My Vision
12
May
2009
Inexperience myth / Nasri, Diaby & Arshavin confusion
12 May 2009 - By Mean LeanIt is all doom and gloom around Arsenal right now or so it seems. Many ex players have been kind enough to give Arsene some much needed advice about his job because he is pretty new to this stuff. He clearly doesn't know which area of the pitch he needs to look at, so thank you to Emmanuel Petit.
“Arsenal have not won anything in four years,” Petit stated on L’Equipe TV. “Everything was done to bring together a young team and make it progress step by step, after [Thierry] Henry’s departure.
“But, at the end of the day, the transition did not work out.Arsene Wenger was always protected by David Dein, but today the shareholders, the fans and the press are doing soul-searching.
“Arsene is extremely intelligent, he is a visionary. I am not saying that he should change his ways, but if he made slight changes and managed to find a compromise between youth and experience, like Manchester and every dominant team in Europe do, he would find the right mix. But it means spending more money.”
I love the Arsene does not buy experience waffle. Bacary Sagna, William Gallas, Mikel Silvestre, Tomas Rosicky, Andrey Arshavin and Eduardo are all experienced international players and correct me if I am wrong, Arsene did actually buy those players.
The Arsene needs to buy organisation or leadership argument would sit better with me. What I am a little confused about is the Abou Diaby out on the left and Samir Nasri in the middle experiment. During Cesc's absence, Diaby played in the middle on more than one occasion and won plenty of tackles and tracked back and we saw against Chelsea that Samir Nasri really isn't a natural at that. Having said that I think Nasri is a far more productive attacking central player than he is a wide player.
Speaking of wide and central players, I am a little confused about Arshavin's comments about playing on the left.
"The target for my first three months here was not to score a certain number of goals but to discover whether I could play in England or not.
"Sometimes I feel I can do well here but other times I don't - and that's probably because I am playing as a left midfielder.
"I still can't get used to the idea that I am capable of playing there and, frankly, having to do it keeps me baffled.
"I don't know if I can play so well as a left winger or if it is just God taking care of me."
Now is that a 'I do not want to play left wing' or 'I am trying to get used to it' either way it is down to the manager where his players play and I personally think Arshavin is wasted behind the striker. He has fantastic vision and passing but his ability to carry the ball from a wide area is needed in a team of passers.
DJ Dragonfly mentioned the 4-3-3 formation yesterday in his Your Vision article and he makes a good point about how our players would fit nicely into that system.
Away from on pitch matters Stan the man Kroenke has upped his shareholding to 28.3% which is getting rather close to the 30% needed to make a takeover bid, although he apparently has no intension of doing so. What I find interesting is the fact that Kroenke taking over the club is no longer seen as a bad thing in the public eye, villain Alisher Usmanov has allowed Kroenke to be cast as the hero.
Gotta make tracks now, so appologies for short post today. Back tomorrow.
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Latest article YourVision - Is Wenger moving towards a 4-3-3 formation for the Arsenal? ...... (By DJ Dragonfly)
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It looks like we have more than 2 position we need to address this summer.
1) A CB.
2) A DM
3) A LW
1.diaby
2. denilson
3. eboue
4. bendtner ( although he tries his heart out)
5. rosicky (he hasnt had enuf playin time to be classed as top quality)
6. fabianski
7. bischoff
8. silvestre
9. senderos
we ALL NO THAT NOT 1 OF THESE PLAYERS WOULD GET INTO ANY OF THE OTHER BIG 3 and would probably only get into relegation threatened teams like newcastle we all no they wouldnt even get into spurs!!!!!
players we should try to get!!!
1. gokhan inler
2. materazzi
3 zhikov
4. villa
5. muntari
6. cana
even if these players dont play a strong bench is required,
if manyoo can leave berbatov, tevez, scholes, giggs on the bench then we are going ridiculously the wrong way. especially if our bench is not full of winners like the manyoo one is............
there is no way we will win the title with no winners in the squad,
its just embarrassing
arsenal is becoming a joke,,,,
as is arsene who is clearly playing everyone out of position,,
nasri is WINGER
arshavin plays BEHIND THE STRIKER (more effective than rvp) imo
fabregas CANNOT play BEHIND THE STRIKER his movement isnt good enuf and he isnt fast enuf!!!
diaby CANNOT play on the pitch!!!!!!!!! he has no awareness and holds the bal tooo long!!!!!!
denilson is as ineffective as ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this situation is very irritating
Now this is easy to say, i know. But we need winners. In todays market these type of players are not cheap and are certainly hard to find but Arsenal need to find them and for the right price.
