Wheels Come Off Against The Baggies

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Oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my! 

First things first. I give full credit to West Bromwich Albion and their manager Roberto di Matteo for an excellent, compact, organised and efficient performance at the Grove on Saturday. They fully merited the three points they got. Congratulations to them. 

We got exactly what we deserved. Nothing. You simply can’t expect to display team defending and goalkeeping of the quality you’d expect from the local pub team and still win the Premier League. It’s as simple as that. One point out of six in our last to League outings isn’t the stuff of title winners. 

Fortunately, we having decided to stand firmly on our own old chaps whilst shod in golf shoes, neither Chelsea nor Yoonited had a weekend to remember either. The Pensioners lost at Eastlands and United could only draw with the Trotters at the Reebok. We’re now in third behind United however with Citeh and the Baggies breathing down our necks. In this sort of form a visit to Stamford Bridge is just what we could do without. However that is what we have to face. 

All thoughts of the League need to be pushed to one side however. The players will now be on their way to Serbia to face Partizan Belgrade. Again, not a fixture one would have picked after our implosion on Saturday. 

I’m afraid Manuel Almunia showed once again why he’ll never be a top drawer goalie. I don’t know what an Earth he thought he was doing for the Baggies’ second goal, nor their third, when he went walkabout with no discernable plan nor purpose. For the Albion opener Bacary Sagna was beaten all ends up out on the wing before sliding the ball in to the six yard box for a tap-in with three defenders standing around ball-watching with their old chaps in their hands. Woeful. Absolutely woeful. 

As I’ve blogged ad nauseam here, defending isn’t just about the goalkeeper and the back four. It’s about the whole team. You don’t have to indulge in cantenaccio coma-inducing defence or its modern equivalent to maintain tactical discipline and awareness when not in possession. I know it’s not stylish to prey FC Barcelona in aid of anything amongst the Gooner Nation but they do demonstrate what can be done when you don’t have the ball whilst maintaining fidelity to “the beautiful game”. Barcelona isn’t perfect as a team. They lost in La Liga at home in the Camp Nou 0-2 to newly promoted Hércules of Alicante earlier this month. 

This is one of the reasons why we don’t want to be panicking TOO much about Saturday. We’d be foolish to simply dismiss it as a “bad day at the office” which even the best teams have from time to time though. The loss demonstrated long-standing weaknesses. I’ve blogged before that with the exception of sub-par goalkeeping I think our potential downfalls are far more to do with tactical weaknesses and lack of mental discipline as they are with the technical qualities of our current squad. 

If these weaknesses aren’t addressed we’re in some danger of becoming a Rolls Royce version of what West Ham United were in the ten years after England’s home World Cup win in 1966. Widely admired for their football and youth system but not taken REALLY seriously when it came to the biggest prizes in the game. The financial gap between us and the ‘Appy ‘Ammers is now a chasm in the digital age. Then there was a gap but it wasn’t that huge. Broadcasting income hardly amounted to the gate takings from a single home match in those times. There were no live League games whatsoever. The sole domestic match shown live was the FA Cup Final. Still, we need to have a long, hard look at ourselves. It’s no good us saying “we don’t do defence” and leaving it at that. 

Manuel Almunia has developed one of those mystery injuries that tend to coincide with him displaying a dip in form. He won’t travel to Serbia. Łukasz Fabiański will start tomorrow night in Belgrade. I for one will be hoping that he firmly pokes his fingers in the eyes of all his critics, which definitely include me. I hope he has an absolutely faultless display.  For the life of me though I can’t see how Fabiański is a better goalkeeper than either Don Vito Mannone or Wojciech Szczęsny, either of whom I would pick ahead of him (and Manuel Almunia for that matter). 

The only opinion that matters however is that of Arsčne Wenger. He clearly thinks that Fabiański will come correct at some stage. I hope that he’s right. He and Fabiański will be fully entitled to repeatedly flick up the V’s at the rest of us if he does. I for one would be delighted if he were so to do. One area where I do have some sympathy with Fabiański is that it can’t be easy playing the very occasional game. He hardly ever plays in the reserves if not called upon to play in the first team, something 

I find odd as reserve team matches were moved to midweek when the Premier League started in 1992/3 precisely because the new League permitted a substitute goalkeeper to be named along with two outfield substitutes. This was a new departure for the English game, which up until 1987/88 only allowed one substitute to be named and used in League matches (the number was increased to two for FA Cup and League Cup matches in 1986/87 with the League following one season later). 

Reserve matches were moved to midweek to allow reserve goalies sitting on the bench at the weekend to get a game. We decreasingly avail ourselves of this possibility with the fourth or fifth choice goalie often between the sticks in Premier Reserve League games. There must be a reason. I don’t know what it is. I’d have thought that a goalie would be better off playing in the stiffs rather than just training. Clearly Arsčne Wenger disagrees. I’d love to know why. Perhaps a question for the next shareholders’ question and answer session with shareholders. 

That said, I’d love to know why Wenger reposes so much faith in Fabiański, as compared to Mannone or Szczęsny. I really, really can’t see it. Fabiański had one good game for us last season at the Boleyn Ground against the ‘Appy ‘Ammers in the FA Cup. All his other first team performances were blighted with errors. He also had a lot of responsibility for the Spurs equaliser in the Carling Cup this season, displaying chocolate wrists and butter fingers. All that said I hope he comes out of tomorrow night with all his critics, me included, having to eat humble pie. I’m not one of those who seemingly delight in being proved right about the technical weaknesses I perceive in any of our players, and/or their tactical deployment and mental preparation. 

Wenger said in his recent Q & A session with Arsenal shareholders that the goalie is never exclusively responsible for a goal conceded. There are always “at least five mistakes” that contribute to any goal conceded. In most cases he has a strong point. Very few goals against are solely down to the keeper. Although he made a fearful dog’s breakfast of Gonzalo Jara’s second for Albion on Saturday, the Chilean wing-back was allowed to go for a stroll into our box. Alex Song and Gaël Clichy giving up the chase after being beaten with a good pass to Jara and Laurent Koscielny backing off him as he advanced into the box rather than closing him down. 

Talking of Koscielny, the manager’s decision to substitute him with Carlos Vela twenty minutes into the second half smacked of panic rather than astute tactical judgement. It left us looking unbalanced I thought. 

Let’s put all our doubts to one side and get behind the team in Serbia tomorrow night though. There’s plenty of time for analysis and discussion outside the games. Whenever an Arsenal team steps over the touch-line I want them to win and win well. 

Keep the faith!