I have been reading Ray Parlour’s new book
and the book makes me fall in love more with Arsenal football club, Arsene
Wenger and Ray Parlour himself.
Ray comes across as your quintessential old school English / British / UK person. Honest and transparent to a fault while still
maintaining his dignity and personal space. He openly acknowledges his fault,
good fortune in life while making several salient points that true football
fans need to read, understand and assimilate.
I’m not trying to canonise Ray or turn him into
a saint of the church or to imply that everything he said he is the gospel but Ray
has been there, he has done that and he has got the T-shirt. He understands how
football works and he says some wonderfully profound things in his book.
Reading Ray’s book helped me adopt a much
more Zen like approach to yesterday’s match. He was definite in his book on how
football matches can go one way or the other based on small margins and that’s what
many fans on all sides of the Arsene Wenger debate fail to grasp.
Small margins
6 points better than equivalent fixtures
last season – ✔
6 points grabbed from ‘late minutes’ goals
–
Played not very well at OT and grabbed a
point –
Could have lost woefully at the Parc Des
Prince but got a point –
2 down away against a somewhat average team
in Bulgaria & won – ✔ check (hopefully you all remember drawing 3 - 3 with
Anderlecht after leading 3 nil and losing to Zagreb and Olympiakos last
season - pub sides from Belgium, Croatia and Greece respectively)
November is a terrible month for Arsenal in
Wenger’s time but we are yet to lose –
So please, people might want to miss me with
some of their baseless outrage following yesterday’s match. The fact that 11
players in Arsenal jerseys are not trying their best to win a match is
ludicrous to me. Yes their best might not be good enough to win the match or dominate
but it was good enough to grab a precious point.
The media hail Jose Mourinho for going to
potential Premier League title rivals and getting a point to ensure no advantage lost in
the title race. Wenger does something potentially similar and the
world is about to end. I can’t believe the lack of logic in that.
It was a very good point at Old Trafford for me. United always raise their game against Arsenal and they did
yesterday. They have recently been at the end of a chastening loss to Arsenal
and they and their manager are savvy enough not to play an open game with us.
Their game plan was designed to neutralize
our game, on many occasions when we had the ball in their half, we faced two
banks of four. Their plan was to win turnovers high up the pitch and to kick
Arsenal players to prevent any counter attacks and they did it
Going back to Ray’s book, I will suggest
that the Arsenal fans who try to downgrade Wenger’s achievements as the Arsenal
manager with the famous Back 4 / Back 5 of George Graham are downright mischievous. That team hadn’t won the Premier League for 7
years; Wenger changed it by winning the league in his 2nd season
while prolonging the playing career of those legendary guys. It is remarkable
going by what is in Ray’s books that Arsenal won anything in Arsene’s earlier
days with all the changes he was implementing within the club, playing squad
and with individual players.
Why anybody will want to then want to
question such a manager’s player selection, in - game management and tactical
preparations is beyond me. Just because you have watched footy for 20years or
you have a vlog or a blog and you are a super fan or because you have plenty
social media followers doesn’t make you know more about footy than the manager
of a club side.
Arsene understands the psychological
framework of his boys. For example, the club announced the Old Trafford Team Sheet yesterday
with a caveat that they might have to withdraw Theo before kick off if a call
came that his missus had gone into labour. For one minute and if you are a responsible person, just think if that was you and you genuinely love your
missus. You will have to be Buddha to be
100% concentrated on whatever you are doing. While torn between not letting your mates
and manager down and been there with your wife.
Think about Alexis, you and I know he
wasn’t 100% but still turned up in all sense of the phrase. He wasn’t vintage Alexis but he turned up.
"Ozil was missing", "Jenkinson was that" and whoever it is that is the subject of
your misdirected ire. Calm the F down. Yesterday and for me they all put in a 100% shift and a decent one for that matter. Unbelievable. Same people that say it the result that matter all of a sudden quibbling about the result.
The
thought that Ozil wasn’t doing his best on the pitch in that game is moronic.
He was playing against a manager who knows his game well and that sour faced manager deployed the
personnel and tactics to stop Ozil playing his game. Ozil was also playing for
a manager who went a bit ‘safety first’ yesterday. Have you tried
For me, Arsene was right in his approach. He
knew what resources he had and deployed them the way he did to get a
respectable result. He is managing for a 38 game league season not for one
weekend.
Arsenal fans looking for an education on
football especially those with open minds should please read Ray Parlour’s book
and understand the history of the club you support, understand one person's perspective of Arsene’s make up as a manager and Ray's take on the
type of club you support.
Not every time, mindless Twitter meltdowns.
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