Could Arsenal become what is supposed to be a joke?

‘Could Arsenal become what is supposed to be a joke?’

An Arsenal blog that should be everybody’s perspective 

When I first started going to football, there was a chant that I got particularly attached to.

It was the quite ridiculous ‘ we’re by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen.’

I liked it because even though Arsenal were good, and our bias could make us believe what we were singing, but then every team in the football league sang it. I just loved that type of ridiculous humour. I think it was also because one of the reasons that I first loved football was that fans in England love the sport so much that they weren’t going to let the score of the game ruin their personal footballing experience. You could never accuse English fans of not being serious because they would spend a whole lot of money and an entire day based around their team’s game, but they take joy in the whole experience rather than just the scoreboard.

My perception of what the “greatest team that the world had ever seen” was a team that would outscore you. A team so offensively strong from every side of the pitch that you did not even notice the solidity of their defenders because the opponent looked like a balloon swiftly deflating. A team exuding confidence either individually or collectively. A team of players that would make it look easy as all great players and great teams do.

For me personally, it started with the Brazil side in 1982. I couldn’t believe when they were eliminated, but looking back they were significantly stronger going forward than defending. They attacked with such a level of excitement and energy and defending collectively seemed to be an afterthought. So now I look back and  realize why it is so important to get the balance right. To know when to press the accelerator but also know what it’s time to put the car in neutral and possibly park it.

Then I made a trip to Lake Garda. I became aware of Serie A and my Mum bought me a long sleeve AC Milan top. Then I started watching James Richardson on his Gazetta show and I started to understand the importance of groupings. Football had just turned from leagues of native players to the door being swung open for foreign players who were often better. AC Milan and Inter Milan found the best Dutch and German players and grouped them. It was clever on a human level because football was stepping into a foreign world and there were more stories of failure than of success. I’m sure that putting Gullit and Rijkaard and Van Basten together greatly helped them on a human level and therefore impacted the on field.

My football journey then taught me about aura. My team didn’t have it until the early 2000s but I could see it in Liverpool and Manchester United. Teams that had so many superstars and this seemed to kick off the new trend. You needed superstars.

The European competitions weren’t so accessible when I was young, but as the Champions League format was introduced, it was Real Madrid and Barcelona that rose to the top. It seemed like regardless of how well you played, their players were just significantly better and their aura seemed to have a magnetic way of somehow sucking the ball into its inevitable home. Celebrity football that took advantage of the psychological part of the game. Players and teams that were too impacted by aura and were defeated before 3 PM.

The last 15 years have been largely dominated by one man. Pep Guardiola. His Barcelona team might just be by far the greatest team the world has ever seen. A team so technical and patient that opponents would literally give up.

His football traveled to Germany and adapted, and then reverted back to type in Manchester. Again, opponents and coaches alike giving up the game before the game.

During these last few 25 years there was a man with little celebrity playing against celebrity footballers. A man born into an academy of technical brilliance and exposed to opposing tactical view points. Literally. Playing for a coach that had no tactical interest in the opponent, to a coach whose wife left him because of his tactical footballing obsession. Arteta showed up and started his career with a team whose attitude and results were closer to the local out of town solid waste company than the celebrity Michelin star chef and his downtown restaurant.

One thing you learn as you grow up is that some people have to fall so low in order to be willing to turn around and see the light at the end of the very long tunnel and finally become willing to head in that direction.

This season Arsenal and Arteta have become ridiculed by green eyes. The efficiency of Arsenal Football Club has been ignored largely because the vast majority of media and pundits in the United Kingdom still see football from the 90s/2000s perspective. Football has become a coaches game and cannot be analyzed by those unwilling to re-educate themselves.

Then the Bayern Munich game happened.

After this game and the memory of the Real Madrid game of last season, those commenting have had their one leg that they stood on cut from under them. They cannot now see Arsenal as a team to ridicule because it’s become too obvious that Arsenal Football Club are currently the most efficient football team in world football. The only team that could possibly compare as we read this today is the Spanish national team, but that comparison can only ever be an argument and will never be proven.

