There has to be an end product, measured in trophies won, if this is not to be another season of useless beauty. At times, Arsenal’s football is so exceptional it feels almost sacrilegious to question the direction of Arsene Wenger. Yet this was not one of those times.
Arriving at Old Trafford top of the League, Arsenal failed to put it up to Manchester United, forcing barely a save from goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar. The margin was small but the best team won. Had Wayne Rooney scored his penalty, two goals would have separated the teams, a more accurate reflection of United’s superiority.
In this way, it was a depressing evening. The same old failings may pull Arsenal up short again, and that is a source of continued frustration. Whatever Wenger might think, his team could do with a major signing in the transfer window, they could do with the match-winning quality an outlay of £30million might bring, and they could do with a world-class goalkeeper.
Evra’s words were disrespectful considering Arsenal’s wonderful contribution to the Premier League, but he is not alone in regarding Arsenal as a college rather than a challenge. Jose Mourinho is perhaps the most openly disparaging of Wenger’s project, but others are equally dismissive, if not publicly.
Here is one theory, advanced to me by a senior football man only recently. Wenger does not buy big because then he will have to deliver a trophy. While he chooses to build his team on a self-imposed budget, based on youth development, there will always be mitigation for nights like this.
The moment he throws money at it, like Sir Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Mancini at Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City, there will be no excuses. He loses at Old Trafford then and there is no hiding place.
We seem to spend each season highlighting the same deficiencies at Arsenal. How many times has the pedigree of the goalkeepers been debated? And here we go again. Arsenal did not lose to Manchester United because Wojciech Szczesny, a 20-year-old from Warsaw, was in goal, but even so, should he have been?
Wenger’s refusal to address an obvious weakness in his squad is nothing if not curious. Szczesny has talent and potential and made two excellent saves in the second half, but he should not have been exposed to this.
Wenger should have secured a world-class goalkeeper for Arsenal long ago; instead they were reduced to bickering over the fee for Fulham’s Mark Schwarzer in the summer. The difference in valuation between the clubs was said to be as little as £1million. Winning the league is worth at least 30 times that; hardly makes sense, does it?
True, Manchester United’s winner looped into Arsenal’s goal as much by luck as judgment and, for any other team, that would be dismissed as just one of those things. But this is not any other team. This is Arsenal and these players are on the brink of delivering on all of Wenger’s most fanciful predictions. They just need one last push.
So, when they go down by one goal at Old Trafford and surrender the summit of the Premier League, we look for clues. And there in Arsenal’s goal is Szczesny — a fine prospect and yet to concede in the Carling Cup this season, but this is Manchester United away, and it is his Premier League debut. He is half the age of Van der Sar at the opposite end. Is this any way to win a title?
Arsenal had rotten luck with injuries prior to this game, no doubt about that. Manuel Almunia is out of favour and, when his understudy Lukasz Fabianski picked up a knock, Wenger had little option but to relegate him to the bench and pick the third choice instead.
Yet, looking along that cast list, is there anyone in Arsenal’s goalkeeping roster with the pedigree of a title winner? Think Van der Sar, Petr Cech, imposing figures who have long been regarded among the best in the world. Then consider that Arsenal’s first choice is not even a squad player for Spain, and their second conceded a goal last season when he turned his back on the play to argue a decision with the referee.
Then there is Szczesny: a callow reserve thrown into one of the biggest matches of the season. He made a fine save when Anderson was put in by Wayne Rooney early in the second half and denied a vicious chip from Rooney, but his positioning for the goal was unfortunate and his distribution nervous in the extreme.
His first kick went straight to a red shirt 30 yards from goal and in the first half he did a better job picking out United’s forward line than some of Ferguson’s midfield.
For the goal, he was in no man’s land, not far enough off his line to influence the play, not back protecting his goal. The ball arrived with Park Ji-sung courtesy of a fortuitous deflection, which did not help, but any header that goes in soft and loopy will be a frustration to a goalkeeper.
It was not Szczesny’s fault that Arsenal lost, but whether he should have been in that predicament is another question, A recurring one, unfortunately.
