UK Edition
Arsenal were dreadful against Liverpool and the usual tactical deficiencies were on show. It’s not so much like listening to the same broken record as it is being duct taped to a chair inside a burning building and forced to listen to forgotten X-Factor failures covering an album you used to really love.
At the Emirates Stadium, the team still walks out to Right Here, Right Now, a Fatboy Slim song released in 1998. Oh how things were different in the 90s. They desperately need a new direction.
Arsène Wenger knows that his team is in trouble. He is right not to denounce his players as being bad or to jump to the conclusion that they are doomed – but this was the performance and result that Arsenal could not afford.
After last season, and the one before that, and the one before that… oh yes, and the one before that [continues for several more seasons] there are key tactical areas which any football fan alive has realised need fixing. How on earth does Wenger get away with it?
Too many players are short of the level required. Rob Holding looks like he’ll be a great player but isn’t there yet. Granit Xhaka is superb in the right company, Mesut Özil can be one of the loveliest footballers in Europe to watch when starring alongside similarly talented team-mates and Héctor Bellerín is one of the best young wing-backs around. But the problem is that the line-ups Wenger fields do not work as a collective – they actually make each other worse.
It was the same old story against Liverpool. They paid no respect to their opponents, naively assuming that they would turn up, dominate possession and play football The Arsenal Way. This just does not work anymore guys. You must know this.
Jürgen Klopp wants his team to fly out the traps and destroy his opponents in quick attacks, with a high press, attacking wing-backs and midfielders running from deep to arrive in space and cause havoc.
Crucially, there is balance. Jordan Henderson keeps things together at the base of the midfield trio, the wing-backs get forward so the wide forwards can cut inside and Roberto Firmino ducks out of his No 9 position to leave space.
Emre Can adds extra protection as a creatively minded box-to-box midfielder too. Liverpool are committed and driven to winning the ball - it is relentless.
The three man defence that Wenger is still experimenting with does nothing to fix Arsenal’s problems and the holes that have been obvious in the defence – despite their improved record at the end of last season – were laid bare.
If Wenger has been thinking about changing back to a four-man defence, using one or two holding midfielders like he used to, this was the game to do it. Liverpool were going to attack with three forwards. With three central defenders this was always going to be an issue.
A three man defence helps against a two striker system – that’s why it became popular originally – but against three of them, the wing-backs have to drop back to avoid the team being overrun at the back. Chelsea did it very well last week against Spurs, for example.
But Wenger dislikes defensive set-ups. He sticks to his ideals that football should be beautiful and we have seen some spectacular tapestries woven in Arsenal teams over the years. This one unravelled from kick-off.
In Wenger’s 3-4-3 he needs his team to create width from the wing-backs. Sending Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who still isn’t a wing-back, and Bellerín forward, left all the space in the world for Liverpool to exploit. Nacho Monreal is not a Premier League winning standard of centre-back.
Klopp’s team sat slightly further back than usual and sprung attacks from deep. Wenger appears to be the only manager in the Premier League who does not know that this is how you beat Arsenal.
There was a lack of commitment to winning the ball, which is the fault of the players but the team shape and players picked make Wenger accountable.
Do his assistants ever question him? It took until half time for Arsenal to switch to a back four when the change should have been made after 20 minutes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is what a manager earning several millions a year is meant to bring to the table.
The Arsenal defence is routinely torn apart by pundits but what the hell are they supposed to do when three of the most electric, terrifyingly quick forwards in the Premier League are running full pelt at them and the entire middle of the team’s shape has wandered off?
Aaron Ramsey did what Aaron Ramsey does and bombed forward to join in attacks, leaving a gaping hole in the midfield, which should have meant that Xhaka was somewhere further back keeping a hold of things. Nope.
Former players Ian Wright and Martin Keown were scathing of Wenger’s match preparation, with the former lambasting the manager for never making anyone accountable for decisions and performances in the changing room.
“He won’t shout, or raise his voice, it’ll just be something philosophical,” is a rough summary of Wright’s thoughts on the matter, while Keown seethed on MOTD 2 as he suggested that Wenger was probably more worried about Arsenal’s lack of shots on goal (zero on target) than the four goals conceded.
If there are things going on behind the scenes at Arsenal that have affected Wenger’s planning, at a club he’s had full control of since forever, his management must be questioned. There’s no aggression or power on the pitch. The team lacks balance and organisation too – a team full of amazing players can get away with this, but other teams have better players than Arsenal’s now and they also ‘get stuck in’ far more readily.
This Arsenal team reminds me of a time I saw a group of Top Lads strutting around the floor at a gig, wearing T-shirts with slogans like FCUK Fear and generally acting like they were a big deal. These were the boys. The top dogs.
And then one of them bumped into a far larger gentleman and spilled his pint, a gentleman of such an appearance that he didn’t need a T-shirt to inform anyone that he genuinely had little time for fear or youngsters posing as hard men.
Fortunately, nothing actually kicked-off and instead of the ensuing shoeing those around expected Lad Squad to receive, they snuck off with tails between legs somewhere at the back of the arena and looked stupid.
And those boys grew up to be Arsenal. "Something has to change", said Aaron Ramsey after the match. Will it ever?
Arsenal lacked aggression, balance and organisation at Anfield – so little has changed despite repeated warnings