As I attempt to remove my Arsenal goggles, which is never that easy, I feel safe in saying that this particular Arsenal team and squad could end up singing that chant with full rights to be in the proverbial boxing ring with 90’s AC Milan, 80s Brazil, Liverpool, Manchester, United and Real Madrid, and all others prior to my footballing journey that deserve to sing that chant with real intent. Messi’s Barcelona likely look down on everybody else. I emphasize the word could because all those other teams won big and won often. Arsenal have yet to do that…. yet.

So what is the superpower that could propel this Arsenal team to being in the conversation as ‘the greatest?’

I think that when we look back in 10 years time people will say that it was four things, in particular.

Arsenal and Arteta will be put on a pedestal for changing football like all of the teams mentioned before did. They will be remembered as the team that put

1. Greater value on standards

2. The off the ball game

3. Soft factors and…….

4. The ability to turn off every light.

1. Young people or newly married readers, here is some advice from my rocking chair… before you have children, give more thought to the standards that you want upheld than anything else. Secondly, be careful what you say. Making a rule that you intend on breaking or will inevitably bend on, will make you realize that it was better that you never had the rule in the first place. I know it’s not just me that looks at Mikel Arteta and sees a man who has given full thought to his coaching approach. He came up with his standards and whether people like them or not, he hasn’t bent or changed. The Aubameyang situation was one of them. Many thought that Arteta was being harsh and as much as we loved Auba’s personality and ability to consistently score goals, Arsenal as a team are exponentially better since his era. Arteta looked at what the players in the club were capable of and pushed them to achieve their potential. Most coaches never even get close to that because they’re not given the time or they don’t have the consistency of standards. Those players that refused to meet their individual or the collective standards at Arsenal were removed. Even players that could’ve done it with more maturity or time like Lokonga and Taveres were not given it because of the risk of their lower standards affecting others. Arteta pushed the club to not just buy better players but trust him in choosing players with better character. Players that wouldn’t have to be coaxed to achieve their potential but were self driven. When you get to a point where over 2/3 of your group are all pushing in one direction then the others will likely follow because they have been converted or they realized that there was no other choice.  Arteta has higher standards than most every other coach in world football. Other coaches allow players to give a token effort. They might shout at them in the dressing room or point them out at the video session, but they’ll pick the player on Saturday, which is a big mistake.

2. The off ball game will likely be how Arteta is best remembered. It was the first international compliment that he got, and even those that relentlessly mock Arsenal for whatever bizarre reason, recognize that Arsenal play at a completely different level than most everybody else when they don’t have the ball. It’s to the point where coaches like myself, and I’m sure many others, have wondered if we’d actually be better off ceding more possession because we could annihilate teams simply with our individual and collective defensive structure, anticipation, and duel winning.
   Excuse me if I’ve told you this a time or two before, but I’m rather excited about the prospects of my new high school team in the spring. I’ve decided to accept that they are all older than 14 and that I can affect their technical game very little, but I can give them new achievable ideas that could turn them from being a good local team to a regional force. I shall be teaching them the importance of the ‘off ball.’ For this generation, I’ve realized that I can’t talk as long as I write and that I have to keep it super simple because of their attention span.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           So, the challenge will be this….. Are you watching or are you helping?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           We’ve all played football and we all now recognize the sin that we are now making because we watch this modern Arsenal team. When we play football and the opponent has the ball and the ball is a fair distance away from us, we have a mental nap. A physical nap too. As long as we become active when the ball is in our vicinity then all is good. We watch the game and only help  when the ball is in the local vicinity.  I challenge you to watch Arsenal for two minutes when the opponent is in possession. That will be a very rare two minutes to find but give it a go. Watch how serious they are about where they are standing. Watch how they are clearly communicating to each other about distances. Watch how they seem to actually enjoy it. Then go pick most any other team and do the same. There is a clear reluctance in comparison. The biggest single difference is when they are being transitioned on. You can see it most perfectly at Liverpool right now. You have different levels of disinterest. Salah will either stand still or barely jog when the ball goes past him. VVD will go into a 60% swift jog and make it look like he is trying. Even the usually energetic Curtis Jones will give up and then go on television and tell everybody about the sins of the team without pointing at himself.                                                                                                                                                            On a sidenote, if ever I’ve seen a team actively trying to get their coach fired, it is this one. To the point where they have decided that it’s worth losing games by heavy score lines in order to illuminate the problem. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a player so obviously playing the position of blocker in volleyball as VVD did the other day. His acting mask slipped a little and that was just too obvious. Liverpool are currently an extreme example so maybe a bad example even though they should be at a similar level to Arsenal. It doesn’t really matter who you want to pick but you will very quickly see the marked difference. You need to pause and consider that this is a common dominator to so many things going right or so many things going wrong.

