Daily Bits and Bobs

Don’t ‘go compare.’

Posted on by rico


Morning guys.

Bear with me on this one, hopefully it’ll make sense.

A few weeks ago I was put on a gluten free diet. I had two choices on how to approach this as I love homemade sourdough bread, any bread really. I enjoy a bowl of porridge in the morning or a homemade flapjack with a good old cup of tea in the afternoon. I wasn’t about to attempt to make my own gluten free bread so both warburtons and Waitrose sourdough and tiger loaf came to the rescue. I tried it with an open mind, a free mind really as the worst thing I could do I thought was to compare what I was going to be eating for the next few months, possibly years, with the real thing. It worked because in all honesty, the alternative choices I eventually settled for were ok. No, good and before I knew it, I was enjoying my toast. Just as I am the gluten free porridge oats.

What the heck am I on about I hear you say, and what has gluten free food got to do with football.

Well, I think it’s fair to say that Arsenal FC aren’t Man City for a few reasons. They’re northern whereas we’re in London. They have rich owners who will spend whatever it takes to build the best team in England and they’ll pay what they need to in order to get the best manager they can. I don’t understand how they conform to FFP but that’s another issue totally and one I’m not going to try and understand either.

Arsenal on the other hand do have a rich owner but his approach is very different. Or it has been thus far. Unai Emery, although a well respected manager in his own right, isn’t Pep Guardiola, nor any other manager the British media are gushing over these days. He’s Unai Emery. 

Shkodran Mustafi isn’t Virgil van Dyke, Bernd Leno isn’t Ederson or Alisson either. Alex Iwobi isn’t David Silva, Xhaka isn’t Fernandinho and Mkhitaryan certainly isn’t de Bruyne, Sane or Sterling. Yet don’t we expect them to perform like them, compare them even? I know I’m guilty of doing so in the past.

Abou Diaby was always being compared to Patrick Vieria but in reality they had four things in common. The colour of their skin, their height, their long legs and they were French. Mesut Ozil. Just because he wears the number 10 shirt, he’s not Dennis Bergkamp, just as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is not Thierry Henry. 

Each footballer who comes and goes has a different quality to bring to the team. A different style and sometimes, something not necessarily better but it’s better for that specific time in the game. Often over the last ten years something worse too but they’re are the ones who shouldn’t have stayed as long as they did. Shouldn’t have been rewarded with more money and a new contract, not when what they’re doing on the pitch just isn’t working. That doesn’t always mean that player is a bad one, it just means that perhaps Arsenal weren’t the right team for him or the Premier League isn’t for them. Isn’t that the case right now for a handful of our players?

Something isn’t right between Arsenal, Emery and Ozil so it needs sorting. Mustafi and English football doesn’t seem to be a good fit either, just as it doesn’t for Aubameyang who despite being our leading goal scorer, just doesn’t seem to be able to perform well against the teams around and above us. That’s where Henry was superb. He loved the big games didn’t he, actually they all did back in his day and those of Tony Adams and co.

We’d all love to see Arsenal defend as well as the Toots, Liverpool and City etc but we don’t have their players, nor do we have their manager. What we have is a manager trying to do something with players he was left, not who he chose to do the job he wants them to do unlike Klopp, Guardiola and Poch. In fact right the way through the league it’s similar I’d say. While some managers might focus on defending, their attacking game suffers, others try and sort everything and end up mid to half way down the table and then the rest, well they just fight it out for relegation.

Huddersfield, Southampton and Fulham have all changed their manager yet there remain in the bottom three. Sarri started well with a better squad than us but they’ve just been thumped 6-0 by City and previously defeated by us and Toots. So has he suddenly become a bad manager? Or like Emery, perhaps just needs time to get his game plan across to the players and add a few of his own choice to achieve what he’s striving to? Is it a coincidence that Chelsea and ourselves are going through similar things after both clubs started the new season with a different coach?

When was Emery last able to pick his strongest eleven? During our 22 match unbeaten run I think it was. A run which ended when he fielded Lichtsteiner, Xhaka and Koscielny as our back three. Heck, even Simeone wouldn’t get that three playing well together would he?

Anyway, the moral of my story is that perhaps when Emery can field his strongest eleven, some of whom he might not even want to keep and he’s added more of the type of player he wants, we as a club might stick our heads around the corner he’s trying to turn us.

I know many of you reading this this will disagree and that’s fine by me as we live in a democratic world but unless Mustafi morphs into a top notch centre back overnight, Ozil finds his spine, Lichtsteiner’s legs drop ten years off their age and Aubameyang realises that if his feet leave the turf he might win a header we’ll never be perfect.

Mind you, Henry wasn’t good with his head either, so perhaps there is a comparison between the two after all. Oh, number 14 too…


rico

23 thoughts on “Don’t ‘go compare.’”

  1. scottfromoz says:

    Morning all.
    Rico, you got there in the end 🙂 🙂
    Good read!!
    We really do have quite a few players who came to the club with damn good resumes and reputations, but just haven’t performed the same as they did elsewhere.
    The PL isn’t for all players, that’s for sure.

  3. allezkev says:

    Afternoon Gooners
    Afternoon Rico. The Co Op do some interesting gluten free products, their chocolate biscuits are really nice. Oh, and a great post.

    I wonder what kind of team Emery will choose for the trip to Belarus?
    Does he go strong, kill the tie and play a rotated team in the 2nd leg or does he play some fringe players like Lichtsteiner, Cech, Elneny, Ozil, Ramsey etc?

  4. allezkev says:

    Today Liam Brady is 63 years old and the worrying thing is I can remember seeing him playing for the Youth team and the Stiffs when he was 17 years old… ☹️

  5. allezkev says:

    That was a brilliant group of young players, Brady, Matthews, Rostron, Powling, Ross, O’Leary, Stapleton, Rix, Devine…

  6. rico says:

    Afternoon Kev.

    I’ll look in the Co-op, thanks. Lol

    Tough question as we could do with winning this competition. Tough ask but not impossible..

  8. Hobart says:

    I’d like to think that Emery could use the first leg to express his vision for the team. To give us an insight into what he wants us to be almost.

    As for the corner that we need to turn, my concern is that it needs to be soon as we can’t afford to not have champions league money for too long.

  11. allezkev says:

    I actually never saw David O’Leary play in the youths and Stiffs, he was pretty much fast tracked right into the 1st team Hobart.

    I saw him make his debut as a 17 year old at Turf Moor, playing alongside Terry Mancini, he was without doubt a quality player.

    Rixy actually made his debut vs Leicester at Highbury, also 17, he scored in a 3-0 win where oddly enough O’Leary scored twice, the only time he managed that.

  13. Le Coq Monster says:

    Afternoon all and loved the post Rico, I do like analogy`s.

    You are a gluten for punishment and you have definately punished me by reminding me how inadequate our players are compared to Man C………………….Jesus they have some super quality, any idea how they come by them ? hahaha

    Always said I would die a happy man after being at that 5-0 thrashing of Spuds, lucky enough I didn`t die after the game and I`m still here ! 😆

  17. rico says:

    Don’t think I’ll be going down that route Micko. I can’t even cope with green tea… lol
    Great goal by Brady. Nice to look back at some real talent. They don’t make them like him anymore. I used to like Rix too, however…..

  19. potter says:

    We all agree Rixy is better than Hoddle. ……………………………………….We were wierd even then.

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