The Arsenal Season: 2013-2014

Rather than a statistical analysis or match by match recounting, I thought I would post impressions of the season in some kind of random way that reflects discussions I've had with other Gooners since the FA Cup final victory over Hull City.

THE GOOD

My player of the season for Arsenal had to be Per Mertesacker. Ramsey burned brighter but you can't miss 14 weeks of the season and be named footballer of the year.  BFG's interventions became so routine that they were expected, and I can't count how many times he would do the simplest thing that caused an opposing attack to break down. That's what I loved about Per this season: the simple toe-poke to dispossess someone, the simple pass from the back to the open midfielder, the clearance that snubbed out a threat; it was minimalist, Philip Glass-esque defending and that's what we needed. I don't hate his goals, either, few though they may be, they seem to always be of vital importance.

His partner in the centre of defence would be option 1a in the POS voting. Koscielny, the man with the big pockets, the man who scores the falling-down-iest goals in the squad used his considerable athleticism to chase the ball down when Wenger employed the much-lamented high line and I shudder to think what things may have been without him. Many was the time the opposition would break up the pitch and Kos would be the one at the touchline harassing the ball until reinforcements could arrive.

Aaron Ramsey...what mysterious ailment kept him out so long?  We'll never know. But what we do know is that the cheeky look-off that he gave Podolski at the end of the 2012-2013 campaign before he smashed home a goal from a ridiculous angle was just a preview. He had displayed his tireless running and tackling during that season's run-in, but the goal scoring...it leaves one speechless. It didn't even seem as though it took effort, it just seemed to occur and then keep occurring every time it was needed. He was everywhere, he was industrious, he was classy, he was inspirational. Teams that want to win have to plan for injuries, but with only one striker Arsenal couldn't compensate for Ramsey's absence. And of course, he scored THAT goal.

THINGS I LOVED

Rozza's goals versus Spuds, especially picking off the ball from Danny Effing Rose, finally helping put to rest that ghost from season's past.

Wilshere's goal versus Norwich. Everybody likes that one, don't they?

Ozil versus Napoli at Ashburton Grove. More like that, please. The man is so good it's just ridiculous sometimes.

Carl Jenkinson's goal versus Norwich, and the joy he showed following it.

Wilshere giving the middles to the MCFC supporters. Never surrender!

Theo giving the scoreline to the swamp people, then being pelted with missiles which the FA did absolutely nothing to punish, and rather made the story about TW14 "inciting the crowd." Tremendous leadership and showed absolutely NO anti-Arsenal bias there.

Szcz's selfie. Anyone who was churlish over this needs to seriously grow a sense of humour.

Mertesacker and Cazorla's "unclassic" commentary video.

Anything involving Gunnersaurus.

Opponents running away scared from Bacary Sagna on the pitch when he got in their faces. 

Flamini doing needed business against those who had it coming to them.

Wilshere doing the "Tottenham-Shit" cheer at the FA Cup celebration. Well done, lad.

Nicky Bendtner's goal versus Cardiff City whilst I was in the process of nearly shitting myself in angst. 

All of Podolski's 8 league goals.

And my goal of the season, Aaron Ramsey's blast versus Liverpool. I hate Liverpool. That's why.

(All the fun stuff that happened during the FA Cup final is different unto itself, and since it was finally a trophy you could probably pick every moment in that game that was good as a highlight.)

THINGS I DIDN'T NECESSARILY LOVE ALL THAT MUCH

Losing at home to Villa on opening day following a summer of (to that point) transfer inactivity. It was not a pretty sight anywhere amongst the Gooners of the world.

Losing away to Stoke City and Manchester United without scoring a goal.

Drawing to Swansea, Everton, and Southampton.

"Those heavy defeats." I've said enough about that elsewhere.

The way they played at Napoli. 

Arjen Robben, Chelsea Football Club, Stoke City supporters, Yanks pretending to like Liverpool, Juan Kincaid jinxing the Arsenal. 

Arsene Wenger shirtless after the FA Cup final. Still better than seeing Steve Bruce shirtless ever, but not something I'd anticipated.

Starting Big Luke in the FA Cup final. What's done is done, but I thought that was not a very good choice by the manager.

People talking about the number of goals Olivier Giroud scored as 22, when he only scored 16 in the league, which is still not good enough.

I HAVE NO CLEVER SUMMATION FOR THIS POST

It was another decent 4th place finish for the Arsenal and it was great to win the FA Cup. Here's to a summer of smashing transfers that will push the club on to winning the Premier League. Heh heh.

Arsene knows...except when he doesn't.

There is a reason this blog is called “The Existential Arsenalist.” You won't come here to read yet another in the hundreds of recounts of matches. I'm not here to match statistical analysis with 7amkickoff. I'm not privy to inside information.

