Let’s be clear: the West Ham game was bad. It was awful. It was an abomination, a mockery, a (gets thesaurus)… well, it was all the synonyms for awful. You name it… that’s not the point of this screed. We all know it sucked. Instead, I want to think about the reactions to the game. I’m definitely not going to tell anyone how to react after a game like this, but I do think reactions are instructive. In other words, I think your reaction to the game says more about you as a fan than it does about the team. This is natural, of course, but it’s also pretty frustrating as well. Let me try to illustrate this over the next few paragraphs.
First of all, it’s just one game, out of 38. You can bet that every team’s gonna have a s**t-storm of a game during the season, maybe even a couple. Arsenal’s happened to come in the first game of the season. Does it narrow the margin for error? Yes, but you know it’s coming for other teams. Arsenal have done this before, and have come out of it better, and this squad will be able to do it again. So let’s just everyone calm down. They controlled possession as well as shots and gave away a couple of relatively avoidable goals.
Counterpoint: Did you watch that display? It was atrocious. Poor passing, poor defending on set pieces, a howler by our “world class” ‘keeper; no impetus, no drive, no hunger, and no one at all blameless in their roles. It was a comprehensive dud of a game. Honest to God, it looked like we could have been out there for 5 more hours and not scored a goal.
Let’s try another one: Who’s to blame? (because blame isn’t the fans’ hobby, it’s their instinct, their first and second nature) Well, the manager set out a lineup that excluded Theo Walcott who had been playing magnificently (or, at very least, scoring with some regularity) and who started the Community Shield fixture against Chelsea. What’s the rationale for that? Wenger has also been quoted as saying that the players were “nervous”. I suppose it’s not at all out of line to ask why, and whose responsibility is it to soothe players’ collective nerves? Clearly, that’s going to fall within the manager’s purview. If the players aren’t up for it, no small part of that is clearly on the boss. That’s part of the job. Finally, the manager’s insistence on shoehorning players into uncomfortable positions rather than playing the best players for the system is costing the team points, and it shows no signs of abating.
Counterpoint: The players weren’t up for it. With that lineup, at home, and against a game that ultimately undermanned West Ham, it was always going to be there for the taking, and I don’t give the slightest who’s playing where. The manager sets the team us, sure, but he doesn’t make the passes, doesn’t line up the final ball, and doesn’t try to dribble out of the defensive area leading to the second goal. If the players look flat, that may be on the manager, but if you’re a professional athlete and you can’t get up for the opening game of the season,
then what the hell are you in this business for? It’s appalling to be that apathetic and poor in effort on day 1.
Now… those are reasonable interpretations of the game from what I would consider optimistic and pessimistic fans. Obviously, many Arsenal fans aren’t exactly reasonable, but that’s not exactly the job of fans, even if “fan” isn’t really short for “fanatic” (see Elliott Gorn’s The Manly Art for a pretty convincing case that “fan” is actually short for “fancy”). At any rate, depending on my mood, I have felt pretty much all of that as my day progressed (I got up at 6:30AM for the game… stupid western US). And here’s the big problem: they’re all post-hoc rationalizations, and they say far more about the people saying them than they actually do the team. I believe, if we all look deep down and get really honest and critical with ourselves, we’d be able to admit that we know almost literally nothing about what goes on within the dressing room, at training, etc. and that’s OK. But we’d be a hell of a lot better off by admitting that up front and stop acting like we actually know anything. But that’s clearly not going to happen, so where does that leave us?
First of all, I’d say that you don’t form your conclusions off one game, no matter how instructive you think it is. One game doesn’t prove your point… it just doesn’t (unless your point was referring to a single game). If you were one of those predicting (and I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot myself) that Arsenal would win the league this season, I really don’t think you should be walking back on that just yet. Obviously, if you thought the team was short before, this game obviously didn’t change that opinion. However, it is most definitely too early to get smug about it (and why would you want to get smug when your team is losing anyway?). At the end of the day, it’s just one game.
However… if they drop another one at Selhurst next Sunday…
All.
Bets.
Are.
Off.
