Season in Review, Part II: The In-Between

By: Martin | May 12th, 2010

Part II, comin’ at ya!:

1. The Domestic Cups We didn’t win either one of them. And we didn’t come particularly close. But considering the circumstances, I don’t think we can actually be too disappointed.

In the Carling Cup, we just have to face up to the fact that that’s not a competition we even try to win any more. We just don’t. As long as Wenger is in charge and has his current philosophy, we never will. So I don’t think we can really measure success by traditional measures there, since that’s not the club’s goal any more. Instead, I think we have to look at whether we accomplish what we set out to accomplish in the Carling Cup — specifically, do the young players get a chance to play and show what they’ve got against top level competition. And on those terms, I think it was a decent showing this season. We beat Championship side West Brom, who finished 2nd there and will be playing in the Premiership next season, 2-0 at home. We then beat Liverpool 2-1 at home (while it wasn’t their starting XI, Liverpool did run out quite a few of their regulars, like Kuyt, Babel, Ngog, Skrtel, Insue, Degen, and the Greek), which was a big win for the youngsters. We then performed bravely before eventually succumbing 3-0 to Manchester City. But City fielded their first team, which had beat our first-team regulars ~~by an identical 3-0 scoreline~~ 4-2 a few weeks before. It was a decent showing, and a good chance for guys like Gibbs, Eastmond, Wilshere, Ramsey, Flaps, and others to get a run out in an Arsenal shirt. And like I said, that seems to pretty much be the goal at this point, so it’s hard to say it’s a failure.

As for the FA Cup, well, while we rotate our squad a bit, that is a competition we should still be trying to win. That was doubly true after Manchester United and Liverpool were knocked out of the competition early. But after a big come from behind victory over West Ham which doubled as Aaron Ramsey’s coming out party, Arsenal were disappointingly sent home by Stoke in a rough 3-1 loss. But if we had won that, we would have faced a tough trip to the Eastlands to play Manchester City. That would have been 3 away trips to Premiership sides, which is a pretty brutal draw (in contrast, we didn’t have to play a Premiership side away from home last season until the semifinal, which was at a neutral site). It was a disappointing showing, but maybe it just wasn’t our year…

2. Champions League We didn’t win, or even make it to the semifinal. But we beat Celtic in both legs in the qualifier, won our group by winning all 3 of our home matches and the comeback win at Standard Liege. We then lost the opening leg of the first knockout round match 2-1 at Porto, but demolished them 5-0 at the Emirates.

Then, of course, there was the quarterfinal loss to Barca. We staged a pretty stunning comeback to draw the first leg 2-2, before being outclassed away 4-1 to go down 6-3 on aggregate. Still, Barcelona were the defending champs and one of the top handful of teams in the world, and were playing at the absolute peak of their powers in those matches. I certainly would have preferred us to put up a better fight, but, but there’s no shame in losing to Barca. Overall, our Champions League record this year was 7-2-3, with one of those losses, away to Olympiakos, coming in a match that was meaningless to us since we had already won the group. Not a bad performance.

3. Jack Wilshere (Appearances: 20; Goals: 1; Assists: 1; Average Rating: 5.75; Man of the Match: 0) After his two man of the match performances in the preseason Emirates Cup, I think a lot of people got their hopes up way too much that he was going to be a key player for us this season. He didn’t.

But he did put in some decent shifts at the first-team level, especially in the domestic cups, and continued to develop as we had hoped. He only got 4 senior starts for Arsenal, 3 of which came in the domestic cups and one of which came in the meaningless final group stage match against Olympiakos. But his loan spell to Owen Coyle’s Bolton was really good for him, I think. He got 13 league starts, and really impressed there with his drive and creativity. He notched his first league goal against West Ham, and did enough so that Owen Coyle was coming out publicly and stating that he’d love to bring Wilshere back on a season-loan for next season. While I’m not sure if Wenger will go for that (my sense is that he won’t), it’s certainly been nice to see Wilshere prove himself as a player capable of contributing in the Premiership.

