Arsènal (28 page)

In fact, Arsenal should have been sitting on an even bigger lead at the top of the table as they travelled to the Midlands. But in one of their most insipid performances of the season six weeks earlier, they had been held to a draw at home by Birmingham. So with the visiting fans anticipating retribution and three points, the St Andrew's ground put on a three-act tragedy that took everyone by surprise. First and most distressing was the broken leg suffered by Eduardo as a result of a late challenge by opposition skipper Martin Taylor. Sky told their viewers it was “so horrific we do not want to show you that again”. While several minutes elapsed as Eduardo was treated and then taken on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, his teammates were visibly distraught.

Taylor was given a straight red card, and so despite losing Eduardo Arsenal still had 87 minutes to play with a man advantage. However, they were so shaken by the traumatic incident that the half-time score was 1–0 to the ten men. At least it gave Arsenal 15 minutes to compose themselves, and it seemed like business as usual when Theo Walcott put them ahead with a brace before the second half was even ten minutes old. Birmingham were like a boxer on the ropes, awaiting the final blow that would end the contest, a strike that would give the visitors their desired eight-point lead over the chasing pack. Although Arsenal created some excellent opportunities and had a cast-iron penalty claim waved away, the knockout punch was never delivered. As injury time ticked down, Gaël Clichy allowed the ball to run across him in his own penalty area rather than hoof it clear. He failed to see Stuart Parnaby closing in to steal possession, but recovered by dispossessing him in the box.

Unfortunately, in making the challenge he also gave Paranaby the opportunity to fall over his outstretched leg and the referee to award a penalty. The spot kick would be effect ively the last action of the game, although if it was saved, there would be time for a shot on the rebound before referee Mike Dean blew his final whistle, so Arsenal's players needed to be poised on the edge of the area to pounce on any loose ball.

But not William Gallas. It was all too much for the captain. He'd spent the previous week comforting Sagna over the tragic death of his brother, seen Eduardo's harrowing injury and now an act of defensive naivety that looked as if it would result in the dropping of two precious points against opponents who were struggling at the other end of the table. He stood on the halfway line looking on in evident fury from afar. His action, or rather lack of it, effectively reducing his own side to ten men, didn't ultimately affect events as the penalty was converted for a 2–2 draw, but his lack of preparation for any parry by Manuel Almunia would have made Gallas a poor boy scout. His response to the penalty being converted was to kick the advertising boards near the dugouts, for which he earned a yellow card. After a restart that lasted just a few seconds, Gallas then sat down on the pitch and stayed there. When everyone else had left the field Arsène Wenger walked over to his captain who eventually got to his feet and poured out his frustrations to his manager, who just listened.

In the space of moments, Wenger's decision to award him the armband came back to haunt him. Then, Wenger had emphasised, “He has to set an example everywhere, not just on the pitch but off it as well.” Gallas had said all the right things, a few weeks before proclaiming, “Mentally, I think we are ready, but the tough games come now. When we feel tired we have to be strong in our minds, in our bodies.” But cometh the hour, where was the man? Gallas's behaviour was more like that of an emotional supporter rather than a responsible and highly paid employee. Arsenal lost a player under horrific circumstances, threw away two points and had their captain go AWOL. William Gallas looked for all the world like his team had just conceded the title, when in fact the table showed them to be six points clear, albeit having played a game more. But what events at Birmingham seemed to do was halt the momentum of the leaders in their tracks, with fate and their own destructive tendencies acting against them in the fixtures that followed. Whether the captain's post-match sit-in was a contribution to the decline or the result of his realisation that his young colleagues were not up to the task is academic. In his role, he should have known better than to behave in such an ignominious fashion.

When the season was over, Wenger reflected, “We could not win the next game [a 1–1 home draw with Aston Villa] and then confidence dropped a little bit. Then every time after that when we were in a situation leading 1–0, we did not have the same drive going forwards, we just wanted to keep the result because we had less confidence. That all started at Birmingham.”

