Over the years, Arsenal have been known as a team that plays in a certain way, a free flowing attacking football of which many football lovers and Arsenal fans got mesmerized and obsessed with, to the extent that many even called it ‘Wengerball’ or ‘Sexy football’…
Wenger was often credited with this new identity, and rightly so, especially as it delivered trophies and got more fans for the club across the globe…
In those early years, we had Pires, Bergkamp, Lunjberg, Henry and Vieira, to name a few who shone in the ‘Wengerball’. Some years later, transition from the legends saw players like Nasri, Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky and Diaby, carry on this identity although they maintained the brand they failed to deliver much success in terms of titles…
In the Fabregas and Nasri years, the football was so sexy, that even if we lost you would still be proud of our display as we were so attacking and we score a lot of goals…
However, the current Arsenal team in my opinion do not really have this identity, our brand of football is only seen once in a blue moon, we just pass the ball around for passings sake most times, that even Giroud admitted…”Sometimes we pass the ball too much”
The Wengerball is rapidly declining, we are not very direct in our attacks any more. We are not as sexy as we used to be…in fact in my own opinion, we saw that only once last season against Chelsea and do I also remember the Napoli game at home in the CL… Benitez said after the game..”Arsenal were devastating”
Then I begin to wonder what could be the cause of this? Is it the manager or the players? But can we say it is the manager, seeing as he was the one that brought this to us, but if you say its the players then one can say, “But he decided to buy the player”
I would say Wenger has over time gotten the wrong players for this system to work…
I mean if you take a look at our team now, only Cazorla had that special technicality to operate in that brand of football, but I think Iwobi is not far off…players like Le Coq, Elneny and co do not have the playmaking and technical abilities of Hleb, Rosicky and Cesc…
I still believe we can play good football and win trophies just like Barcelona but maybe we aren’t getting the right players…
What do you think?
Goonerboy