The season doesn’t start here

It’s strange to arrive at the morning of our season opener and not feel the usual mix of excitement and optimism, or at least intrigue.

That’s because the summer usually involves new signings or squad promotions which bring fresh blood into the team, making me either convinced we’ll overcome our faults and challenge for honours or scared witless that everything will come crashing down.

This time round it just feels like we’re in for more of the same. Arteta’s injury apart, the team we field against Villa today will in all likelihood be exactly the same as the one that won at Newcastle on the final day of last season.

Really, our season will start against Sunderland on September 14, the first match after the transfer window shuts. It’s a stupid system that everyone is left dangling until the first three league fixtures – not to mention both legs of the Champions League qualifiers – are completed before we know who our squad members will be for the campaign.

But that is nothing compared to the stupidity of the way Arsenal have done their transfer business this summer.

The good ship Prudence was launched with high expectations after Ivan Gazidis’s ‘new era of financial firepower’ rhetoric, it coasted through the Higuain speculation before hitting weather off Irony Bay with the signing of an injury-prone French teenager in the form of Yaya Sanogo. Then it crashed into the Suarez £40,000,001m storm and has now properly run aground in Plain Embarrassing Straits with Wenger blaming the market and other clubs for doing business early as the reasons we haven’t signed anyone of note.

I could moan away for another 1,000 words about how badly the Club has handled things but, in the interests of readers’ sanity, let me try to be brief: we have no transfer strategy; our scouting system is failing; we don’t have the manpower to complete deals; the messages from Gazidis and Wenger are not the same and yet there never appears to be any pressure placed on the boss; Wenger’s perception of ‘value’ is the same as ‘discounted’; signing Suarez would have/still could undermine a huge amount of what Arsenal Football Club stands for.

These aren’t completely new problems but I’ve always managed to be persuaded that they were excused by the financial constraints of financing the construction of Ashburton Grove. Now, with new commercial deals secured and having oodles of cash in the pot, I just see them as inherent flaws in Wenger’s attitude and the way that part of the Club is run.

The one plus has been the amount of deadwood we have managed to chop out. Bendtner and Park Ju-Young remain but getting rid of Squillaci, Arshavin, Denilson, Santos, Chamakh and, best of all, persuading Roma to pay actual money for Gervinho, in the course of three months is pretty sharp.

But of course virtually all of these players represent failures of our transfer policies in the first place. With the exception of Gervinho they have had to be written off by the Club because they were literally worthless.

Questions need to be asked both about how and why we targeted these players in the first place and also about how they were treated (by that I mean coached as well as the atmosphere within the ‘Colney creche’) once they arrived. Basically, were they crap when we bought them or did we make them crap? But there is no feeling that those questions ARE being asked, either by Wenger or anyone supposedly above him.

So we arrive at the start of the season not having suffered the traditional trauma of selling our best player but equally not having taken the opportunity to use some of our mammoth cash pile. The teams that will be competing for the title have all undergone upheaval to a greater or lesser degree by appointing Moyes, Mourinho and Pellegrini. This was a chance to add even more pressure on them by – crazy thought this – buying players that are better than theirs.

It all still may happen in the final days of the window. But it hasn’t so far this summer and it hasn’t in any of the last eight or nine so don’t build your hopes up.

Suarez and Rooney – between the devil and the shallow red git

We all remember those breath-taking transfers. For me, the hallucinatory sight of Dennis Bergkamp standing in red and white at Highbury and a beaming Sol Campbell shaking hands with Arsene at London Colney stand out as the real jaw droppers. Even thinking back to those moments now brings a smile to my face.

Should the growing speculation of Arsenal’s desire to sign Luis Suarez or Wayne Rooney be proved true, it will feel similar but without any of the joy. How could you take pleasure in recruiting two players with such ugly histories?

I’ll deal with Rooney first. I know it is almost 10 years ago but I’ll never forgive him for his contribution to ending the Invincibles’ run at Old Trafford.

