Arsenal’s flabby culture indulges failure – and it comes from the top
Hnorth London club need to heed lesson of Chelsea’s ruthless pursuit of success, regardless of what it costs
The problem for Arsenal is that Chelsea are everything they are not. Years ago, in the halcyon days of Arsene Wenger before he started arguing about “financial doping” and began the slow march towards mediocrity, that statement was worn as a proud badge of honour. Now that cannon is broken.
Arsenal were stylish, yet tough. They did not just win leagues, they won doubles. Wenger was elegantly ruthless in his approach and was astutely backed by an ambitious vice-chairman, David Dein. Wenger sold record goalscorer Ian Wright and replaced him with Nicolas Anelka. Then, after the striker agitated to leave, he got a huge fee for him, used the money to build a new training ground and brought in Thierry Henry and Davor Suker – and kept winning. He stole Sol Campbell from
Tottenham on a free transfer – and kept winning. The thinking was efficient, clear and quick.
Meanwhile, Chelsea were the dilettantes who splashed the cash, indulged certain players, did not seem to have a coherent plan but consoled themselves with winning the odd cup … sound familiar?
Gianluca Vialli collected five trophies in three years but, even so, Chelsea felt miles behind what Wenger was achieving at Arsenal.
How that has changed. “London is blue,” tweeted Romelu Lukaku – as did his hero, Didier Drogba – after the predictable 2-0 win at a far-from-full Emirates on Sunday, when the striker scored on his second debut and the gulf between the clubs, on and off the pitch, was again exposed. Not even the most diehard Arsenal fan would try to claim that it is red any more.
Chelsea are focused. Everything they do has a purpose. Failure or mediocrity is not countenanced. It may be unsavoury to go through managers as quickly as Chelsea do, and even to have a first-team squad of 42 players, as Thomas Tuchel faced earlier this summer, but results speak for themselves.
Mikel Arteta might be a fine manager one day – and he got off to a tremendous start by winning the FA Cup last year, beating Chelsea in the final – but he would not have survived at Stamford Bridge. Just ask Frank Lampard, who was in the Chelsea dugout at Wembley.
Chelsea get lots of things wrong – not least in several of their expensive signings (Danny Drinkwater? Tiemoue Bakayoko? Kepa Arrizabalaga?) – but they do not hang around. They rectify those mistakes – and quickly.
In December 2020, Chelsea were top of the league, £220million had been spent the previous summer and Lampard was talking about a contract extension. He was sacked the following month.
It helps that Tuchel has not put a foot wrong. But he was available and Chelsea did not hesitate. Lampard could talk about projects, just as Stan and Josh Kroenke, Arsenal’s owners, wrote about a “bright future” in the programme notes before the Chelsea game, but such a “jam tomorrow” approach is not palatable for Roman Abramovich. He demands both. A bright present and a bright future. As Pep Guardiola says, it is easier to convince everyone about your “project” when you are winning.
The problem for Arsenal is that they have created a culture in which underachievement is tolerated and excuses are made.
There is a flabbiness to them, as there has been for years, where they flip-flop between deciding, for example, Granit Xhaka can go to Roma, before panicking after he played well for Switzerland at the Euros. They awarded him a new contract, a pay rise – and he has captained the side in their first two league defeats. Where is the thinking in that? (Bizarrely that contract is yet to be officially announced, but was referred to in the Kroenkes’ programme notes).
Arsenal fielded the youngest back four in the Premier League at the weekend. But that is not something for a club of their stature to trumpet, especially when they are then ripped apart by Chelsea, with Arteta getting his tactics wrong. The coach left those players exposed.
Of course Arsenal are not Chelsea. They do not have the same financial might. Neither are they Manchesters United or City. But neither are they minnows, nor should they continually give the
Already, just two games in, qualifying for the Champions League looks highly unlikely
impression that they need to search for excuses.
There is a common theme. The Kroenke ownership; the “Silent Stan” ownership. The Americans still appear uncaring, distant, cash-focused and only panicked into reaching out, and investing further, following the fan backlash after the European Super League debacle. “We got it wrong,” Josh Kroenke said. He could have been speaking about so much more than the, thankfully, aborted ESL.
Arsenal are out of European competition this season. Already, just two games in, qualifying for the Champions League, in which they have not played since 2017, looks highly unlikely.
Of course a case can be made for the future. There are highly talented, promising young players. But the problem for Arsenal is that at the very best-run clubs – like Chelsea – that is allied with a case for the present. And they have summarily failed to address that throughout the club. There are too many attempts at mitigation and justifying failure, and as a grand old news editor (Alf Green at the Liverpool Echo) once told me when I started out in my journalism career 30 years ago: bring me exclusives, not excuses.
As ever with Alf, he was right.