In the abstract, I like what Arsene Wenger is about. I like the football his teams try and play. I like the development model they’ve been forced to adopt.
I’m less of a fan of the Gallic condescension and brittle arrogance. The self-serving story lines and imagined slings and arrows. But this is Arsenal under Wenger, and we’re used to it. At least they have more tradition than Chelsea.
But while these Gunners may have produced 15 minutes of pressure that produced 15 minutes of panic, errors, and three gift-wrapped goals from Villa, they’re a far cry from anything vintage.
In other words, Arsenal didn’t really win anything. The story line? Villa crapped themselves. Two penalties and a deflection in 15 minutes? That only happens when your opponent helps it along. It wasn’t ‘capitulation’—it was chaos, confusion, and gutlessness.
Unexpectedly up 2-0 at the half, you could easily see that Villa had no idea what to do with a comfortable lead at the Emirates.
The title “pretenders” hanging on to a lifeline for any sort of silverware, Villa held all the cards and looked like the new kid at the table. All we had to do was attack them high, pressure them early, keep them from getting a quick goal. Make the crowd restless, let the pressure build.
But no. We ceded ground and time and space, let them run at us in their desperation to salvage anything from the season. Then clumsily challenged too late and gifted them goals that we could easily see weren’t coming from open play.
They pressed, and we let them. We helped them, even. Because we didn’t know what to do (Hint: Keep on playing the way you were playing when you found yourselves going up 2-0.)
We let them back in. Then we caught a terribly unlucky break. An we conceded a second penalty, this one very soft (not deserving of deciding a cup tie, for example), and courtesy of a man who all of a sudden decided to help out for once and cocked things up because he doesn’t know how to actually help out.
What can I take from this game? If Alex McLeish has done one thing wrong, it’s signing Alan Hutton. I hate to be harsh, but he’s useless out there. Warnock is better, and that ought to tell you something.
Cuellar started, and though it was only one game, he and Dunne looked no more solid than Dunne and Collins.
This Villa side doesn’t have the athleticism to let teams run at them, turn, pick them up and cut them out. The hips are too slow to turn on the back line. The first steps, not fast enough to keep up. The indecision far from goal compounded by the recklessness right in front. If Arsenal’s 15 minutes looked like anything, it was the spell that saw Wolves go from 0-1 down to 2-1 up.
Challenge further up the pitch. Concede fouls at midfield. Disrupt their rhythm. Put players off. Make them hear footsteps. Don’t sit back and invite it all into the box. That’s just a stupid recipe for disaster, and I don’t know anyone, McLeish included, who would be happy with what we saw, instead.
But as we’ve all been saying, this, of all games, shows what’s in store for the Villa faithful.
Oh, and by the way, the January window is closing, and I think our business is done. Wasn’t bad, all things considered, but I wouldn’t mind Robbie Keane being at B6 a little longer.
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