3. We found out when Arsenal dabbled in the documentary world that Arteta isn’t satisfied with winging it when he’s talking to the players. He wants to be creative. He wants to keep them wondering. He wants them to consider things that ought to be considered, but never have been.  It’s got to the point now where Arteta got more credit for the amazing tifo against Spurs than the supporters who put it together. Arteta has figured out that you need to have some special sauce to kick off an atmosphere and change peoples mental energy. When that tifo went up the crowd went from excited to the state of feeling  invincible. One of Munich’s complaints after the game was the speed at which the ball boys moved when they needed the ball back. We all know what that’s about .We all just assumed that it was Arteta’s idea.                                                                                                                                                                 Of the four parts to a player’s game the mental has the greatest impact. No matter how technically good you are or technically aware you are, how brilliant your decision-making is, and how many reps you’ve done in the gym, your mind can weaken all three of those with a thought that leads to another negative thought that becomes a cancer in your game. Coaches like Brian Clough, José Mourinho and especially those that coached before football became hyper tactical, put a lot of stock in the mental. They would even intentionally hurt players’ feelings in order to provoke them to a better performance. Most modern coaches have somewhat given up on this because there is so much more to focus on. They didn’t build their house with a solid foundation like Arteta did, so they are constantly fixing problems rather than tweaking.                                                                                                                   The latest soft factor that I’ve noticed is goal celebrations. I admit that this may be organic or driven by a team leader, but I think that it’s Arteta. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a team where every single player seems to have been encouraged to enjoy themselves to the fullest when their team scores than Arteta’s Arsenal. I know that you might be thinking that nobody needs to be prodded to enjoy their team scoring a goal, but much like the off ball conversation, there are levels to it. Every team works off the ball but some do it more consistently and to higher level than others. Every team celebrates goals, but Arsenal players run off in a variety of directions and let loose. Again, watch away from the camera and you’ll see it. So, why has this been promoted by the coach? Is it simply so that they don’t forget to enjoy their career? I think it’s because of the effect it has on the opponents and their fans. Again, we’ve all played football and we know how it feels when the opponent scores. It never feels good, but when you play against a team who celebrates as if their best friend just won the lottery and he promised them 20% and you a Snickers bar then the sting is sharper. There are lots of soft factors that are worth mentioning, especially those that don’t take two weeks of repetition to perfect. If you don’t believe in soft factors, then go talk to Win the dog. At the very least, he agrees with me.

