idle.

Plenty to ponder as Arsenal self-destruct

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Liverpool 5-1 Arsenal

It’s not lost on me that since it all came together so spectacularly against our old friends up the road on 2nd December, cracks have started to appear. Yesterday, those cracks became giant fissures, as all of our failings of yore came back to dance a merry jig.

For all of Liverpool’s excellence (they’re not top and flying by chance), all five of their goals were avoidable from a defensive point of view, and that’s the grim truth of it. I fired off this tweet at the end of the game last night:

No club that considers itself one of those capable of challenging for the big honours should let five goals in. It ought to be a once-a-generation brain freeze, but in seven years (not including the League Cup) we’ve shipped eight goals once, six goals twice and five goals four times (that I can think of – there are probably more). Wenger’s late-era teams were weak, and for it to happen again under a new man suggests to me that a lot of those weaknesses are still there.

I also lobbed this tweet out there too. It wasn’t universally popular – it’s a bit black-and-white / binary I know, so lacks a bit of context – but it did resonate with many:

They’re not be set up / organised properly yet – that seems pretty clear – and solving that would put a different light on some of these players. Some of them would also look better when paired with better players. But even with that, I don’t think any of the above is defensively consistent enough or fit/quick enough (Kolasinac, however, is incredibly dangerous going forward) to get into the teams of any of our rivals, and that’s the essence of the problem. We either need a miracle structural cure, which has not been forthcoming yet, or we need a serious injection of quality if we want to step up.

So fix it, yeah

Easier said than done I’m aware, because we all know Kroenke’s not going to wave a £75m magic wand for a defender – and that might really only get you one exceptional defender these days, however wrong that is – even if there was one available in January.

In the context of this urgent need to improve, some of the other things going down across the club make a bit more sense. Selling Ramsey (again – rightly or wrongly) in January would raise some money, if they can make it happen. I’d wager that some of the defenders above – if there were takers and if there are replacements – should be looking over their shoulder too. Sokratis seems a good squad option and I like his attitude, but Mustafi? It might also explain the Ozil situation, though that’s possibly harder to resolve. Put bluntly, to spend money we need to have money, and that requires some ruthlessness that will be well received by some but not by others.

On the plus side

Some positives, while we’re at it. I thought Maitland-Niles, who’s something of a travelling salesman in this team, made a real impression early on from his berth on the right. Iwobi did well in the early part of the game too. Overall, to have gone 22 games unbeaten is admirable, and I’m enjoying the team edging towards being a team that presses better, stands up for each other and is developing – albeit with glitches in the matrix – more resilience.

But to have let 30 goals in tells you where we can improve the most. Emery knows only too well that his job depends on making rapid improvements, getting into the Champions League, and winning things, and he can’t afford to let transfer windows pass by in the way Wenger could, whose power came from  early success and latter-day patronage. Emery has neither of those things and there’s no time like the present.

So I think some stuff will happen in January. We’re still there or thereabouts, and we need something to help steady the ship and push us on.