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There once lived a fisherman. He used to wait on the top of a particular rock with delicious bait by the riverside every day. The river flew past him, ruthlessly, without any sort of empathy. He returned home every day without catching a single fish. Absolutely nothing! Zilch! After returning home, his wife used to shoot him with the usual inquiry – “No, fish for today, again?” The fisherman couldn’t fault his dedication; he used to respond back with a smile, every day – “Dear, we just need to keep on believing!” It is absolutely preposterous if we are to believe that the fisherman was not aware of the fact that he never changed his methodology, equipment or the location in which he sat every day. He just didn’t want to, because he felt, some day, everything would just work, everything will fall into place, he just needed to believe. Well, the fisherman is now a gardener. Sigh!
For things to change for the good Arsenal needn’t overhaul the entire squad; they don’t have to make drastic alterations to smell silverware. There needs to be a change in mentality and with that equipment upgrading to support that change in mentality. With it becoming the most spoken cliché on the internet, Arsenal has actually managed to finish in the Top Four in every season after the new stadium was built. But, if that was a measure of success at Arsenal, Emile Heskey would have been knighted by now.
We’ll take a look at how Arsenal can be a ‘real’ title-challenger next season.
Keep Fabregas. Buy what is required to keep him.
Arsene cannot afford to let go off his team’s fulcrum. The Spanish International and Arsenal captain is the driving force of this team. Eight years back, Arsene built his team around the Master, Thierry Henry. That team had brilliant players to compliment Thierry; they worked on the same wavelength as the mercurial Frenchman. This motivated Thierry even further and his game moved up a few notches benefiting the Arsenal team during the short Invincibles Era. As players like Pires, Freddie, Sol, Lauren and others got shipped out of Arsenal, Thierry lost his motivation among other reasons to continue with the club.
The analogy goes exactly the same with Cesc in the team. He operates at a very high level of proficiency, probably only Bacary Sagna and van Persie matches his level. If he doesn’t find more players around him who can complement his game, he’ll eventually be insipid with his performance. The fantastic player that he is, he’ll probably still give his all, but it won’t help the team’s purpose which will still be devoid of quality in all positions of the pitch.
Arsene needs to buy quality around Cesc, so that when he looks up for a ‘killer pass’, he has more than only van Persie running into space. And more importantly, these buys need to happen early, before the 13th of July, so that the new players can get a month of pre-season as they get into the mix seamlessly right from the first day of the season.
Summary – Get your talks cleared out with Cesc, Clichy and Nasri as soon as possible. Retain key experienced players. Complete your transfer dealings early.
Get a proper Left Winger and strengthen Plan B.
As far as Arsenal’s Plan B goes, it should ideally be on hot-standby, i.e capable of taking over the objectives of Plan A without any hiccups.
It has been quite some time since the talks of Eden Hazard started floating on the internet and how he would love to be a part of the Arsenal setup. If Hazard is bought, it would be quite tricky as the crafty Belgian plays in the Center of Midfield and Arsenal already have Cesc, Nasri and Wilshere capable of doing the same duties. If Hazard is forcefully employed on the left wing in the same way Nasri is, Arsene would again lose the plot of having a natural left winger.
There has been talks of Ashley Young too as a perfect Englishman capable of helping out Arsenal during Plan B implementation. If Ashley is bought, he can even add to the Free-Kick takers’ department. The fact that he is essentially right-footed, makes him even more dangerous as he would be capable of ‘cutting in’ and shooting. If Arsenal are to work more on Plan B, they need to make one of Bendtner and Chamakh play upfront with van Persie, a little ahead of the Dutchman, in fact.
Summary – Don’t buy a central player and play him on the wings, change that ‘outlook’ and resort to traditional and more direct approach.
Change Formation. Play strikers as strikers and not as Wingers.
Continuing with the above point, it is very important for Arsene to ‘play the right man at the right place’.
The manager needs to get his priorities right with Bendtner, Chamakh and whichever mystery striker he is planning to bring in this summer. The Dane and the Moroccan are out-and-out strikers with more aerial presence than any other player in the team. Employing them on the wings week-in-week-out is absolutely outrageous. In order to accommodate one of the tall strikers and the two wingers, Arsenal needs to go back to their traditional 4-4-2 formation which has brought them so much of success over the years. Arsene can deploy van Persie a little behind one of these ‘aerial’ strikers, giving him the much coveted ‘Dennis Bergkamp’ role.
Summary: Plan A to be operated against teams who play ‘football on the ground’, employ 4-2-3-1. Plan B to enacted upon teams who love to Stoke around with Arsenal, employ 4-4-2.
Don’t buy liabilities. Don’t make stop-gap arrangements
A new owner brings in a lot of cash, ask any Chelsea or a Manchester City fan. Is it the same with Stan Kroenke? The Sports mogul, owner of the Kroenke Sports Enterprise, is a believer of Arsene’s philosophy. Even if he is capable of ‘splashing the cash’, transfer dealings won’t be on the lines of Chelsea or City. It is very important for Arsenal fans to realize that there won’t be ‘transfer madness’ this summer. Big buys are not necessarily costly buys, but effective buys, players who are capable of gelling with the team right from the first day. Things will still be quite calculative but hopefully more straightforward and worthy than the last few summers. Buying players like Squillaci and Silvestre is as close to lunacy as explaining Christopher Nolan’s Inception to a pygmy. These players may have all the experience in the world, but they will always be a liability as far as consistency is concerned. Even if players like Scotty Parker, Christopher Samba and Gary Cahill make the occasional mistakes, Arsene would at least make a statement of purpose with these kind of signings.
Summary: Be a little less miser with transfer dealings. If a Player A absolutely fits the bill, get him.
Practice set-pieces like there was no tomorrow
It is an irony that we have Arsene Wenger, a former Center-Back, Pat Rice, a former Right Full Back, Steve Bould, a former Center-Back among the coaching staff, yet the team is so poor with their set-piece defending. Is it a technical problem that goes unnoticed during training sessions? Is it the collective determination of the team that is lacking during set-piece situations. Or, is it simply because they don’t care about set-pieces? The coaching staff has to clearly sort it out, whatever it is, Arsenal’s Achilles heel is exposed to the entire football fraternity. Teams from coastal Fiji can come and make life miserable for Arsenal by just sending long balls into their half. It has become the first piece of ‘to-do’ note in every manager’s diary as they visit The Emirates. Set-Piece defending should be a collective responsibility of the entire team and not left to the Center Backs. This is one area the Gunners need to improve immensely if they are to challenge for the throne of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Summary – Practice a lot of set-piece defending during training. Put extra effort in improving this particular area.