I’ve watched the clip of him diving over Sol’s leg again for the first time in years this morning (remind yourselves here if you dare: Rooney dive video) and it still riles me. Fine, Sol shouldn’t have flashed a leg at the ball, but that was a dive by Rooney, pure and simple.

That leap, in a game were there was nothing to choose between the two teams, triggered the end of that glorious period. It was a group so committed to the beauty of football that to see the unbeaten run end in such an unjust way was devastating for them. Of course they could have shown more resilience afterwards and not stumbled for so long but Rooney had a central role in sparking them fall from the top of the tree and I can’t forgive him for it.

Now for Suarez. This is a man who has been banned for racially abusing a black player, showed great delight at committing a handball in a World Cup quarter final, has twice been banned for biting opponents and is currently in part way through a 10 match suspension for the latest of the two chomps.

How can you want to sign a person who has done all that? Forget whether they will improve your starting XI or not, what on earth would want you to bring someone like that into your football club, nevermind potentially blowing at least half of your transfer kitty on him?

There is no shame in wanting to work to a higher standard compared to other clubs. It is a proud part of our tradition that we have at least strived to be a club that does things honourably and in recent years our self-sacrificing pursuit of living within our means and taking FFP seriously while our rivals have been ‘financial doping’ has reflected we still try to work to a better set of rules. Wenger forever lauds our topping of the fair play league whenever it happens (where’s the trophy for that!) so it must be close to his heart.

I have no doubt there would be double standards involved if these two had done what they did in an Arsenal shirt - dozens of my Arsenal heroes have bent the rules over time and I have continued to worship them regardless. But I’d like to think even as one-eyed a supporter as me would draw a line at backing an Arsenal man who committed any of Suarez’s most heinous acts.

Both players are not Wenger players, not Arsenal players. For a man who puts so much store by how players live their lives, how could Wenger want someone with Rooney’s lifestyle? And for a man who believes so strongly in multiculturalism and looking beyond a passport, how can he want someone with Suarez’s attitudes?

I don’t understand why we would want them in the first place or, if the speculation isn’t true, why the club wouldn’t quash rumours linking us to such degenerates.

Will ‘big’ signings even make a difference?

So the Arsenal purse strings are supposed to have been loosened and the money is set to flow.

Judging by the way the long-expected Higuain deal has panned out, there probably won’t be any evidence of that until the clock strikes midnight at the close of transfer window.

But let’s assume Arsene does actually splash the cash a bit more freely. My fear is that the tiki-taka-lite style we deploy and the attitude among the squad means no matter who we sign we still won’t challenge for the title.

I should rewind slightly and – on the off chance that this is the only blog that survives the end of the world – offer a bit of context since my last post following the Sunderland game in February. My hope then was that a team spirit could be forged which would propel us on to better times. It didn’t really turn out that way. As much as you could admire the way the team didn’t crumble after defeats to Blackburn, Bayern Munich and Sperz – not to mention another immensely satisfying last day win to deny our nearest and dearest neighbours a Champions League place – when you look back on the run-in there was little to draw inspiration from.

The clean sheets gained and home draws against the likes of Man U and Everton did not reflect a new-found resilience but were the result of giving up what attacking flair the team did possess for some pretty stodgy defending that got the job done.

It is too hopeful to think the end to the campaign offered a platform for greater things this coming season, just like a couple year back when Arsene lauded our unbeaten run and chose to ignore the fact that most of the results were draws not wins.

And it’s that aspect of history repeating, despite the pledges of Gazidis that money will be spent, which is most dispiriting. We have been ready to wipe the slate clean and start afresh at the end of almost every season since the move from Highbury. But while Arsene has changed the characters pretty often, the script has remained the same – a lightweight team, playing too often at a meandering (aimless?) pace, not possessing the ‘belly fire’ or nous to beat title rivals.

The one crumb of comfort I have is the 2007/08 season when we suffered no major departures in the close season and a stable, decent team was augmented by a ‘fox in the box’ striker (assuming Higuain plays the role of Eduardo) and went on to play like champions for six months. No, it wasn’t a full season but I’d settle for six months right now.