If you read my writings on anything resembling a regular basis, you know that for me, every minute of every match of every season is nothing short of an existential crisis. It is very personal in nature, and as such is intended to be very subjective. Also, I'm watching from the USA, so I've less access to some things that those of you back in Blighty have as far as television coverage.

So enough with the exposition. Here's the premise of this entry: As we enter another transfer window, remember that Arsene knows, except when he doesn't, and when he doesn't know, look out, because he can miss by miles.

I'm not talking about missing with last minute stop-gap measures like Park or Squillaci. I'm talking about a particular vision for the club that Wenger had, a long-term building project that failed as miserably as any manager's efforts ever have.

The move to Ashburton Grove was designed to make Arsenal competitive with, at the time, England's “biggest” club. Petrodollars and oligarchs were topics reserved for the FT, not the FA. (See what I did there?) Decisions were made in the belief that the difference between Arsenal and their rival (there was really only one at that time) was matchday turnover. Gate receipts, if you will, limited how much money Arsenal could spend. That was true then.

Arsene saw a problem with the big picture before the move. He feared something very specific. I cannot find the exact quote, but I remember reading it. He said that he feared that Arsenal would become “like Ajax” after they moved to the Amsterdam ArenA. I specifically remember him saying “What good is a new stadium if you don't have any players in it?” or something similar. He was afraid that the debt from the building of the stadium would make it impossible to attract and pay top players.

Arsene Wenger was afraid. He saw a future bereft of talent at Arsenal, a half-empty Grove, a decline, a collapse, the end of the Arsenal Football Club. In his mind, if not manged very, very cautiously (and I say cautiously as opposed to carefully), the move to the new grounds would leave Arsenal not unlike Leeds United under Peter Ridsdale's stewardship. And THAT is something that AW simply could not abide.

Thus he began what would become known among some people as “The Project.” This is how I remember the project: Take all the players who made Arsenal great during the 8 or so years of his reign and sell them for whatever he can get, stockpiling their transfer money and more importantly, the savings from their wages. Having done that, part 2 of the project was to buy a bunch of players for less money and keep them on the books for lower wages, letting them “grow up” at Arsenal, love the club and each other, and at that magical moment when they all matured together, Arsenal would be the “modern superclub (groan).”

If you didn't follow Arsenal before the middle years of the naughts, you might not know just how miserable a failure “The Project” turned out to be.

I bring this up now not to flog Wenger with it—please, that's the last thing in the world I wish for the man. I bring it up because I've just heard more than one Gooner that I respect (and you know who are, Goonerholic) declare the 2012-2013 edition Arsene's “worst Arsenal side ever.”

Bollox. Excrement. Not even close. I mean that—literally not even CLOSE to the worst side Wenger ever sent out over the course of a season.

Because I watched the worst side Wenger ever sent out over the course of a season. And that season was the one which ended in the spring of 2009. And, if I may be so bold, it's the season which shows the brilliant failure of The Project.

(Note: for the purposes of this incredibly subjective blog, I am talking about the domestic league. I'm one of those antiquated fools who actually puts a priority on winning the league and thinks that's the true measure of a side.)

Don't get me wrong—that season was only one point worse than the one just completed. That season featured a 21-game unbeaten run (unbeaten, but god help us not untied, and “tied” is what we call a drawn match here in the USA).

I only really hate (did I say hate?) the memory of the 2008-09 season because I think it reflects just how massively AW got it wrong. Wenger put his faith in a group of players who completely, utterly, and miserably failed him, the club, themselves, and the supporters. And I'll guarantee you that to a man none of them give a holy shit that they did. Never before has there been assembled such a worthless, shiftless bunch of passengers in a side supposedly built for spirit and all that shit Wenger always says. And they're gone. Almost all of them are gone, just 4 years later. Has any other side undergone such a change in such a short time?

What a joke played on us. Adebayor, Bendtner, Nasri, Fabregas, Denilson, Arshavin, Eboue, Gallas, Song, Clichy, Vela, Hleb...thank you, Arsene. Thank you for showing us that you are human. Thank you for showing us that you can fail and do so in a spectacular fashion.

Look at that list of names.

Egomaniacs, wasters, crybabies, bottlers, clowns...and not one of them invested in the club. THAT lot was supposed to replace The Invincibles, remember.

Compared to the group that finished 2012-2013, what shocks me the most is just how utterly unprofessional their conduct was. How many of those players ended up agitating for a move away rather than honour their contracts and the agreements made between them and the manager? How many of them appeared to quit on the manager and the club? I'm not speaking about players who suffered major injuries and fought to come back from them here—that's clearly the antithesis of quitting (and thus I'm sparing Diaby and Rosicky).

