Arsenal took on Boca Juniors in the Emirates Cup today. They jumped all over the South Americans 2-0, only to table 2 goal scoring offers within 3 minutes of each other that the visitors couldn't refuse. And quicker than I lost interest in Cowboys & Aliens (What an underachieving film! With such a cast, director and budget, this is what Hollywood gives me? For these ticket prices? But I digress), the match ended 2-2.
This is the same water-bottle-slam-inciting, violent-gesticulation-inducing behavior from the same area of the field as last season.
While it's easy to write this off as "just another preseason friendly," it's excruciatingly difficult to read play-by-play from the past few trophy-less seasons' goals-allowed history - the latter being what matters. For all the theory behind the Xs and Os to playing attractive football, it is never more than a proposed means to an end. Great players understand this... sometimes to a fault. Announcers pussyfoot around addressing it, but the shortcomings of Messi, Rooney, Ronaldo and the like are on full display on the rare occasions that they cannot produce at the level they're used to. Granted they have different coping mechanisms and usually stay professional, the fact remains that losing isn't OK.
So who could fault Nasri for balking at signing a new contract? His individual moments of brilliance inspired standing ovations... for what? Rescuing us from uninspired losses to clubs like Fulham? Fulham's ambition couldn't even keep their manager at the helm.
The classic definition of insanity is performing the same actions under the same circumstances, expecting different results.
Everybody seems to forget that this young-look team was originally labeled an "experiment." Wenger now relies on "stay-the-course" and "adherence to values" rhetoric in defense of his error-prone squad. This holds weight when it has been proven successful in the past. Sadly, the reality is that while Arsenal have stayed in the Top 4 and maintained a profitable business model, supporters are only gifted more high profile losses on the European stage to go with congested schedule excuses for sub-par domestic performances. Therefore this is still an experiment which needs to be dynamic and able to address areas of deficiency. We haven't established many values!
You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but our tub's looking rather murky.
The Bad News: Promised changes in personnel haven't happened yet.
The Good News: The season hasn't started yet and transfer window is still open.
No comments:
Post a Comment