March's Premier League programme saw one deception after another for Arsenal. Ahead of the run of fixtures against Birmingham, Villa, Wigan and Middlesbrough, some Gooners were anticipating who the opposition might be when the title was confirmed. But these encounters saw a pitiful return of four points from a possible 12; certainly not the form of champions elect. The players who had shown they had it in them to ‘win ugly' in Prague back in August had forgotten how to eke out victory when the chips were down. Arsène Wenger had once more failed to prepare his men to come out fighting and strong leadership on the field was conspicuous by its absence. It was difficult to imagine that Tony Adams or Patrick Vieira would have let control slip away in this manner.

Injuries compounded Wenger's problems. Eduardo was on crutches, whilst Robin van Persie, though finally able to return never regained his early-season sharpness, a converted penalty his only goal in the first eight appearances after his mid-March comeback. The disappearance of Tomas Rosicky had the fans renaming him ‘Rosicknote', as he did not feature again after the end of January, with the medical team apparently unable to explain why his hamstring injury was the cause of such a prolonged absence. Wenger was mystified. “It is not a serious injury but a strange one; he is not making much progress,” he said. “It is impossible to say when he will return. It is a frustration for me.” So much reliance had been placed on the good form of Emmanuel Adebayor that when his own scoring run hit a lean patch, results suffered.

Wenger was forced to field players – Theo Walcott and Nicklas Bendtner were tried as starters – whose form or readiness for the task in hand was found wanting, hardly a surprise given their youth and inexperience. The fragility of Arsenal's situation was laid bare. The alchemist had accomplished so much with so many non-world-class performers, but now his unit had been breached. While United had Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tévez
et al
and Chelsea a variety of international options, Wenger was forced to run arguably his only world-class star into the ground. The midfield appeared to visibly wilt, and the wisdom of letting Lassana Diarra go was again called into question. The dip in form may not have been purely down to physical reasons, but the decision to depend on younger players, whilst initially providing Wenger's pace and power prerequisites, was shown to be misplaced. Would more experienced professionals have paced themselves better? By the time of the Birmingham game that changed the course of the season, Fàbregas had already made 30 appearances and Flamini 28. At the cam paign's conclusion they had registered 45 and 40 respectively. It placed huge demands on two young men still learning their trade. Arsenal were top dogs for the first seven months of the campaign, but the only trophy handed out in February was the one that Wenger conceded to Tottenham by sending out a mix-and-match team at the semi-final stage of the Carling Cup.

Then in the midst of their woes Arsenal faced their most difficult assignment so far. They travelled to Milan needing to avoid defeat to progress to the Champions League quarter-final. At a time when they were producing turgid domestic displays, where exactly did they find the mettle that saw them dethrone the holders of the European Cup in their own backyard? The goals in the 2–0 victory might have come in the latter stages of the match, but the scoreline accurately reflected their superiority on the night. At times, Wenger's young team ran rings round their illustrious foes, who at the same venue the previous April had made Premier League champions Manchester United look like continental novices. It was a remarkable triumph, and one of Arsenal's great nights in Europe.

The contrast to domestic disappointment might be explained by the greater self-belief of opponents who consider themselves at least to be the equal if not superior to Arsenal. So there is more of a positive approach by both sides and less concentration by one team to simply deny the other. Greater space is a consequence, which is then expertly exploited by Wenger's men. In an ironic way, it probably gives them a better chance of beating a Barcelona than a Bolton.

So even with major rivals on the horizon, perhaps all was not lost. In the Premier League, visits to Chelsea and Manchester United lay ahead. In the Champions League, the quarter-final draw saw them paired with Liverpool, the second leg at Anfield. The San Siro result was a reminder that Arsenal were capable of beating anyone anywhere, and if they could repeat their away form in the key clashes to come then maybe the season could still be salvaged. The table said that Arsenal had still only suffered a solitary league defeat after 30 matches. If they could keep that statistic going until the end, surely they could still take the title?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The series of key encounters that would determine the outcome of the 2007/08 season for Arsenal began with a visit to Stamford Bridge. There they faced a Chelsea side who were in the midst of a lengthy undefeated run under José Mourinho's replacement Avram Grant, making them legitimate title challengers alongside Arsenal and Manchester United. Ahead of the clash, Wenger addressed the problems he had faced in recent weeks. “I believe we need to get back to speeding up our passing around the box,” he said. “That's where we can be neater and where we can make a difference. We have been too narrow. That's down to the fact that I play Alex Hleb on one flank and he is more comfortable centrally and always comes inside. Therefore if teams defend deep like Middlesbrough did, we can be a bit narrow. We will play wide on Sunday, and Eboue is a natural wide player.”