So perhaps I am being a bit too Stewart Robson and Arsene can make this style and system work and things will change now he has a bigger wallet – to answer my question in the blog title, maybe a ‘big’ signing(s) could make a difference.

But can you imagine a Wenger Arsenal side, even with Higuain and perhaps another stellar new name, once more going to Man U, Man City or Chelsea with a genuine expectation (not hope) of winning? I can’t and that’s why, sadly, the one transfer I was getting genuinely excited about was seeing Arsene replaced. I’d like to see us take a different approach to solving the same familiar problems and acknowledge that playing with more power and pace does not immediately make you a worshipper at Fat Sam’s anti-football alter.

Real teams are forged by wins like this

Sunderland 0 Arsenal 1

It was always going to take a performance this satisfying to bring me back to blogging. 

The past four months have produced some highs but too many familiar lows as sparks of flair have been more than extinguished by errors and displays that were, frankly, depressing.

But yesterday was different. The team showed all of the character that has been missing since the heady opening few games of the campaign. Determination, stubbornness and genuinely good defending (and not a little creativity when required) are things that put this supporter, reared on George Graham’s Arsenal, in a happy place.

The word generally being used to describe Sagna’s performance was immense and it is spot on. Drafted in at last minute to centre back, he produced some majestic blocks, tackles and headers as Sunderland kept coming forwards. And when he wasn’t putting his body on the line, he was busy organising his defensive colleagues, pointing people to the right spot and helping Aaron Ramsey find his feet at right back.

It was great to see Sagna back to his best after a few weeks where he looked to have switched off. His contract discussions rumble on but if he shows more of the same kind of effort he’ll no doubt earn a new payday from us. It worked for Theo Walcott, after all.

The other defensive star was Szczesny. I thought he looked solid enough on crosses but he produced two, maybe three, match-winning saves. He was decisive enough to put off Fletcher in the one-on-one and then athletic enough to tip over the late header (from Graham?). Just like Sagna, it was pleasing to see him shine. He’s young to be relied on as a first team goalkeeper and you feel he needs days like yesterday to reassure himself – and maybe Wenger too – that he’s worthy of the position.

Elsewhere, Wilshere and Cazorla were again clearly on another level to everyone else on the pitch. At times I felt sorry for them seeing Giroud and Walcott fumble their way around or just not have the speed of thought to understand what tune the conductors were trying to play.

The biggest winner though was the team. Was it a real Arsenal team that gave away a winning position at home to Fulham? Or lost to fourth-tier (remember that, FOURTH tier) Bradford City? Or performed so meekly for much of the Chelsea and Man City defeats? Far more than 7-3s against Newcastle or 5-1s against West Ham it is victories like the one at the Stadium of Light that help to form a real team.

There has been so much player turnover in the past few years that the common bond that fixes everyone – teammates, partnerships and defensive and attacking units on the pitch, as well as supporters off it – has been missing. They and we haven’t been through enough ‘together’ to really get to know one another.

To illustrate the point, if you compare the squad fielded for the match closest to February 9 four years ago (Tottenham away, Feb 8, 2009), just one of our starting XI that day, Sagna, is still at the club. Of our subs, six remain, though two are on loan (Arshavin, Gibbs, Ramsey, Fabianski, Djourou, Bendtner). Contrast that with Man U, where six of their starting XI away at West Ham on the same day remain (Ferdinand, Vidic, Rafael, Carrick, Giggs, Scholes) and four of the seven subs still there with one on loan (Nani, Welbeck, Fletcher, Fabio). In total, ignoring injuries, five Arsenal players from that day could have been fielded yesterday compared to nine from Man U.

It takes time and victories like yesterday to build the sense of joint purpose which successful teams need. Over time they transform players from professionals who happen to play for Arsenal to Arsenal footballers who are linked to each other and with us, the poor souls who survived it all with them. Hopefully it marks the start of a new phase for this group – the same spirit will come in very useful over coming weeks and months.