ARTETA SHOOK THE TREE BUT THE DEAD WOOD REMAINS
BACK in December when things were normal, a long, cold day in London culminated in a warming 30 minutes with Mikel Arteta. Unveiled as Arsenal’s new manager, the Spaniard could not have been clearer about what he would demand from his players.
‘They have to accept a different way of thinking,’ said Arteta. ‘This is how we are going to live. Otherwise the tree is going to shake.’
So it was a great day for the headline writers and for Arsenal supporters tired of watching players lacking emotional fibre.
And then, exactly six months on, we watched Arteta’s Arsenal play at Manchester City and Brighton and realised things are still the same. If the tree has been shaken, the dead wood is clinging on.
Arsenal were lousy at City. They were better at Brighton but still failed.
Arteta’s players were happy to act tough when it did not matter, happy to jostle Brighton’s Neal Maupay even though his challenge on goalkeeper Bernd Leno was innocuous.
Happy to have another go at the Brighton matchwinner once the final whistle had been blown.
But when it counted — when Brighton men had to be marked properly at corners and such like — Arsenal’s players were nowhere to be seen.
So, as he tries desperately to move the club forward, this is Arteta’s problem. The culture has not changed.
He must look back at his time as assistant to Pep Guardiola at City and weep. He left behind a group of players whose supreme talents are underpinned by an understanding that hard work is not negotiable. Let’s just say that in north London it’s not the same.
At Arsenal, players have been indulged for too long. When managers and coaches talk about a ‘culture’, that has to come from the top. What happens in the boardroom and the chief executive’s office influences directly what happens in the dressing room.
So when Mesut Ozil arrived from Real Madrid in 2013, did pretty much nothing for five years and then got a recordbreaking contract worth £350,000 a week, what message do you think that sends to his team-mates?
And when the club moved to address problems at the centre of defence that had existed since the latter years of Arsene Wenger’s reign by signing David Luiz from Chelsea, what message does that deliver?
Ozil isn’t worth half the money he earns. Arteta knows that, as did his predecessor Unai Emery. Both have been brave enough to bench him, whereas Wenger never was.
Luiz, meanwhile, is not capable of playing at centre half in the Premier League. The Brazilian does not concentrate fully and does not do the ugly stuff well, either.
The Arsenal dressing room will know all these things. Footballers are not stupid. They see these things happen and they know that theirs is a club where you can get away with things, a place where the hard work and painful, boring bits of professional sport are, indeed, negotiable.
So what happens is that, when Brighton get a corner, Alexandre Lacazette, a talented attacker, does not try hard enough to close a man down after a short kick is taken. A second later, Brighton are level. And 20 minutes further on, they are in front and Arsenal’s season in the Premier League is pretty much over. On Sunday in the FA Cup, Arteta takes his team to Sheffield United and not enough has changed to give them much chance. Arsenal are a club where players know the ride comes for free. Until that changes, Arteta will not alter a thing.