2 ways Arsene Wenger has let the players down. by Max Moon
Over the past week, many pundits and fans have jumped to the defense of Wenger, about how the players have let him down and though they have showed little to no backbone over the past few games, they are simply not to blame.
Santi Cazorla
Santi, Santiago, little magician, call the man whatever you want, but the point is that he is the most important piece in our formation, take him out and the team lacks that link which connects defense-midfield-attack. Though his injury did halt our progression in this title campaign, his injury was in October ffs. Oddly enough, after his injury the players (surprisingly) rallied together and started getting results. However, losing such a pivotal component will have its effects and the signs were already showing towards the end of November, where we somehow managed to secure points, against both PSG and Manchester United, who dominated us heavily in both games. Though the players were somehow managing it, they were starting to fade rapidly and come to mid-December we lost back to back games, the sad thing is not once did we try something new and fast forward now to March, we still haven’t attempted anything new. The fact is that the Manager didn’t do them any favor and in all honesty we look lost in our play and confused, (duh) since we don’t have a like for like replacement for Santi in the squad, (another problem) yet still persisted with the same 4-2-3-1 formation…
Tactics
This season, we’ve had one of the most diverse attacking setups we’ve had in a long time, yet for some reason we seem to not deploy these setups effectively, for example against Chelsea away, we had seen in their game against Tottenham that they were poor at defending aerial threats, yet we didn’t play Giroud. Whilst against Liverpool, we knew that they would leave spaces to run into, yet didn’t play a more fluid attacking front line. Even against West Brom, who sit back for large amounts of the game we played a player (Theo), who’s strongest asset is his runs in behind… Though World Class players can make anything happen regardless of the opposition, our strongest asset was our Squad not our starting 11 and we simply haven’t used it enough.
Also, the biggest question I have for Wenger is if this squad was good enough last season (where we bought 0 outfield players) and failed, after we spent 100 million+ why are we even worse?
Max