Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Tony Attwood

Goals are on the up – more are scored in the Premier League than in the top leagues in Germany, Spain and Italy.   Good for us.  Except when we lose 8-2 of course.

Meanwhile club owners and managers are buying strikers and then more strikers, paying £30m or more for players of only modest ability, and the new approach is one of endless attack.  Hate them or hate them, Man City have not specifically gone out to deaden the opposition with their defence, but rather they aim to win by scoring lots of goals and rarely keep a clean sheet.

The new mood is called “expansiveness”.  Everyone lets in a goal or two more often than not.  In fact so profligate are defences that Sir F Word felt he had to reinvent the notion of 1-0 last week.

So what’s going on?  And why?  And how does this affect Arsenal?

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Part of the issue is that old time defenders who have been around a while are starting to get a bit, sort of, old.  John Terry is the obvious example.  With a career in abuse, shop lifting or drug dealing open to him when he retires (although of course I make no allegation that he has any connections with any of his family’s businesses) he is starting to look ready for a new life, as are many other central defenders across the top clubs.  (You can always tell an old defender – the ball goes past, VP runs by in a whirl, and the old boy sits down.)

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Which leads on to the big question: why now.   Why is the art of defending out, and the era of manic scores in?

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There are several possible answers

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1.  Rubbish defending

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Ray Houghton was asked by the Guardian what he thought of defending at the moment (no particular reason but someone met him down the pub and asked him).   He said,  “This goal glut is down to dreadful defending, simply as that. I’ve felt for ages that the art of defending has gone from most Premier League sides…”

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So we get more goals because suddenly we have no defenders of quality.  Right, it’s rocket science.

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(I should explain: the phrase “it’s not rocket science” which is commonplace in the English language, is basically twaddle.  Of all science, rocket science is just about the simplest science.  You have a load of stuff which when heated expands.  It pushes gas out through the exhaust in one direction, and the rocket moves in the other direction.  Do people really think that when they light the touchpapaper and stand well clear their fireworks are powered by quantum mechanics?  No, it is rocket science, and and it equals simplicity.  So saying we let in goals because all defenders are rubbish IS rocket science.  OK?  Right!)

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2.  Better attacking

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There is of course a contrary view, that attackers are getting better.  That’s slightly more complex than rocket science because it means that the art of attack and the art of defence are different.   With attack we have more and more options, with defence we have more or less explored all the options.

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Thierry Henry invented a new form of attack by being a centre forward who played left wing while his mate Robert came in from the left and took up Thierry’s position in the centre.   Put like that it seems like rocket science – ie dead simple – but it was astoundingly effective, and the lumbering big central defenders never quite got it.

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3.  Defenders get injured more

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I wonder if this is true, and must take a look at Dale’s figures to see if it is.  Or maybe defenders, not needing to run so fast, carry small injuries more often.  Either way, because of the nature of their work, defenders are out of the game more than attackers.

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Certainly for Arsenal it seems true.  Remember the Year of the Seven Left Backs?

4.  The view is not “you do not beat us” but rather “we will score more than you”

This is philosophy rather than rocket science, and not very complex philosophy, but nevertheless it is a reversal.  We have all seen it.  George Graham built his successful team from the back – the famous back five who now earn a living in part on TV (apart from Tony who is in foreign parts and David who doesn’t seem to be doing much these days).   Mr Wenger did the reverse and built a team out of attackers.

Could it be that others have followed?  Could it be that the philosophy at Man City is not, “win at all costs” as it seems to be at Ch3l5ea but rather “win whatever it takes, but make it look nice and score a few too”.

5.  The creative players are getting more creative.

Maybe it isn’t that we are always finding creative players – maybe we are finding players who are more creative than those of earlier days.  If so it is a bit too early to say, but this view is perhaps the most amazing one of all – that Mr Wenger, having discovered earlier ways to win the league is now not just building a new team, but an utterly different type of player – a team that is built on a new form of individual creativity that we are only slowly seeing emerge.

6.  It is not the creativity of the attacking players but the creativity of a new system of playing.

I guess we will know more when we see the likes of Oxlade-C and Ryo burst through, but the liberation of Van Persie into a goal scoring machine of the type we have not seen since Theirry H. suggests that something is going on under the surface.

The argument that we are just lucky that VP has come good at the right moment isn’t quite right.  Theirry came good at the right moment, but didn’t blossom utterly until he had friend Robert at his side making the whole system work – a system that utterly bemused defenders.  Are we seeing something like that again?

I think we are seeing a combination of these factors – more creative players, plus the evolution of a new system: Wenger 3.0.

Wenger 1.0 brought life back to a crumpled and run down team, destroyed by and large by an simplistic and intransigent Rioch who was letting good players go to waste.   Wenger 2.0 was Henry/Pires – and it revolutionised not just Arsenal but football.

Now we have Wenger 3.0 and one or two other clubs are looking to create new systems which bemuse defenders.

So the argument is, defenders can’t really be that creative in their new style or approach – they defend, there isn’t much more to learn.  But there are lots of new ways of developing attack, and Wenger 3.0 is the new approach we are seeing at Arsenal.

Interestingly it is happening as we have a really good set of defensive group of players – including not only our first choice pair of centre backs, but also some rather interesting fellows coming through from the ranks.

But there is one more thing: the newly evolving philosophy of football which I think Mr Wenger is spearheading is actually forcing a rethink of the defensive approach.  Which is why we have Santos.  He’s not a defender in the normal sense – and for commentators like Lee Dixon there is only the old standard normal sense – the simplistic rocket science.   But Mr Wenger has often got his defenders to do the unexpected, and Wenger 3.0 includes this approach.

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So that’s it.  Defending is starting to change to, in response to Wenger 3.0 football, but it is a bit behind the revolution happening in attack.  Meanwhile the big spending clubs have decided that the only way to win over the commentators is to score lots of goals, so people forget to ask questions about money.

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It’s not rocket science.  It’s far more complex than that.

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