FA PREMIER LEAGUE:FRENCH FOOTBALL folk have to watch what they do with their hands in the current climate. But when Arsene Wenger attracted criticism on Wednesday night for ducking out of the traditional post-match handshake with Mark Hughes, his counterpart at Manchester City, it was so much more than an unsporting reaction in the heat of the moment.
The Arsenal manager’s frustration has been building and his fit of pique at Eastlands, after the 3-0 League Cup quarter-final defeat, was further fall-out from a difficult period.
The controversies of the international break last month, when forces beyond his control took hold, including the Dutch Football Association’s medical team, served as the prelude.
When his players returned to domestic duty, they fell to a lacklustre 1-0 Premier League loss at Sunderland. But, after the 2-0 win at the Emirates Stadium over Standard Liege in the Champions League, it was the events of last Sunday that plunged Wenger into despair.
The 3-0 home defeat by Chelsea, that left Arsenal 11 points off the championship pace, albeit with a game in hand, has been shattering. Would Wenger have reacted so truculently to Hughes during and after the game against City if his team had beaten Chelsea?
It is not unusual to hear Wenger shouting the odds in defeat but some of his arguments after the Chelsea humbling bordered on the irrational. He railed at Andre Marriner for disallowing a goal early in the second half, which would have cut Chelsea’s lead to 2-1, saying “the referee got the turning point of the game wrong”.
Turning points tend not to occur after one team has already scored two goals. Wenger also remarked that Didier Drogba, Chelsea’s match-winner, “does not do a lot”. He meant the striker’s contribution was limited to highly effective bursts but the sentiment was churlish, as was his suggestion that Drogba knew little about his first finish, which had sailed perfectly into the top corner.
Wenger is not a good loser. He would admit that. But the Chelsea defeat was harder to swallow because he had billed it as the moment when his young team would come of age.
After four trophyless seasons of patience and nurture, this was the time when Wenger insisted “we have to show we have grown up”. Instead, they were swatted aside by Chelsea, as they had been in the corresponding Premier League fixture last May and as they had been in the Champions League semi-final second leg in the same month, also at Emirates Stadium, by Manchester United.
To Wenger’s angst, the gap to the very top continues to seem tantalisingly beyond them. It was a 3-0 loss at Manchester City at around the same time last season that had Wenger at possibly his lowest ebb. The defeat was in the Premier League and it was the team’s fifth in the opening 14 matches. Their title chances were over before the start of December.
This season, the league defeat at United was followed by one at City while Chelsea followed Sunderland.
The team’s best efforts have been undermined by injuries, none crueller than that suffered by the striker Robin van Persie on international duty with the Netherlands. Wenger has promised to look for a replacement in January, although this does raise the thorny issue of why he did not seek to bulk up his squad before the season started.
More immediately though, Arsenal face Stoke City at home tomorrow and Wenger hopes the game will mark the beginning of an upturn in fortunes. After last season’s defeat at Manchester City, the team went 21 Premier League matches without defeat.
No one could rule out such a run again but would it be enough?
GuardianService