He’s still just 5′7, and will probably never be the kind of player who can really physically battle the larger Premiership guys. But he’ll fill out and muscle up a bit as he ages, which will help. And he’s just 18, so he’s got plenty of time to turn his talent into performance. I think he’s got a very bright future ahead of him, the only question is whether he’s a forward/winger type, or whether he’s more of a pure playmaker from the center of the pitch.

4. William Gallas (Appearances: 33; Goals: 3; Assists: 1; Average Rating: 6.85; Man of the Match: 1) Performed well, about as well as expected, in what was in all likelihood his final year in an Arsenal shirt. He teamed up well with Thomas Vermaelen in TV5’s first year in England, and used his pace and veteran savvy to provide some really solid defensive play throughout the season.

His season started off with a bang, as he scored 3 goals in his first 3 games. He and Vermaelen backstopped Arsenal’s surprise title bid, as the two started every single match as the center half pairing until Gallas suffered a calf injury against Liverpool on February 10. He was out long-term, until an ill-advised attempt to come back for the Champions League quarterfinal against Barcelona backfired when he aggravated the injury, putting himself out for the season. Started 39 matches for Arsenal this season, and played really solidly this season. If this was his final season with Arsenal, while he certainly falls far far short of being a club legend, I think I’ll remember him fondly, despite his fiasco of a captaincy. I wish him well, and assuming he doesn’t re-sign, his vacancy is the most obvious one that needs replacing.

5. Aaron Ramsey (Appearances: 28; Goals: 4; Assists: 3; Average Rating: 6.69; Man of the Match: 1.5) I honestly wasn’t sure where to put Ramsey on the list, because it was a season of spectacular highs and one spectacular low for Ramsey. So ultimately, I settled on in-between.

First, the good. After last season, I think many of us were asking ourselves, “All that huge bidding war with United was over this guy?!” He just didn’t seem to have all that much to offer. But we should have trusted Wenger and known better, because in several performances this season, Ramsey finally showed us what he was capable of. When he’s on, he really does look like a complete midfielder, combining skill and flair going forward with grit and character getting back.

But then, of course, there was the bad — a severe leg-break on the tackle by Ryan Shawcross against Stoke which put him out for the season and looked like it could be career-threatening. All the news we’re hearing from the physios is positive — they say that Rambo will be able to resume football activities sometime in late summer/early fall. Obviously, with such a huge layoff, it will be quite some time before he even physically gets back into shape where he can play, much less regain his touch to play football at the highest level. But he’s young, he’s got a great attitude, and hopefully he can pickup where he left off at the very end of this year or early 2011. Still has a bright future ahead of him.

6. Robin van Persie (Appearances: 19; Goals: 10; Assists: 8; Average Rating: 7.57; Man of the Match: 3) While his injury was nowhere near as severe as Rambo’s, I put Robbie down as an “in-between” guy for largely the same reasons.

Coming into the season, I think there was a lot of doubt regarding our striker situation. Many Gunners felt that it was folly to allow Adebayor to leave, and that van Persie wasn’t capable of being the main man. Others of us said good riddance to Adebayor, that Robbie was ready to carry us. And in a weird way, I think both sides will claim they were correct. At the beginning of the season, I thought Robbie was the best striker in the Premiership for the first couple of months. And he fit like a glove into the new 4-3-3 formation, as the perfect pivot man — capable of holding the ball up, scoring a goal if in a good position, but also great at distributing the ball in traffic, which really opened things up for the club going forward.

Unfortunately, in November, van Persie suffered a severely dislocated ankle in an (all together, now) meaningless international friendly, that kept him out for about 5 months, until he made his return in April. His detractors will say that one of the reasons they questioned his ability to be our # 1 striker is simply that Robbie is constantly getting injured, and will seemingly never be able to play over the course of a full season without missing a significant amount of time on the training table.

So in 2009-2010, Robbie reminded us both of what he has to offer on the pitch, but also how much time he spends off the pitch injured. The very definition of a mixed bag season.

7. Samir Nasri (Appearances: 34; Goals: 5; Assists: 5; Average Rating: 6.61; Man of the Match: 0) A mixed bag season for Samir in his second season with the club as well. After having his leg broken by an Abou Diaby tackle in preseason training, Nasri couldn’t return to action until the end of October, and had to ease himself back into action.

