Gary Neville was not specifically talking about Arsenal and the situation that Arsene Wenger and the players find themselves in this season, but the former England and Man United defender was talking about things that could just as easily be applied to the Gunners, as he did his punditry for Sky Sports Monday Night Football last night.
After Newcastle United lost again to leave them joint bottom of the BPL table with Burnley, Neville suggested the problem might be the time it takes to assimilate a number of new players into the team. With Newcastle, however, he thinks the problem is that a lot of the new magpies are new to the Premier League, while only Aleis Sanchez of the new Arsenal signings is new to English football.
But Neville went on to discuss with Jamie Carragher why he thinks United have the edge of Liverpool in the race for a top four spot and that does mirror our situation. Because of this season’s Champions League games, Brendan Rodgers (and Arsene Wenger of course) do not have the same amount of time to work with the players and get the new squad drilled into what he wants from them and get them used to playing together.
In fact, Danny Welbeck has already mentioned his lack of proper in depth training sessions with his new team mates. So with new players like Alexis, Welbeck, Calum Chambers, Joel Campbell, Mathieu Debuchy, David Ospina and now the young players like Bellerin, Hayden and Akpom to integrate into the Arsenal system, is this the reason for our slow start to the season?