What is going on at our club? What is our manager thinking? What is wrong with the once untouchable Arsene Wenger, the man that changed the club, made football be football, the man that wanted to change the sport for the better? And he did change it for the better, for a time, but now his past remains nothing but that. Has he simply lost his way in the harsh jungle of the business, or is it something else, and something deeper tearing through the club and affecting all areas towards one catastrophic, indefensible mess?
The team isn’t playing well, the injuries have truly tipped into the red zone on the diabolical scale, and if everything goes to plan, by January 31st, we will sign Kalou and begin our own personal apocalypse. Brace yourselves, Twitter. Then we will ride out the horror show and wait for it all to blow over before the new season arrives, where we will eat and choke on further failed promises. It is the Arsenal cycle. It is forever, inescapable, at least for another three years, using the same failed methods, or using new ones that refuse to work and only shorten the timer on that ticking bomb. Not the little bombs, because they are well underway and are exploding every week into new and tragic confetti, but the the big bomb; which is yet to go off, but being Arsenal, a loss to Hull City could move things swiftly along. It’s all rather boring, because we all know how it ends: Theo will come in and shine a bright light, we’ll believe everything is not so terrible, get all excited, then he’ll reacquaint himself with the Injury Monster, then we’ll scrape fourth and pat ourselves on the back after a long, laborious season of misfortune. It’s all ridiculous. But not quite as ridiculous as this injured starting eleven: Ospina, Debuchy, Koscielny, Diaby, Monreal, Arteta, Ramsey, Ozil, Gnabry, Sanogo, Giroud. Eleven senior players. Half of a squad. No team should have to cope with that. When was the last time Chelsea picked up a serious injury? (And yes, we’re all well aware that any injury they pick up can be sweetly compensated for through their spoils of squad depth.) I’d like to see Chelsea lose the spine of their team, but it will never happen; because they are prepared, they know how to manage an effective squad, and they fix their problems. And that last point is the defining reason behind their success already this season. They needed a creative midfielder: they bought the best in the business. They needed a striker: they bought this 40 year old killing machine. Where’s our defensive midfielder? How many injuries has Ospina had since Joining? Why were we targeting a goalkeeper with a recurring thigh-problem, or is that simply an Arsenal thing, and if so, what is going on? How can a physical striker like Giroud be hit by the ball and miss six months because of it? Chelsea’s Costa was supposed to have been injured three times already, and he’s overcome every single one to hurt teams and win points. Where’s his setbacks? It’s beyond just freak injuries. It’s much worse. Not to mention, Diaby, who was supposed to be in the best shape of his life before the start of the season. On the madder scale, and getting crazier with each dissection of the plagues running through Arsenal; not just one plague, but many, such is the mess of everything, we move on from injuries and dive into managerial tactics, which, frankly, seem to be picked out of hat, shuffled by a rabid dog.
It’s cute seeing Podolski getting his ten minutes a month in a game that’s already been lost. What a horrible situation to be in and way to treat a player that you’ve been desperate to kick out of the door and only kept through fear of having no available players to field (because, of course, you’re already deeply aware of the injury crisis happening behind closed doors and all the other problems you’ve failed to address in the summer). Grade A management. It’s pointless persisting with a player you hope to get rid of, it doesn’t help the spirit of the team, and it ultimately achieves nothing. The chance is better gifted to a player with a future at the club, isn’t that what they’re knocking on the door for? Why isn’t our manager answering it? Hayden, for example, has produced on every first team occasion, yet he’s left wasting away in the youth team while we stutter with two ageing footballers who cannot compete with the level and intensity of the game now. One is our captain, and the other only plays when there’s nobody else. What does it say about the ambition of the club when the Captain occupies the weakest part of the team that is in desperate need of new blood? In doing this, you’re forcing a scenario where you have to continuously pick this weakness in the team because you can’t keep dropping your Captain. How can a wealthy club continue like this? It’s mentally numbing seeing players struggle every week because they’re not of the level required, or enjoying their football. And it’s the manager putting them in the firing line, waiting to be shot. Look at Ozil: played every week, out of position, regularly hammered in the press, and is now injured due to being overplayed. That’s down to Wenger. Nobody else. He gambles every year, and every year he loses. He’s addicted to enforcing what he believes and what he wants, and refuses to accept that it’s not working, because it’s too late, and he has another three years of security so why would he change now? Answer: he won’t, or he will, ever so slightly, just to appease fans for the next few months, and it will be to little effect. He’s tampered with our formation and seen it fail, yet he he will persist with it until a 7-0 slaughter, probably to Manchester United, with Van Persie netting all seven, because that’s the template Arsenal have got themselves stuck in; dispose of small teams and cower when the elite turn up.
Chelsea was more alarming than usual last week-end, and their efficiency was staggering in comparison to our inefficiency, worsened by our manger getting in a side-line kerfuffle because it’s not going the way he envisaged it. Not one person can, hand on heart, say they were optimistic about going to Chelsea and winning, at best we were praying for a point; going into a big game like that against rivals is harrowing stuff. Can anybody say they were surprised when we conceded a penalty, or watched Cesc do that thing he’s really better than anybody else at? We saw it coming, watched it happen, and now what? Hope we win against Hull city or else? It’s insane. I despise Mourinho as much as any righteous person, but to me, Wenger’s little outburst just marks another sign of a manager losing his way. And he is losing it. I love Wenger. I probably raved about his superiority when we signed Alexis Sanchez, but the problems were coated over with the thinnest layer, and now that layer has inevitably fallen to pieces and yet again, we’re left staring stupidly at the glaring problems. It doesn’t matter if you love, or hate, Wenger, he’s creating his own problems and appears to be incapable of rectifying them.
It’s the same excuses, same problems, and same themes every year. There used to be a vision about Arsenal, the way we play,  or our youth policy. Now there’s nothing.; it’s all make do,  fill this gap, play over there until ‘thingy’ returns. It’s being thrown around that Arsenal have had 881 injuries in 12 years. Depressingly, that doesn’t even sound made up. This isn’t a Wenger out, or a Wenger in, thing, and the idea of a club being split down the middle by that is silly. Why is it frowned upon to criticise your own players and manager? You praise a dog when it’s been good, not when it starts ruining the carpet. I’d miss his smirk and wit, and I don’t like any of this, but at the moment, all I can see is Wenger problems.