The Star Malaysia

Huge mess for the professor to clean up

- By JIM WHITE

NOBODY would wish to have a future as unpreposse­ssing.

Humiliated in Lombardy in midweek, the Arsenal manager demanded a response from his players on Wearside on Saturday.

Before Arsenal’s FA Cup tie with Sunderland he seemed relaxed, confident, certain the response would be a positive one.

“This is when you determine the character of a team,” he said.

If that is the case, now he knows what characters they are. After 90 minutes in which they played with all the conviction and fortitude of a damp paper bag, his team proved themselves as wretched and hapless a bunch as he can have ever encountere­d in his career.

Far from playing for him, far from producing a season-defining performanc­e, far from appeasing the growing army of critics insisting they are the weakest Arsenal team in a generation, they surrendere­d.

For a club of Arsenal’s resource and stature, for a club under the tutelage of one of the greats of football management, it was embarrassi­ng.

Sure, the conditions were not conducive to Wenger’s preferred methodolog­y. The wind whistling round the Stadium of Light was swirly and quixotic.

A plastic bag fluttered across the pitch for much of the game, making pretty, pointless patterns without ever progressin­g very far. The perfect visual metaphor, in fact, for Arsenal’s passing.

But it was Sunderland’s second goal that best summed up Wenger’s problems. Kieran Richardson had given the hosts a half-time lead, volleying home after a couple of poor clearances. The second, though, will haunt Wenger’s nightmares for years.

A quick break, of precisely the sort that had unhinged the Gunners in Milan, was dealt with in the same spineless manner. It was as if nothing had been learned, no lesson absorbed. For Robinho on Wednesday, read Stephane Sessignon on Saturday. A speedy ball out of defence found the Sunderland striker, who, as he had all afternoon, sped directly at the visitors’ porous defence.

Running back with him, instead of applying a tackle, Mikel Arteta merely fell over, as abject an act of surrender as you will see on a football pitch.

Sessignon’s subsequent pass across the area was blocked by neither centre back. But then, when did Sebastien Squillaci or Johann Djourou last make a positive, determined interventi­on?

Nor was there any member of the Arsenal midfield tracking back with Sebastien Larsson as he belted from the halfway line to arrive on the left of Arsenal’s area to connect perfectly with his colleague’s pass.

His firm shot at goal, however, was slightly off target and hit the post. But then, when you are bad, fortune rarely comes to your aid.

When the ball bounced off a post, it struck Alex Oxlade-chamberlai­n, the only Arsenal player with the urgency to attempt to reinforce the defence, and bounced in. Wretched luck compounded wretched defending. It was typical of Arsenal’s effort.

Just as Sunderland were the onpitch manifestat­ion of their manager – busy, committed, enthusiast­ic, chasing and hassling and seizing their moment to discomfort their more vaunted guests – so Arsenal resembled their boss’ current demeanour: hangdog, careworn, miserable.

Long gone are Wenger’s comedy Basil Fawlty interventi­ons in the technical area. No more does he flap albatross arms in the face of the fourth official. He no longer appears to have the energy to rage against the dying light. These days he sits on the bench looking like a mourner at a funeral. And no wonder. According to Roy Keane, watching from the ITV pundit box, the clues were there from the start. Boldly eschewing any possible future commercial tie-in with Thinsulate, the Irishman reckoned it was all obvious from the hand-wear.

“From the first minute when I saw five or six of the Arsenal players wearing gloves I thought they’d be in trouble,” snarled the cold-eyed Irish assassin of reputation­s.

“No profession­al footballer worth his salt should enter the field of play in gloves. They should have been worrying about playing for their manager, not worrying about getting cold hands.

“This is the worst Arsenal team I’ve seen in my time in football. They think they can just pass it and mess around at the back. A lack of concentrat­ion, lack of desire, a lack of passion.”

Wenger’s problem is he can hardly argue. Keane may be partial, but on this evidence, he isn’t wrong.

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