SOCCER: 1ARSENE Wenger's persecution complex. To the Arsenal manager's mind, this has been an encouraging season. Wenger's side have challenged seriously for the league title; they have gone deep into both domestic knockout competitions and there can be no shame in losing to Barcelona in the Champions League, particularly when it was all down to the referee. Arsenal have, into the bargain, played some fantastic football.
Wenger is unable to accept any alternative readings and he has come to feel that there is a conspiracy in place to chip away at his club. Everyone is in on it, from match officials and the authorities to rival clubs and the media.
Wenger has propagated a culture in which Arsenal can never be to blame.
But the siege mentality is draining and not only to Wenger, who has withdrawn from some of his press commitments. The players have had to shoulder an onerous burden. It is hard enough to win and win well, without needing to defeat the world.
2THE psychological blow of losing the League Cup final. Arsenal had hardly hired the open-top bus and cordoned off of Islington, but the English game's secondary cup competition had assumed tremendous significance. The players considered themselves on a mission to win it; Cesc Fabregas had demanded to play in both legs of the semi-final and he was distraught when injury ruled him out of the final. The Wembley showpiece against Birmingham City was the opportunity for Arsenal to get back into the groove, to prove they could win after five trophy-free seasons and to set themselves fair for a tilt at the bigger prizes.
Yet they fell short and it was as much the manner of the 2-1 defeat. Birmingham’s 89th-minute winner had Arsenal bent double from the kick to the guts. Since then they have suffered six dispiriting results in eight matches. The mental toughness of Wenger’s squad has been questioned.
3PLAYERS running on empty through fatigue and injury. Wenger had said Arsenal needed to beat Liverpool at home on Sunday or kiss goodbye to the title. But he saw a dreadfully flat performance and, after the 1-1 draw, he admitted "we were a bit jaded physically".
Jack Wilshere looked like a player with 49 matches for club and country in his legs while Samir Nasri’s form has been nose-diving for weeks.
Fabregas has grimaced through plenty of the season because of a long-standing hamstring problem.
The injury list has offered mitigation, even if the number of muscular problems remains a worry. Is it the way that the club train or condition the players? Or the way they rehabilitate them?
Arsenal have not played a midweek fixture since the Barca defeat on March 8th but the damage appears to have been done in January and February, when they played 16 matches.
4THE absence of a focal point in the attack.Robin van Persie's statistics brook no argument. In 20 starts in all competitions the Holland striker has scored 17 goals; his record is 13 in 13 in the Premier League. He is almost always wonderful to watch, the classic Wenger fusion of swiftness of thought, skill and technique. Yet in Wenger's 4-2-3-1 formation Van Persie has sometimes looked ill-equipped to lead the line.
His best position is surely as a number 10, who can work off and with the front man. Van Persie drops deep and wide to seek out the ball but a lone striker ought not to be building up the play.
Arsenal have often had plenty of creators flitting around the edges of the penalty area, but then had nobody inside it. Wenger’s vision is a take on Total Football; but has he got the team’s balance right? Marouane Chamakh has been awol since December and Nicklas Bendtner continues to talk a better game than he plays.
5THE high-profile lapses of the back five. It is the easiest hole to pick in Wenger's masterplan for the simple reason that when his goalkeepers or defenders make a mistake, it is often the sort that makes blooper DVDs.
Arsenal have a better defensive record in the Premier League this season than Manchester United, which no one ever talks about but, equally, Arsenal do seem to have the capacity to gravely undermine themselves at the back. Perhaps Wenger’s attacking system leaves them exposed.
There is little doubt that Laurent Koscielny’s central-defensive partnership with Sebastien Squillaci has been problematic – the pair have been together in all five of the club’s league defeats – while the chopping and changing in goal has not been ideal.
The recruitment of Jens Lehmann was one of the season’s many outlandish story-lines.
– David Hytner