We have many potentially fabulous young midfielders but this club can not wait the 2 or 3 years for them to develop. True great players usually show their potential in glimpses at a young age anyway so we could argue some players should be bumped down the pecking order and superseeded by players who can do the job now.
I feel Adebayor should leave Arsenal. I don't hate him. When he give it 110% he is very good. But I fear 2007-08 Ade has gone forever.
I feel Silvestre should be nothing more than squad fodder and should not be relied upon as much as he has in such a vital part of the season.
I have mixed views on Denilson, Song and Diaby. I actually feel Diaby could be the ace in the pack but the other two had good half seasons. Maybe there lies the problem. No consistency. Denilson good first half and Song a good second half of the season. But can any of those players be anywhere the level or players of past like Petit, Parlour, Edu, Vieira even Grimandi?
I would move some of these inconsitant performers further away from the first for now and sign a dominant midfielder along with a dominant centreback and a clincial striker/attacker (depends if he feels Theo is ready for the centre yet) with presence. These players need to be winners though. They have to add fight, spine and character to this potentially great team.
I would go Joleon Lescott/ Cristian Zapata/ Micah Richards or Sakho. They are have similar yet different qualities. But 4 names people. For names that may not add experience but are fighters.
As for midfield, its more difficuilt. Any suggestions people? What midfielders and attackers do you feel could do the job for us and have the desired qualities to really move this squad of players forward.
P.S. I feel 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 should be the only formations we use from now on.
We are not too far, but problems need to be addressed otherwise we will continue to slide. You can't keep polishing turds.
The truth is not in between. Wenger buys experienced players. And he never stopped doing so. The only thing Wenger does not do is "spend big".
Let's stop the smokescreen. People think Wenger should spend big. And they're lying about his actual record to get push their case.
but it isnt the same team as last season...we went into this season with a whole new midfield bar one.... we went into this season with two long term injuries to two main players BEFORE the season has begun and we didnt get the players we needed from last year to finish the job last year....
we missed out last year because we were two players short....we went into this year 6 players short and weve suffered...
it isnt the same team....last summer set us back 3-4 seasons and wenger did nothing about it.....
I do think we have defensive problems. And I do think the squad must always be strengthened continually.
I however don't agree that we have a bad set of players here. That's nonsense. Look at the injuries we've had this season!
If we were as bad as everyone makes out how did we get anything out of the season??!
It seems to me that people want to make Arsenal start another transition phase.
If these people are right that we need reconstruction, then we're 3 years away from competing. But that's not true.
It is no coincidence that we did compete last season and did compete in the cups this season. It's not.
As well as I believe that Wenger is moving towards a 4-3-3 formation next season, I also think that Wenger needs to address the spine of the team.
The spine of our team has to be of a high standard. Our current spine consists of Almunia, Gallas, Fabregas, Arshavin and Van Persie, which I have to say is near that high level. However If we were to acquire a better goalkeeper than Almunia, then I believe our spine would be of a high standard.
The spine of the team MUST play week in, week out. It is no coincidence that Man United (Van Der Sar, Vidic, Carrick, Ronaldo and Rooney), Liverpool (Reina, Carragher, Alonso, Gerrard and Torres) and Chelski (Cech, Terry, Essien, Lampard and Drogba) have a better spine than us, which also spends less time on the treatment table.
arshavin and rosicky are the only international recognised experience in the midfeild,,,, the rest are babies that wenger has paid for at a young age and the majority havent improved...
its the midfield that controls the game....you win a football game in midfield and the reason why we dont win enough big football games is because the average age of our midfeild is 12 or something.....
there is no smokescreen ole....its a fact....
last year we had the best midfield...rosicky 27 hleb 27 famini 24 cesc 21....
cesc is now the oldest player....that aint right mate....
I will list those with Excellence in my view:
Arshavin
Van Persie
Fabregas
Sagna
Good Enough
Gallas
Clichy
Potential
Walcott
Gibbs
Nasri
Vela
I will not include the likes of Wilshere, Ramsay etc who just didn't play enough games to make a fair assessment. The rest are really not good enough IF we want to compete at the very top of the game in England and Europe.
We desperately need some big strong characters (not necessarily big strong men, but that wouldn't go amiss either) who will see taht these guys need something to hold on to in tough matches, who can provide the foundations on which they can develop and reach their potential. These CANNOT be imports, they MUST be Premier League established players so that we minimise the transition time. I think we need about 4-5 in honesty but 2-3 would be a great start.
Two of your top 6 players have already played in the premiership and were average... how do you know any of your other recommendations are any good?
How can you say Rosicky and Denilson are never going to be top class? Rosicky was bought as an extablished top class player and Denilson is Brazil U21 captain. you telling me that Arsene Wenger and Brazil dont know a good player when they see one.
