A few years ago, when Jens Lehmann was in between spells as an Arsenal player and coach, he explained a key to the Invincibles team with a teasing question: “What is the fastest thing on a football pitch?” he asked cryptically, looking smug as he waited for the wrong answer. “It’s not the ball,” he added, before the big reveal: “Nobody is faster on the pitch than a thought. And then the ball comes. And then the players come. I can honestly say between 2003 and 2006 we played such fast football. One touch. It was amazing to see.”
Fast football. That is one of the aspects that has declined at Arsenal in recent years as the speedometer has dropped off. The high-velocity style Arsène Wenger encouraged when he arrived in England, the full-throttle bursts Lehmann watched take off in front of him, have become less prominent. When Arsenal struggle and slip into endless sideways probing, becoming exposed to the kind of errors and breaks that got punished so typically at Swansea, that is when they look a world away from the best Wenger teams of old.
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