It is just to note that the kids are not getting a real view of the hyper-competitive world of sport and that might be why they don’t realise they have to take their chances or suffer career consequences

Arsenal were terrible last night. There is no unanimity about what the problem was. Some blame the back-4. Some blame the midfield. Some blame Wenger. Many will blame individuals…..

What went wrong:

1. Purpose: A team has to have a purpose. Any 11 stepping out against any opposition has to know what they’re there to do. At Porto, the purpose, substantively was to be there. You can blame Wenger for this perhaps. It’s easy to say that Arsenal’s purpose in every game should be to win. But realities of modern football dictate otherwise. If you have an injury-ridden squad like ours, then sometimes you just have to prioritise. Wenger, rightly decided that a result at Boro on Saturday is more important than topping our Champions League group. On this he’s on solid ground. Of Roma, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus & Panathinaikos, only Barcelona is in imperious current form. If we’d topped the group, we’d have had to contend with pedigreed teams like Inter & Real Madrid, as well as Atletico Madrid. Not much difference one way or the other.

On the other hand, true purpose would dictate wanting to win always in every game. And even if we were going to rest players, the replacements had to have purpose. But football psychology is such that people often choose to do just as much as is required of them. If you make players realise the result doesn’t matter. Then they’re less likely to get the result.

2. Drive: I didn’t see any sense of urgency from this team. One of the media critics says that this present Arsenal crop treat every game like a friendly. There’s an extent to which this is true. The game had the look and feel of a pre-season friendly. The players didn’t know themselves well. They didn’t combine well. Quite a few are not completely match fit. But most of all, there wasn’t any drive, any fierce urgency.

3. Attack: Bendtner looks like he’s blown his Arsenal chance. He’s had his run in the team but my most metrics he’s not done well. When we have all our players fit he’s probably 6th choice now behind Eduardo, Vela and Walcott in that order. His best selling point is that he’s a 6 ft 5 striker with a good touch. But he certainly hasn’t shown so far that we can see him as a target man. Most of the blame for our flat attack last night can be hung on him. He didn’t make any forward runs. There was no running off the ball. He was quite flat and undangerous. But it could be because we’re using him as a target man when his best games have been as part of an attacking pair or attacking trio.

But the biggest problem we have in attack now is the wings. Our wide men are out, and the wide men we have now weren’t very effective, even if they played well. Vela out on the left showed great touches. Ramsey on the right was bright and applied himself to the task.

Wengerball requires more than that though. Arsenal absolutely needs effective full backs to be useful in attack. Eboue simply didn’t carry much going forward. And Silvestre lacks the pace, the skill or the guile to be effective as an attacking full-back.

We also lacked runners. Actually, Denilson, Ramsey and Song ran like crazy. But doing midfieldy (ok I invented the word) things not offensive things. Set pieces apart, I don’t think Silvestre even got into the box once, and Eboue not more than once or twice. Denilson was busy buzzing around outside the box. Diaby had no purpose, and seemed to doubt whether he was supposed to offer any attacking threat at all. Bendtner was drifting to the flanks.

3. Set Pieces: It seemed to me like essentially a 0-0 game. From the start Porto didn’t press forward, and Arsenal didn’t press too hard to score. Obviously the game plan of each team was to take their chances. In games like that, set pieces become very important.

But the kids; Ramsey, Vela and Denilson wasted several set pieces in which they failed to even deliver the ball into the box. This you have to blame the manager for. Whoever was taking set pieces in a game like that had to know he had to deliver the ball well each time.

4. Tactics: We started out with the following formation;

4-5-1 I’d say it was. The problem was that the actual formation to me seemed more like;

If my reading is correct, there’s a big problem here. Denilson is not the player to play behind the front man. Diaby was stuck in midfield and not bringing much into attack. Ramsey and Vela didn’t really have the ability to be effective on the wings since the only man who’d ever be in the box with a formation like this is Bendtner. This is what happened. A few times we had the ball out wide, not even Bendtner was in the box to receive the ball.

A 4-5-1 with these players is a bad idea. It might have worked if we had Diaby and Vela interchanging on the left so that they were taking turns to cover the left back and to join the attack.

This formation actually helped us to dominate in midfield. This we did. Song and Denilson were awesome in defence, snapping into tackles and covering every midfield blade of grass. Their ball-winning would have been effective if we could quickly sweep into attack. But this formation didn’t allow that.

5. Concentration: This continues to be a problem. Diaby switched off and allowed the Porto goalscorer score. The set piece takers weren’t focused. The midfielders who gave balls away that could have led to goals weren’t concentrating. This is still a problem, and the cause of it only people in the club can know.

6. Kids: The problem with us playing kids now is not that they’re kids. I actually think football is a game for kids, and having fearless kids can be an advantage. The problem at the moment is that none of them is in the team on merit. They’re playing because our structure depends on kids.

Look, have no doubt about it, we have some super-talented kids, and many of them merit first team cameos. The problem is that yesterday, they were playing because Wenger had to rotate, and we have injuries that dictate that our second team has to be mixed in with our third. Otherwise, we’ d bring in, not Gibbs for Diaby but Nasri who’d have sat out 60 minutes. We’d have brought in, not Wishere but Walcott.

Bendtner wouldn’t have started on current form as Eduardo would perhaps have been a better choice.

This isn’t a criticism per se. It is just to note that the kids are not getting a real view of the hyper-competitive world of sport and that might be why they don’t realise they have to take their chances or suffer career consequences.

Negativity: We’re playing badly at the moment because we are in crisis. And we could go over this a million times but negativity affects players and is hard to snap out of. You could blame it on the fact that we haven’t exactly played well all season. All I know is that, as negativity has grown, performances have become worse.

Which brings us to the biggest point yet:

To those who say that it’s better to play badly and win I say.

NO, YOU’RE WRONG! IT’S BETTER TO PLAY WELL AND LOSE. Because…..

.

1. When you’re playing well, you have confidence.

2. When you’re playing well you’re more likely to win than to lose. Why? Because you’re playing Well!!

3. When you play well and lose, you know you can come back and win.

4. You come out with your dignity and pride intact, and you might be disappointed about losing, but you’ll still know you were good and can win.

Wh
en you are playing badly….

1. You still know you’re not playing well in your heart.

2. Whenever you stop winning then you have nothing.

3. You don’t feel good.

So give me 2 choices. Go back to the beginning of the season when we were cutting teams apart but lost two games cheaply. Or now when we’re playing badly and have lost 3 games. I’ll take the former thank you.