Certainly a lack of width had been an unresolved issue since Thierry Henry last contributed a full season and used the flanks to such devastating effect. Emmanuel Eboue's return in the 27 appearances up to that point was a paltry total of two assists and not a single goal in all competitions. Being forced to rely on a squad member so patently out of form to improve the team's attacking potential exposed how bare Wenger's cupboard was. With Van Persie, Eduardo and Rosicky all able to play wide, and all absent for so many matches, Wenger had no real alternative than to field players who, under normal circumstances, might have struggled to make the substitutes' bench.

In spite of his limited choice, at least the manager could rely on someone to find a goal from somewhere. But the
‘One-nil to the Arsenal'
scenario was a scoreline from another era. The predicament in 2008 was that once ahead, Arsenal's inability to maintain a hard won advantage against their main rivals became their Achilles' heel. Unfortunately it encouraged some feeble gallows humour: Why wouldn't you trust Arsenal to take your dog for a walk? Because they can't hold a lead.

Against Chelsea, the goal they needed to win the game arrived in the 58th minute, courtesy of Bacary Sagna. But if it appeared that the tide might have turned, the sensation was illusory. Moments later, the scorer suffered an ankle injury in an innocuous challenge, and one of Wenger's most consistent and invaluable performers did not appear again for the remainder of the campaign. While Sagna was receiving treatment, Chelsea rang the changes and Nicolas Anelka was brought on to reinforce the attack. Within seconds they were level, the Arsenal defence unsettled and not adapting in time to counter the change in their opponents' formation.

As if the succession of injuries wasn't bad enough, it seemed as if officials' questionable calls always went in favour of the opposition, with scorer Didier Drogba receiving the ball in an offside position in the build-up to the goal just the latest example. Despite the fates conspiring against Arsenal, had the players performed to the level they were capable of against weaker sides such as Birmingham and Middlesbrough their misfortune would only have registered as consolation goals for their opponents. They could then have afforded to come away empty-handed from Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford and still been at the top of the table (instead of in third place) such was their earlier points advantage.

Arsenal were duly defeated by Chelsea, the central defence allowing Drogba a snap shot to register his second goal of the game. According to former Arsenal double-winning captain Frank McLintock, Gallas and Toure would always be vulnerable to opponents such as Drogba, “who disrupts them because they lack a bit of height [both are under six feet tall] and strength. When they come up against a player with sheer physical strength they sometimes get bullied.” This was certainly a state of affairs neither McLintock nor Tony Adams would have permitted. When Arsenal had registered a home win against Chelsea earlier in the campaign, Drogba had been absent through injury, undoubtedly a contributory factor in their first victory over their West London rivals since the Ivory Coast international's arrival from Marseille in 2004.

In answer to the criticism that in January he should have bought a centre back, Wenger replied, “I expected Johan Djourou to come back from Birmingham but he was injured. You have to accept in January to find a centre back who can play for Arsenal Football Club at the top of the league is not easy.” Well, Liverpool managed it, their improving form from the turn of the year owing much to the arrival of the Czech international Martin Skrtel. According to former player Alan Smith, Jonathan Woodgate was waiting and hoping that Wenger's oft-expressed admiration for him would, in a reverse of the Dennis Bergkamp transfer (when the Dutchman wanted to sign for Arsenal's neighbours) see him land at the other end of Seven Sisters Road. If Wenger was interested, he procrastinated, and Woodgate signed for Tottenham. There was speculation that Woodgate had indeed signed for Arsenal hours before he was announced as a Tottenham player, after the production company responsible for the club's TV channel was notified of an unscheduled press conference. But it was suddenly pulled, prompting a belief that the new signing the conference had been called to announce might have failed the club's very thorough medical. With the experience of Van Persie and Rosicky's frequent unavailability, might it have been that the club simply didn't want to take another chance?