One of the problems with sport, imported from heartwarming mid-90s books about Man Feelings and their attendant movie adaptations featuring Colin Farrell looking sad in a hoodie, is the idea that football in particular has something to tell us about life. In many ways this is correct. It’s just that the things football has to tell us are not always good or helpful.
For example, the concept of the zero-sum game. It’s not a zero-sum game. People say this a lot now, often in the context of some reductive and binary argument, the kind of internet shouting match where there can be only one winner, that for one party to succeed it must necessarily be bad for everyone else, without nuance or shared benefits and burdens. Grownups are always insisting that it’s not a zero-sum game.
Third-best Arsenal ever, then, on league finishes at least, and built out of the fourth-highest net transfer spend in the league across Arteta’s time at the club. During Arteta’s reign Arsenal have gone eighth, eighth, fifth, second, second and (probably) second. Take away Liverpool’s brilliant season and they would be top. Is this really a problem that needs solving? How is it possible to construct even the most marginalised of Arteta-must-go subcultures out of this upturn in fortunes?
Except, the title was there for the taking! But was it? The world’s strongest league, thronging with ambitious, robust teams, is never going be a stroll for anyone. And yet even Liverpool are being portrayed as middling champions, placeholders, a default option. This season Arne Slot’s team have beaten the champions of Spain, the champions of Germany, the champions of France and the champions of England (twice), all without conceding a goal. At what point do you actually get to be good? Sometimes someone else just deserved it more.
Still, the zero-sum game insists second must be failure. So we get the endlessly churning Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the certainty there is some fatal malady waiting to be diagnosed. Which isn’t to say there aren’t elements to improve. Even trophy-winning teams carry flaws. Arsenal have lost or drawn games they should have won. How unforgivable are the key charges?
The most obvious fatal flaw is not signing a dedicated goalscorer in the past 18 months. In outline it does look simple. Scoring more goals, having someone in double figures by now. Surely this would, on balance, be good. Why would anyone actively choose to have Mikel Merino up front and not, say, Alexander Isak?
But how easy is this in practice? How irrational are the choices that led to it? Arsenal began the season with an attack built around Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus and Martin Ødegaard, the same attack that helped them score 91 goals in the league last season, a title-trending number.
In the event every single one of these attackers has been injured for a significant period. Saka and Ødegaard, the key axis, have played 10 league games together. Injuries should be factored in. Always add, even from a position of strength. But this also has to be a player good enough to operate in the system as well as score goals, while also falling within budget, being available and fitting with the culture Arteta has constructed out of the slightly broken environment he inherited.
There is surely a door somewhere along this route, a fork in the road that could have averted a situation where you’re trying to win the league with a jobbing midfielder playing up front. But how many of these candidates actually exist in world football? The club tried, couldn’t find the right outstanding player at the right price and took the view that sometimes the best move is not to make a move at all.
That Arsenal were characterised as similarly decadent, defined by senior players failing to pull their weight, weighed down by United-level negativity. Weeding this out, instilling that intensity, was always the keynote of the entire rebuild. Intensity was Arteta’s version of Ruben Amorim’s wingbacks-or-die philosophy. Total commitment was his three at the back. This was the one non-negotiable. Even the obvious missteps, the unfortunate remarks about Saka just needing to be ready to play 70 games a season, about Havertz’s gene-based indestructibility (enter: random hamstring injury) spring from it.
Arteta was always a risky appointment, then 37 years old and in his first proper job. The positive outcomes are so obvious: back in the Champions League, happy dressing room, clear playing identity, young players showing the best of themselves. A tendency towards excessive intensity seems a small price to pay, consistent with the good parts – just as sticking with the manager and absorbing the bumps in the road are also the opposite of the Manchester United playbook of the past 10 years.
Perhaps Arteta’s most interesting comment in the wake of the 7-1 win at PSV Eindhoven (Does this count as good? Are we OK with it?) is that the Champions League can now offer his team “a different energy”, a competition where they are naturally less invested. For now, if there is any lesson to be drawn from a trip to Old Trafford, the ghost ship, the meat grinder, it is simply to count the good bits as well as the bad, and always to be careful what you wish for.