I'd love to produce a 7amkickoff-style chart where the players are listed down one column, then across the top is each category of horrible character trait they displayed at Arsenal. Gallas—disrespectful, quitter. Bendtner—egomaniac, clown. Arshavin—lazy. I suppose Adebayor could win this competition with the most boxes ticked.

Not every player on the list was unprofessional, I'll offer. Clichy was just a poor defender who would consistently make a game-changing mistake. Eboue was a clown but you never got the feeling he didn't love Arsenal. I only include them on the list because they were both players that Wenger put his trust and faith in and they failed him.

This group of players seem to have done something drastic to Wenger's personality. With them, he persisted in playing them long after they had disgraced themselves with terrible performances or off-pitch nonsense. The worst among these was Denilson, Arsenal's ultimate passenger. His complete disregard for the game that was going around him used to make me scream and curse, and my dislike of him was only compounded by his “What, me worry?” Samba-boy Brazilian happiness no matter how utter shit he was or how many times Arsenal lost. He and Adebayor could be the poster children (emphasis on children) for this entire misguided era of Arsenal football—Denilson can do his little dance and Adebayor can grin like an idiot after he's flagged for offside for the 9^th time during a match.

The king of this miserable lot, the player who always “led by example,” was little Francesc Fabregas, little boy lost, the sad little boy who just couldn't honour his contract and had to run back home to sit on the bench at Barcelona. Poor little Cesc, his time at Arsenal was so miserable that his DNA wouldn't let him behave like a professional footballer. Can you imagine him crying into his little blue and red pillow every night? I can. The little boy.

I can imagine him being injured every time a big match came along. Remember, he never got to experience lifting a trophy except that he could have but he was injured for the Birmingham City match. Poor little captain. Pobre Capitanito.

Do you think poor little Cesc was bothered with leading or setting an example? He was such a great leader that he missed the final match of his Arsenal captaincy so that he could attend the Spanish Grand Prix in BARCELONA. Now that's an example, isn't it?

Do you think poor little Cesc was any better of a captain than Billy Big Time Gallas? I don't, because at the first asking, Poor Little Cesc, the homesick boy (who I guarantee you will end up plying his trade in Sunny Spanish Manchester) fucked Arsenal out of 15 million quid and forced (FORCED! Can you read that? HE FORCED ARSENAL TO SELL HIM AT A RIDICULOUS CUT RATE!) his club to sell him.

Adebayor. Bendtner. Nasri. Fabregas. Denilson. Clichy. Hleb.

Arsene knows. Except when he doesn't.

That last match of 2009 had a little bit of everything for that lost generation. Ryan Shawcross conceded a penalty. Go ahead, laugh a bit. Abou Diaby scored. Go ahead, laugh for about 20 minutes. Vito Mannone started at keeper. Eboue, Bendtner, and Vela (who replaced Arshavin, go ahead and cry and laugh and pull out your hair) all featured. Denilson stuck out a leg after being beaten, tripped Ricardo Fuller, and was booked as he conceded a penalty. I am not making that up.

2008-09 really began with Mathieu Flamini leaving for Milan. Flamini was a shit player who baffled at his continued inclusion in the side despite his utter crapness, until he had a decent run in central midfield and decided to cash in on that in a lovely bit of “Fuck you for sticking with me, Arsene Wenger!” (That would certainly become a trend.)

Lehmann was released. Gilberto was released. Vela was granted a work permit. Alas, poor Chip-arito, we knew him well. Nasri was bought from Marseille. Hleb left for Barca (and began forming a great impression, unfortunately for him that was the impression of his arse in a seat on the Barca substitutes bench). Poor Little Cesc was made captain in November after Billy Big Time, er, behaved like he always does, like a massive cunt. Arshavin is bought. Arsenal are destroyed by Manchester United, 4-1 on aggregate, in the Champions League. On the 8^th of May, Nicklas Bendtner is “fined for unacceptable behaviour” because he decided to consume massive quantities of booze and walk out of a nightclub after that MUFC match with his trousers around his ankles.

Adebayor decided to follow his previous season, where he scored 24 league goals, with 10, proving of course that he is a stupid grinning offside twat.

72 points. That's what this squad managed, despite a 21 match unbeaten run.

I'll take the 2012-13 version of Arsenal any day of the week over that lot. For the first time since the undertaking of “The Project,” I saw an Arsenal side made up of professional players led by a manager who was in no mood for nonsense (if Santos' fate is any example). At every position, it seemed that the rot had finally been cut out and, even if they weren't good enough to win anything but a mythical fourth place trophy, they were a reasonably likeable bunch of hard working professionals who gave the required effort.

Arsenal finally have something real upon which to build. Let's hope that Arsene knows this time. Let's hope he knows what a winning squad really needs, and what winning players really look like. A trophy would be nice, but what always satisfies is a team worthy to be called The Arsenal.