Paradise Lost?

“Did you play in the Garden of Eden?

Were the goalkeepers gloves to you tossed?

Because it seems to me, you’re the reason,

You’re the reason why Paradise Lost!”

                             - Paradise Lost – Half Man Half Biscuit

It seems like it was only yesterday that me and my mates were sat in the pub watching the Emirates Cup, bemoaning the lack of investment and arguing about Samir Nasri, where has the bloody season gone?  I suppose I’m getting to that age now that you start to mislay things, like keys, pens and football seasons, or is it the brain utilising some sort of coping mechanism.  You don’t really need those keys, someone will let you in.  Is what you need to write really that important?  Oh and by the way, Arsenal are still shit!

I first started to suspect things were going to go wrong when the 2011/12 kit was revealed.  There beneath the crest was boldly emblazoned the word “Forward”, what were we thinking?  Pedants will no doubt point out that we did go forward, we did move up from fourth to third, but is that the sum total of our ambition these days?  Are we destined to go from nondescript season to season hopefully catching a few crumbs from the top table?  No doubt people will point to the disastrous start to the season we had but, unless I’m missing something, the start of the season is still part of the season.  The season doesn’t wait for you start playing well before it starts!  I know, I know we had the summer of discontent and uncertainty, but surely there are people at the club employed to plan for this, (Gazidis yes I’m looking at you), and yes we had injuries, but all clubs have injuries its part of the game.  Its sport, weird shit happens!  We missed, in my opinion, our best player (Jack Wilshere) for a whole season, we played without any full backs, but on the other hand we got a whole season out of Robin van Persie and look what he achieved.  Its sport weird shit happens!

Depressingly we go into next season in a worse position than we went into last season, unless three crucial things happen.  Investment, divestment and better luck with injuries.  Let’s examine these one by one.

The current squad need significant reinforcement, not to mount a title challenge, but to maintain a top four finish next season.  The likes of Spurs, Liverpool etc will all strengthen their squads and we will have to do the same simply to maintain the status quo, the addition of Podolski is indeed welcome, but we would need the likes of M’Villa, Llorente etc just to keep 3^rd place, and that includes keeping van Persie!  Effectively we need another Sczezsny, another Vermaelen, another Wilshere and another RVP, a whole new secondary spine of the team equally as good as the primary one and even that wouldn’t guarantee us the Premiership!!  We’ve seen City spend close to a billion pounds to win it just once and they will have to spend again just to defend their crown, we are not in their league!

Arsenal have the 4^th highest wage bill in the league and yet we have a very rigid wage structure, how can this be?  Put simply we have too many passengers, our squad is too big, we have too many players out on loan, now I know we are investing for the future but there can be no room for sentiment here, we desperately need a cull, even if it costs us money in the short term.  There can be no more room for sentiment.  Underperforming and injury prone players need to be got rid of, sharpish!  We fans know who they are so I presume the club know as well.  Pay the higher achievers more and if you can’t cut it then ‘bye!!

Football today, is a 14 man game.  Your substitutes need to be impact players who can change a game from the moment they step on to the pitch.  Ideally you would need a sub of equal ability to cover every position but that is just too damn expensive.  Successive seasons have seen us have crucial players out injured with inadequate cover, now some of these injuries have been down to sheer bad luck, but the prolonged recovery times surely point to an arcane and traditionalist methodology, maybe we should be looking at Cryotechnology and other radical treatments that other sports like rugby have embraced.  That being said referees need to give the players more protection as well, how many times this season have we seen the opposition stop our counter attacks by kicking our players with impunity.  Oh yeah we also need luck!

In my opinion we need all three of the above to be implemented to have any hope of success next season.  Sadly we’ll fulfil one maybe two but definitely not all three, so realistically the best we can hope for is a good cup run, the Champions League or the FA Cup maybe, certainly not that other fecky competition, unless our kids win it for us!!

Football is immediate, and therefore it’s very hard to judge a whole season of it, you have to break it down into game size chunks to get a proper context.  So on that note thank you Arsenal for Chelsea away, Spurs at home, the second Milan game, the return of the King, van Persies volleys, Song’s assists, Arteta, Sagna’s header and the sheer Goonerness of our keeper.  I can’t wait for next season when we’ll win the treble!!