Ivan statement not too good for Arsenal’s morale by KM
Ivan Gazidis hit the press again, to say some things about where Arsenal are heading as a football club. “When we talk about the destination, it’s not winning a Champions League, it’s making fans proud,”.
This statement looks like there’s nothing wrong with it. We play good football for the fans. The problem is it somewhat distracts the responsibility. It practically gives an excuse for not winning a trophy.
Football and sports in general have become target oriented. It’s about the PRIZE. The most popular clubs in the world are the ones that win the most trophies. Playing both good and winning trophies is what makes the Barcelona of a few years ago so remarkable.
“It’s about making the people at the football club proud of what we do and how we do it.”. I think Arsenal fans would be really proud of seeing us win the Champions league don’t you? If you want the highest prizes, you need to put them as targets and create plans on how to achieve them.
Our plan for next year is what? Play good football? We will not dominate clubs like Barcelona did. On statistics, you might argue if our strengths are possession football? This season we’ve done pretty good when we have had less possession. Can’t we play through the players strengths rather than a philosophy for the sake of trophies?
People misunderstood my last article when I said that the main problem is not the signings. That didn’t mean we don’t need any. You always need signings. They excite the fans, the players, the media, give you competition and an extra body.
Just looking at the impact Ozil and Sanchez had on our past two seasons is a sheer example of how you can buy quality and it can bring you results. It’s just that we have a lot of work to do behind the scenes. Improve players’ fitness. Ozil looks a beast after his injury. We need to work on reducing the number of injuries. Half of our injuries come from running players down to the ground.
Something that can be avoided by rotating. We have players like Rosicky and Walcott who rarely play, because the fall out of the Wenger shortlist. We also need to work on defending free kicks. We concede quite a lot of free kicks. Also work on not leaving the back 4 exposed. Although this drastically improved since the New year, it was the reason we were shipping in so many goals in the first half.
Improve our tactics. Again use player strengths. Don’t play slow players on the wing. Don’t play players out of position. I completely agree with the general opinion that we need a solid GK. I’d be pretty happy with nicking Lloris from Spurs or getting Cech. Schneiderlin would be a nice addition too. Another CB and a striker or a pacey winger would be good.
We should set ourselves high targets and work on and off the pitch to achieve them. If our goal is another top 4 finish, than 2-3 players to replace the departures would probably do. This is what I fear. The lack of ambition. What I’d like to see next season is a top 2 finish, a cup and at least a quarter final of the CL. Going out to teams like Monaco and finishing second in average groups will not do for me.
What targets will you set if you were Ivan?
Konstantin Mitov