Pre season friendly at Benfica; the only time you’ll ever seen this team « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By Walter Broeckx.
A first defeat in pre-season and the media are all over Arsenal I can imagine. And of course a part of the fans will be doing what they like to do: moan without looking at the facts.
And in the last game, and in all the other games so far, we could see that for most of the time we were very dominant when we played the players who could be seen as what I would call the first or best 14 players.
Let us start with the players who didn’t travel and who are currently still Arsenal players. Koscielny, Wilshere, Diaby, Nasri, Fabregas, Walcott. That is 6 players who when they are completely fit are at least in the team if not in the starting 11. And some of those players are of the very best. But they didn’t travel to Portugal for various reasons.
And then with those six missing we started with Szczesny, Sagna, Vermaelen, Djourou, Gibbs, Rosicky, Van Persie, Ramsey, Song, Gervinho, Arshavin . And maybe I have seen a different game then most of the other people but I thought we did rather well with this team. In fact I thought we were quite simply the better team in the first half. We had the clearest chances and I think the only negative point is that I think we didn’t take our chances well enough.
I also wonder how much some of the players changed their attitude a bit after the silly aggressive tackle on Van Persie. Another one of those tackles that I really don’t like. A tackle coming from behind, going through the attacker and catching him on the ankle. You could see that Van Persie really was angry with the thug from Benfica for producing such a silly tackle in a pre season friendly game. So here we are awaiting how bad it will be.
And I wonder if this was the reason why Wenger chose to change almost the complete team for the second half. At the start of the second half we came out with Fabianski, Squillaci, Jenkinson, Chamakh, , Frimpong, Miyaichi and the ones we kept on from the first half were Vermaelen, Gibbs, Ramsey, Gervinho and Rosicky. Now I think only a blind man cannot see the difference between those two teams. And later on Wenger also brought on Traore, Lansbury, Miquel in the place of Vermaelen, Gibbs and Rosicky.
This was the team on the field for Arsenal at the final whistle : Fabianski, Squillaci, Miquel, Jenkinson, Troare, Chamakh, Frimpong, Miyaichi, Ramsey, Gervinho, Lansbury,
Now apart from a game in the Carling cup what would be the chance of Arsenal playing with this team in the league? In the event that we have some 15 first team players injured at the same time we could see this team. But even for Arsenal having 15 players out with injury is something that we haven’t seen.
So when our team loses a game against Benfica in Benfica I don’t feel happy about it. Because I don’t like it when we lose a game. But I look at the facts and I see that what could be called our best 14 or 15 players are not playing in the second half. And then losing a game can happen.
Even Manchester United proved this week that playing 4 or 5 players of the first team is not enough when you have to play another team. They lost 8-2 to Marseille in those conditions and we lost 2-1 against Benfica doing almost the same thing.
Bringing in new players is something that can be done when you bring them in one at the time. If you play any of those players we had on the field in the second half they will do their job. But then they have to be surrounded by the better players to help them out. But when you have too many youngsters at the same time in the team they can fall short.
So far we never played a game with our best players for 90 minutes. People might say that we needed to do this in order to bond the team. But in a way we don’t need that much of bonding because the majority of our best 14-15 players know each other from the previous season(s). Only Gervinho has to adapt and integrate as a real first team player. Maybe this was the reason why he stayed on the pitch in the second half in Benfica. But then you saw that without the rest of the best even a good player can become anonymous in the game. But even then he was one of the best players when he got on the ball in my opinion.
For those who might say we need to play our best players in pre-season in order to win more games I can only ask them what we should do with the players from the second half? Throw them out? And only play the season with 16 players? No, those days are long gone. We need a team of 25 players and sometimes even more. So if we don’t play them now in pre-season when will we play them? In the league? In the Champions League? Okay, maybe in the Carling Cup we can play a lot of them but even them we must make sure that they have been playing together for a few times.
So I am not bothered unlike other fans are about the results in pre-season, even though I admit that I like us winning every game, but this is about testing and seeing what will work and won’t work. What could work and what wouldn’t work.
And now comes the difficult part of the season: going through the most silly international games of the season. Why oh why does Fifa have to arrange those friendly internationals now just days after the start of some leagues and days before we start our leagues? Or for some countries even weeks before they begin their league. I can only come up with one word: stupid.
So this week will be more about thinking, hoping, fearing that all our players come back fit to start the league. And then we will see how we play with our best players on the pitch.
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