Filed under: Arsenal, Football
Has Arsene Wenger lost his way? It's beginning to look increasingly like it. Arsenal lately have suffered one setback after another. Defeat by unfancied Birmingham City in the League Cup final. Thrashed by Barcelona in Camp Nou, when Arsenal didn't contrive a single strike on goal. A nadir in which Wenger was given a flimsy excuse by the absurd sending off of Robin van Persie by Massimo Busacca, the Swiss referee. Followed by defeat at Old Trafford by the experimental Manchester United side, though at least on this occasion Wenger's choices, so much more rational than in Barcelona, produced a performance that could well have bought several goals.It was the Barcelona disaster, however, which really showed Wenger in so dim a light. What possessed him to risk using his most talismanic but plainly unfit element, Cesc Fabregas, even though it be on the ground where once he had shown such promise as a 16-year-old till the Gunners spirited him away? A Fabregas who had been remotely in good shape would never have been guilty of that suicidal backheel, which gave Barca such a vital goal.
Why did Wenger exclude till so late in the fame an Andrei Arshavin who had been in such lively form the previous Saturday against Sunderland, where he should have been given both a penalty and a goal? Preferring, in Tomas Rosicky, a gifted player never at his best on the wing, rather than in central midfield? Why keep a striker as potentially effective as the Marouane Chamakh on the bench throughout - he'd look lively and opportunist at Old Trafford - yet prefer the limited Nicklas Bendtner, whose poor control flung away the Gunners' one real chance of the game?
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And why spend most of the match in so negative a defensive crouch when both Barca's centre backs, Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique, were unavailable? However much Wenger resented it, surely Barca's Xavi and Sergio Busquets were justified in expressing their surprise that Arsenal were so negative.
Where Wenger did have some luck was in the unexpected resilience of veteran keeper Manuel Almunia, both as substitute in Barcelona and again, at Old Trafford. Fluctuating form had seen him dropped, but these were two defiant performances. Another question. Why when Thomas Vermaelen the Belgian centre back has been out injured almost all season, why didn't Wenger try, during the January transfer window, to reinforce a central defence which had been alarmingly shipping water?
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/03/16/arsenal-arsene-wenger-barcelona-football-brian-glanville/
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