4. Since Wednesday, those that don’t pay enough attention or prefer to mock have had to admit that Arsenal are currently ‘by far the greatest team the world has ever seen’ at covering every base. I prefer to see it this way. Here goes with my own bizarre and unnecessarily creative analogy… Imagine you are playing hide and seek in an extremely large house. You have 10 minutes to find as many people as possible. All the lights are on in the house and you’ve been given a taser gun to threaten them to come out of hiding or they will get tased. The first house is a representation of the current Liverpool team. You find 14 people and unfortunately you had to taze Virgil Van Dijk who was hiding in the attic and refused to come out. The second house represented a game against Aston Villa. All the lights were out in the house, but you were given a cell phone flashlight, and you managed to find six people. You tased Unai Emery, who you actually found, but just as you were moving on to the next person you had flashbacks to Watford away and so felt that you had no choice. The last house represents playing Arsenal. The lights are all turned off, you have no phone and the doors are locked from room to room. You found nobody, you forgot your taser, and had to jump in and out of windows to get from room to room, but still no luck. Arsenal defeated you because they had shut off every possible route to success. Not just some of them. Not just most of them. All of them. Three months later you got to play the ridiculous hide and seek game again against Arsenal. In the allotted time you find one person, but you had to play a blinder to do it. You realize that the only way is to employ Tom Cruise who has the ability to dodge the lasers in the library. He finds Gabriel who made the schoolboy era of smiling whilst he was hiding in the corner. His teeth illuminated the room brighter than any LED light has ever thought of and now Gabriel is banned from playing ‘big house hide and seek.’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Back to the real world and you can only really fully appreciate this if you somehow try to imagine playing against Arsenal. You can’t score from set plays because nobody has the delivery that we have and the positioning of our goalkeeper and mentality of our defenders closes all the doors. You can’t score from crosses because of the positioning of our goalkeeper and attitude of our midfielders, who have literally sprinted back to make  a three against four transition turn into an eight against four defensive overload. You can’t score from distance because the players have been taught how to drop one knee, face the ball and take the hit and behind them is a cat more alert than John Burridge in his prime. You can’t go around the outside because our right back is the best one on one defender in the world. The left back can be got to down the line but only through a switched ball which he heads away before his winger even touches it. You can’t pass through us because our communication and distances are perfect. You might be able to occasionally dribble through us, but we have the best dribblers in the league. They combine elite dribbling with unmatched power and the unique ability to protect the ball whilst they’re doing it. You can’t do it through substitutions because our squad is deeper than yours and so you are more concerned about nullifying us than attacking us. You can’t do it through long balls because our defenders are never switched off and are in position to where they always have a head start. You can’t even rely on taking advantage of Zinchenko because he plays for Nottingham Forest now.                                                                                          Everyone is so fascinated at how Arsenal don’t even concede shots. Nobody has yet said that it’s because they’re coaching staff has taught them the very best way to stop every possible goal scoring opportunity as an individual and as a collective. When you become a believer in these things that I’m talking about, it makes sense that the only goals that go into our net are extremely rare mistakes (Zubimendi v Spurs), incredible finishes (Richarlison, Szoboszlai) or unstoppable one touch football (Lennart Karl). To score on Arsenal you have to be one of the lucky ones that forces a very rare mistake or achieves perfection.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The doors are closed. The lights are off. All of them.

I’ll finish this with a prediction.

Arsenal have just signed a sponsorship deal with Paramount Plus.

It’s been announced that the players will be advertising Paramount Plus shows like Landman and MobLand.

I will not be surprised if Arteta walks into the room and interrupts the marketing meeting and tells them a more creative way to get the players involved in advertising Paramount Plus. A short commercial so funny that the players argue with each other in the dressing room at Sobha Realty as to who gets to do the next commercial.

It will become such a thing that 6-7 will be replaced by a word or a phrase used by one of the players in the commercial.

If I’m right then I’m quitting Arsenal blogging and becoming competition for Mrs Lamarr and her cheeky psychic reading business in Morristown, TN.

I might have a chance tomorrow to do my regular PNH, but this moment is bigger than regular analysis, so I had to do this.

Mike McDonald

Former Highbury regular. Moved to TN, USA in ’99. Married with 3 kids. Coached in UK and US for 27 years.
Mike McDonald Soccer Academy in Morristown TN, Olympic Development coach, Regional Premier League Champion.