The Chilean, dropped for the crunch fixture against Liverpool, threatens to be the latest in long line of false dawns under Arsène WengerThe same again, but this time with more angst. Arsenal lost again away from home to a top-six side and again looked flat and brittle. The difference this season is that there are six sides with genuine hopes of taking the four Champions League qualification berths and, worse, that the future of Arsenal’s two most expensive signings, the players on whose presence fans have built their dreams of progress, looks increasingly uncertain.How big a loss Mesut Özil would be is debatable, so much so that it is not immediately clear which other European club who could afford him...
Arsenal’s away form against the other five leading clubs has been inadequate, with three wins in five seasons, and they travel to a fretful Anfield in search of a long-term sparkWhen Arsène Wenger took Arsenal to Liverpool in September 2012, he watched two of his summer signings, Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla, score the goals in a 2-0 win. It got the club up and running for the season after a couple of disappointing draws and it felt like a spark.Liverpool had a new manager in Brendan Rodgers and he was struggling at the time with various problems. The result meant Rodgers had presided over the club’s worst start since 1962-63 and his team would finish in seventh – one...
The Liverpool manager faces another unwanted summer of trying to entice leading targets without the Champions League unless his team’s form picks up, starting at home to ArsenalLiverpool did not miss the opportunity this week to highlight the fact that their latest set of record-breaking accounts – in terms of their £301.8m revenue, not their £19.8 loss – came in a year when they were the only club in Deloitte’s top 10 rich list without Champions League football. As an illustration of Liverpool’s continued global and commercial appeal, it was a justifiable boast. As a reflection of Jürgen Klopp’s fortunes, it will mark an alarming deterioration should it reappear in the financial results for 2017-18. The prospect is growing.Klopp conceded...
The German is trusted to return past glories to Anfield but cracks are showing before the visit of Arsenal, whose fans’ quest for managerial change recursIf Claudio Ranieri’s dream died when he was sacked before the end of the season, it has taken less than a week for a nightmare to move into its place. Somewhere in Rome the former Leicester manager has probably been waking up screaming at the indignities he has suffered over the past few days.Based on results, the boot ought to have been expected, for dreams of longevity are not permissible for teams near the bottom of the Premier League who are scoring no goals and picking up no points. Leicester’s recovery once he had left...
He resembles not so much an elite streamlined modern athlete as a clever, cheerful cartoon mouse but with Cazorla in the centre Arsenal are a different team. Mainly they’re a better oneEnglish football has always had a thing about leadership. What is it exactly? How loud should it be? How many layers of bandage should be entwined around its blood-caked temples? More to the point, without it who will keep the men in check, prevent them from fleeing the trenches, retain some sense of fragile, orderly decline?More often than not leadership is defined as an absence, a feeling that something brusque and manly and vital has been allowed to wither. Arsenal lack leadership. England lack leadership. In both cases the leadership...