By and large he had a pretty patchy season, especially in the league, only managing 2 goals and 3 assists in 26 matches. However, he played much better in the Champions League, tallying 3 goals in 6 matches, including a spectacular solo effort against Porto that may have been our goal of the season.

Part of the problem is that I’m not sure Wenger has really figured out how Nasri should be used yet. Wenger has seemed to prefer Nasri on one of the front wings, which might not be the right place for him, since he’s still a little too reluctant to take on guys one on one, and doesn’t pose much of a threat from the wing. I do think he’s the second best pure midfield playmaker in the squad (behind Cesc, of course), and several times put in really good performances in Cesc’s absence. He clearly is pretty talented, but I think the task ahead of Wenger might be figuring out how to have Cesc and Nasri co-exist alongside one another in the lineup. If deployed correctly, I think they could be a dual-playmaker, Xavi & Iniesta type duo, but we haven’t figured out a configuration that makes that work just yet. Hopefully next year.

8. Gael Clichy (Appearances: 31; Goals: 0; Assists: 0; Average Rating: 6.64; Man of the Match: 1) Continues to be somewhat of a maddening enigma, doesn’t he? I nearly put him in the “bad” post yesterday, and probably would have had it not been for some very high quality performances from the French left-back near the end of the season.

The best left-back in the Premiership in 2007-2008 at the age of 22, you would have expected then that Clichy would be one of the best in the world by now. Alas, that hasn’t happened. A recurring back injury and some bad defensive decisionmaking began plaguing Clichy last season, and continued on into this season as well.

A back injury kept Clichy out of action from late October until January this season, and he really struggled to get back up to match speed after that. He continues to be pretty iffy defensively — honestly, out of all the things I’ve yelled at the tv this season during matches (yes, I know, I’m a crazy person) this season, “F*cking close him down, Clichy!” is probably by far the most common — but he can still do things no other left back in the world does. He’s amazingly good at jumping a passing lane, intercepting a pass, and using his pace and dribbling to start a dangerous counterattack. And that was something he was just starting to show again at the end of the season. And for all his faults, I have never gotten the sense that he’s fallen into the complacency that afflicts so many of our other players — he always works hard, and wears his desire to win right there on the sleeve, and I think he really, really loves the boss, fans, and club. At present, it looks like he probably won’t be in the France World Cup squad, which given his back issues, could be a blessing for us, as it means he can stay healthy all summer, come back in August focused on the club, and hopefully return to the form of two seasons ago.

9. Andrey Arshavin (Appearances: 37; Goals: 11; Assists: 6; Average Rating: 6.88; Man of the Match: 4) I considered putting him in yesterday’s review as being a disappointment this season, because frankly, I think that he’s been a far inferior player this season to the guy who put us on his shoulders and carried us back to fourth place last season.

But I didn’t, for a couple of reasons. One, I think Arshavin was moved around so much this season that it might have disrupted his rhythm — he’s played on the left, on the right, in midfield, and, when van Persie and Bendtner were out, in the front center. I said at the time, and still think, that he was our best option there, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still woefully miscast in that position — I just remember watching games where we’d kick a long ball forward, and Arshavin would have to pretend to go up for a header against some huge dude a foot taller and 85 pounds heavier than him. It was brutal. I think Arshavin was also playing through quite a few injuries this season — he had a chronic foot injury that kept him from kicking the ball in practice for months, but he kept suiting up and playing. And it’s worth noting that he did still score 11 goals and 6 assists in 37 matches for us — far short of the rates of 6 goals and 9 assists in 14 matches last season, sure, but still not a bad return from a guy who’s never been an out and out goalscorer.

But. The fact is that he showed a lot of troubling tendencies this year, especially toward the end of the year. His physical condition is far from ideal — while he admits he’s not much of a training freak, he definitely could stand to step it up a bit, because he’s getting pretty doughy, and on the occasions when he did play 90 minutes, he was obviously fatigued by the end of matches. His play itself was also very poor at times, and even his vaunted finishing looked way way off towards the end of the season.

