further comments of handshake / jan buy ?
Wenger's team of titches is the smallest in the Premier League, says The Sun.
Skipper Cesc Fabregas thinks that size matters and had implored his manager to sign a striker with a more direct approach.
It seems everyone's now saying what I've been saying on ANR for two years : Wenger's style of play is too one-dimensional. Arsenal's style has not excited me since he lost Flamini, whose running and kicking gave them a high tempo.
Referring to the 3-0 defeat at Manchester City in the Carling Cup, Fabregas said "Throughout the game we had a lot of possession but didn't really have anyone to go in behind the defenders, apart from Carlos Vela, We had a lot of similar players who like the ball into their feet. Sometimes it's true that you need a different kind of option."
Like the rest of us, Fabregas thinks Arsenal need a a powerful striker, and talking about a game where Drogba scored two goals, Cesc said, "Overall, I saw a Chelsea team that was normal but a team that has probably the best striker in the world, and that makes such a difference. An average team that has the best striker in the world can always do something and Didier Drogba makes all the difference to them. Without him, their team would not be the same. Perhaps we had the same kind of problem against Chelsea as the boys had at Manchester City, not really having someone whose game is to go beyond defenders, and we were a little small to fight against them on crosses, too."
Arshavin agrees with Fabregas. Having scored his 100th career goal against Stoke, Arshavin told Russian newspaper Sport Express, " I can't say that centre forward is my position, I am more of a second strikers. I played at the edge of attack because of the many injures to other forwards."
Infortunately, thousands of Gooners no longer trust Wenger to buy the right player. While he is linked with every teenager on five continents, they moan and rumble and rage. In every office and school in the Home Counties and beyond, Arsenal fans ask each other, "Why doesn't he buy what he need?"
After Arsenal were smashed 3-0 by Chelsea, a friend emailed a round-up of things that has been written in the aftermath of that match.
These included a comment by Tomas Rosicky, who said, "I admire the boss for what he is doing. He is special. He doesn't let himself be influenced by people outside the club."
That is exactly the problem. But Wenger should allow himself be influenced by two people inside the club: Fabregas and Arshavin.
The media made far too much of the HANDSHAKE that never was.
Wenger said he had decided by half-time NOT to shake the hand of Manchester City manager Mark Hughes. He probably knew that would become the story for the next four days. And after those four days people would forget that Arsenal been stuffed 3-0 and had thrown away another trophy by playing kids.
After the handshake incident, Hugh McIlvanney, Sir Alex's mate, said in his Sunday Times column that Wenger must be reconciled with reality ASAP :
Great Wenger is evading reality
By Hugh McIlvanney
Shaking hands with Mark Hughes may be optional but Arsène Wenger should feel an obligation to stay on nodding terms with reality.
Of the two unimpressive reactions the Arsenal manager offered last week to the 3-0 hammerings inflicted on his team by Chelsea and Manchester City, his disdain for traditional politeness at Eastlands was probably the more offensive. But the flagrant irrationality of what he said after Chelsea crushed the last breath of optimism out of Arsenal’s challenge for the Premier League title at the Emirates three days earlier was a far bigger worry for the Frenchman’s multitude of admirers.
Wenger insulted everybody’s intelligence, none more than his own, by attempting to portray the performance of Carlo Ancelotti’s men as something other than a demonstration of unanswerably superior power and effectiveness. And his self-serving distortions degenerated into absolute fantasy when he sought, with ill-defined references to the kind of statistical evidence that third-rate coaching theorists might employ, to belittle the contribution of Didier Drogba, the scorer of two memorable goals on the day.
According to Wenger, Drogba is a player “who doesn’t do a lot”, whose contact with the ball last Sunday was surprisingly limited and who is benefiting from “a period where he kicks the ball and it goes in”. It’s interesting how many of those periods the giant Ivorian seems to enjoy when facing Arsenal, against whom he has struck 10 goals in his past nine appearances.
The truth is, of course, that Drogba — thanks to his all but uncontainable strength and athleticism, the soundness of his technique with feet and head, and the violent deadliness of his finishing — has fully earned the right to be the most feared centre-forward in world football. Perhaps Wenger’s reluctance to admit how remarkable he really is reflects the extent to which the mighty striker represents the ideal combination of skill and physical competitiveness that has so expensively eluded Arsenal’s lightweight teams in recent seasons. The list of footballers who brought an inspired manager a healthy flow of trophies between his arrival in 1996 and 2005 has a core of names with a steely resonance. Equivalents have been nowhere to be seen during the ensuing drought.
Vulnerability on Wednesday was linked to the familiar favouring of youth in ｓ ｅｌｅｃｔions for the Carling Cup and it is Wenger’s prerogative to go on defending that policy, just as he is entitled to tell us that his lack of respect or affection for Hughes would have made a handshake rank hypocrisy. But the comments following the humiliation of Arsenal’s strongest available line-up last Sunday were in a different category. They cast one of modern football’s genuinely great figures as either disingenuous or deluded. For Arsène Wenger, a reconciliation with reality is overdue.
Dec 8, 2009
