Arsene Whinging – Preview (1)

Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters

Welcome to my new Football Manager 2011 blog. I’ve already done something like this before, but for humorous purposes called Charles Dickens, Football Manager. This is a more serious take. I will focus on tactics, formations, and the more technical aspects of the beautiful game.

Introduction

Basically, Arsenal have just almost certainly thrown away the title, and now face a 6th trophyless season, which is incredible for a club of its stature. Arsene Wenger always talks of his young talents being ‘ready’ pre-season, but clearly they have not been and in-fact in the above article Wenger admits the errors of his ways.

Problems I identify with Arsenal, almost perfectly showcased in the Bolton 2-1 Arsenal game (see minute-by-minute report @ The Guardian):

1) Defensive frailty. This season, defensive midfielder Alex Song has visibly moved further up the pitch. This

He also has silly hair

could be considered a progressive change in Arsene Wenger’s tactical system: by moving the ‘cog’ of Song further up the pitch, Arsenal should be able to press further up and put less pressure on their defence. The signings of Laurent Koscielny and Sebastien Squillaci have been ineffective. On FM2011, the medium for this experiment, they are represented with nigh-on identical stats. This reveals that Arsene Wenger essentially wanted a no-nonsense, no-frills centre-back, and signed both Koscielny and Squillaci to pair up with former Ajax captain and Belgian international Thomas Vermaelen, who has been kept out for some time with an achilles injury, putting pressure on both new signings to gel quickly. This is very anti-Arsenal, whose strategy has been to purchase young, exciting footballers and to mould them together into a team. And without Song providing as much cover, this perhaps gives an intuitive clue as to why Arsenal have looked far more ‘frail’ (which is a word Arsene Wenger uses himself above). This has added up to a ton of lost points by throwing away leads.

2) Lack of clinicality: Arsenal rely on very few players to score their goals. The main locus is Dutch forward Robin Van Persie, who is a superb player. He is, however, extremely injury prone and this has put a dampener on the Arsenal attack ever since France and Arsenal legend Thierry Henry left for Barcelona.

RVP: Injured Marksman

Nicklas Bendtner has not stepped up, Theo Walcott is injury prone too. Their revelation this season has been French-Algerian attacking midfielder Samir Nasri. Captain Cesc Fabregas, their primary playmaker, is also injury-prone. A pattern emerges here: lack of reliability in the fielding of the team. Wenger’s team simply lacks fitness.

3) Lack of mentality: Arsenal don’t seem to have the mentality to dispatch teams and win trophies at the moment. They are a ‘nearly’ team every time, even against one of the most boring teams in the Premier League, Birmingham City.

Basically, I want to either overcome some of these problems, or at least see if they play out in the ‘simulation’ of Football Manager 2011. We can only dream of being football managers and this as close as it gets.