The problem is defensive as we've seen and i think Wenger has already confirmed he will address this issue. What more do you want from him? Liverpool have won squat all this season as have Chelsea - Does that mean Benitez and Hiddink are just rubbish?
ALL your so called "average players" with the exception of Bischoff have represented their country and Rosicky was Czech Republic's Captain. So go figure.
I think you're wrong. Very wrong.
Every single member of our squad brings something to the squad and is a keeper. Except Silvestre.
Denilson for example bailed us out this season.I hear about how awful he is but with him playing we didn't finish 10th. Must mean there's some quality there.
Diaby is a fantastic squad player. Alex Song played fantastically in some matches recently. Bendtner is our 4th choice striker and he has more goals this season than Berbatov or Tevez.
Adebayor despite missing half the season has scored more goals than he scored last season. Eboue who's played 5 different positions for us this season. Almunia who's made a handful of mistakes this season and has been as consistent as any keeper in the league.
Arsenal fans are a disgraceful lot. You have all these players who've fought for the cause this season, and half of them get no credit. Correct me if I am wrong. Unless we sell the whole squad they'll still be our players this season. Then I wonder what motivation or why they should be motivated for our cause.
add
benzema
gareth barry
haagerland
we will finsih 1st in one of the 3 competitons
You just made a fool of yourself with the last comment. Pleasse don't take offence. It's just feedback.
You say because we're 4th is shows our players are not good enough. To fix it you've suggested players from clubs that have done worse than ours.
How can finishing 4th show our players are bad but finishing 7th or 8th does not show Hangenlande is bad?
if i was going to pick a defender form the PL it would be lescott...
a midfieder would be alonso...
not hangaland or barry...
i heard a rumour that we may take flamini back.....yes please arsene....
In regards to goals conceded in the league, we have let in 36 goals, which we are on level par with Everton. Only Fulham (32), Liverpool (26), Man United (23) and Chelski (22) have conceded fewer goals than us.
As a team, we simply haven't defended properly as a unit and this is the fact which will play on Wenger's mind as we draw to a close to this season's campaign.
He has to come up with a system which will still allow us to score a high number of goals, but also provide the defence with efficient protection. I really thought the 4-2-3-1 formation was the answer, but as we have seen recently, Fabregas has suffered with playing in the hole and our attacking players in this system simply haven't tracked back to protect our full backs (in particular Arshavin, Diaby Nasri, and Walcott, when they have been deployed in the wide areas).
Wenger knows what the problems are, he has made mistakes but will try and correct them.
A big problem for the last 4 years has been defending. Generally, we always score a lot of goals in a season. In recent seasons we've held leads against the top clubs domestically - last season we held leads at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge... this season we held leads in the FA cup semi and at Anfield. But poor defending allowed all of those leads to slip.
Now - for me it's the heart of the defence that has been our problem;
Sagna and Clichy - with Eboue and Gibbs as back up is more than sufficient.
Toure has not really reached the highs that he once did. He's lost that real recovery pace. Djourou is doing well and developing, I think he'll come along nicely over the next season or 2. Gallas, has been the stand out defender for the second half of the season and is ahead of anyone else.
I think I'd look to move on Silvestre and Toure. Wenger has been good at moving people on once they've past their prime. We could do worse to get 2 new CB's in, in the mould of Campbell/Adams. Gallas was proven to be a great partner for that type of Cb, see John Terry etc. If we kept 1 of the other 2, I guess Toure - however, I'm not sure Toure would be as happy to sit on the bench as much as Silvestre would and has.
But I think 2 new cbs with Djourou and Gallas, plus perhaps Silvestre as a 5th choice. People still question Almunia, but I believe he's good enough and not an area we need to strengthen over others. You look at Van der Sar, Reina, Cech - all have dropped more clangers this season than Almunia, or at least the same amount. They have had better defenders in front of them for the most part also...
It's the midfield where we need at least 1 proven quality player. A central player to partner cesc as our first choice pairing with Song, Denilson etc as back up, squad rotation. They would develop quicker having a quality CM to learn off and shield them from full limelight of playing week in week out. They've both improved this season, but not to the level it takes, that's been apparent in the crunch games agains the big teams.
I don't profess to know more than Wenger about football, but I do know enough and played enough to see flaws in our squad and play.
i don't necessarily buy into this whole, need more english players etc. Wengers proven that he can get players from abroad that hit the ground running. It really is all dependant on the individual player not where their from. And the same CAN be said for their age, but I believe top level talent at a young age is the exception rather than the rule.
We need quality players in with proven experience. Also for the fact that if we have injury prone players and african players that you lose for a month every couple of years, then you need a bigger squad to cope.....
I hope Arsene does put it right this summer.....