He also showed some signs, especially as the season went on, that he wasn’t very happy in general. He rarely showed much, if any, joy when one of his teammates scored. A lot of times he would put in so little effort it could only be described as Adebayor-esque. He made it clear that he’s hardly committed to the club, saying it would be the “pinnacle” of his career to play for Barcelona, and stating openly that he “was not a patriot” for the club.

But, for better or for worse, I think he’s definitely here next season. I think he needs to take the summer to get healthy, hopefully get in shape a bit more, and come back hungry and motivated next season. Arshavin does seem to play a lot better tucked in behind the front line than he does when he’s forced to be on the front line himself — he loves to come in from behind the target man/men to find gaps and space and wreak havoc. With Chamakh coming in, plus hopefully a healthy van Persie or Bendtner, Arshavin will hopefully have a lot more freedom and space to play more of a free role behind the front line next season, which should hopefully result in more balls in the back of the net.

10. Arsene Wenger This was a milestone year for Wenger, who in his 13th season in charge became the club’s longest-tenured manager. But it certainly wasn’t his finest hour. I think this year showed us the best of Wenger and the worst of Wenger.

On the positive side, Wenger continued to show his acumen in the transfer market. Paying €10 million for Thomas Vermaelen, who ended up being named one the Premiership’s two best center halves and unanimously acclaimed as the Premiership’s best newcomer, was a stroke of genius. I think Vermaelen is going to be a very good Arsenal player for a long, long time. And the decision to sign Sol Campbell for free in January was also a very shrewd move, as Campbell showed he had more gas in the tank than even those of us in favor of the signing thought.

Also, for all the disappointment at the end of season, we can’t lose sight of the fact that this team played better than anyone expected at the beginning of the season. You’ll recall then that everyone was predicting that this was the year the Big 4 were broken up. And while they were right, I don’t know anyone who wasn’t picking Arsenal to be the club that were knocked out of the Champions League places by Manchester City. Instead of finishing 5th or 6th, though, we hung very tough in the title race until very late in the season, aided by a series of gritty performances and last-minute goals. There were also players like Song, Diaby, Eboue, and Bendtner, who had been lambasted by many (myself included) over the past few seasons, who repaid Wenger’s faith in them by (at times, at least) putting in very good performances and at least partially vindicating his sticking with his players. He also showed he still has a lot of acumen with young players, as Wilshere and Ramsey look like they’re going to be really good young players.

But on the flip side, most of Wenger’s most maddening traits were on display, too. His stubborn refusal to bring in the sufficient reinforcements, especially defensive reinforcements, at the beginning of the season or in January resulted in us once again having to rely upon over-the-hill Disastre and Alex Song out of position at center half, which, to put it bluntly, cost us points. He also refused to bench players who were playing terribly and/or without any effort or passion, like Fabianski, Disastre, and Denilson, when it was absolutely beyond reason to do so.

He also showed a real tactical weakness in big matches. Arsenal failed to beat a real quality side all season (we lost both matches to both Chelsea and Manchester United, had a loss and a draw against Manchester City, and split our matches with Spurs — that’s a 1-1-6 record against our fellow Top 5 members; and of course we got beaten badly in the Champions League by Barca), and it seemed like Wenger was getting outcoached every time. Teams like United and Chelsea, as well as teams like Sunderland and Blackburn, played a very simple strategy — play narrow at the back, allow Arsenal all the harmless possession they want in the middle of the pitch, and hit us on the counter and on set pieces — to completely disarm us. This strategy isn’t rocket science, which makes Arsene’s inability to combat all the more egregious. Instead, he prefers to go to the press and complain about how the other team “doesn’t play football.”

But having said that, I’m still 100% on board with him as manager — he’s made some noise about spending in the offseason, which would help a lot, and if the team’s young players get another year of experience of maturity, I think we could once again have a very good year next season. But it would be nice if Wenger could abandon his stubbornness for a bit and take a good hard look at why the club has struggled — change the medical staff, change our keepers, buy a couple of center halves, hire a real defensive coach, and supplement our attacking players to get a bit more depth. He won’t, of course — not completely, anyway. But he’s still the man for the job, and reports that he’s orally agreed to extend his contract for a couple of years means he’s around for at least 3 more seasons. Which, despite his flaws, is a great thing for the club.

Part III coming up tomorrow.