Wake Up, Arsenal.

Also published here.

The Plan

First and foremost, cut costs. How? Well, sell off your more experienced players, even though they're more than capable enough of contributing much to your team. Instead of buying ready replacements, concentrate all your efforts on youth development. Get kids to join the club at the not-so-tender-anymore age of 16 or 17, groom them, and build a team that grows together like a family.

Advantages?

The plan perfectly suits a club short on finances due to the building of a new stadium, and the sales of some players, coupled with the minimal compensation paid for young starlets coming in, helps the finances of the club immensely during the transition. The plan helps builds unity within the players, who know each other well as they grow up together on the pitch, and off it. Also, it means that the club is no longer dependent on transfer windows and big-name signings to succeed.

Disadvantages?

The biggest disadvantage of this plan, is that we don't live in an ideal world. It may have worked in Utopia, but not in the big,bad world that is professional football today. Playing youngsters in all positions on the pitch, when your title rivals are buying seasoned, proven, top-class professionals, is in most cases like fighting a losing battle. Moreover, when you sell literally all of the experienced trophy-winners in your squad, all you are left with is talent and potential, not consistency and performance.

With youth, also comes a little immaturity, and a lot of impatience. Clubs all over Europe are masters at exploiting these very qualites, and lure these starlets with the promise of more money and trophies, a combination that any player will find hard to refuse. All in all, the whole basis of the plan fails, in the sense that it becomes impossible to keep a team which hasn't won anything together, year after year, in search of the elusive cup or league triumph.

Problems Galore...

This season is over for Arsenal. And like last season, it has come to a halt just before the finish line, a season of almosts and near-misses. However, one wouldn't be off the mark when observing that the team under Arsene Wenger has moved backwards this season, as admitted even by Emmanuel Adebayor after the United defeat.

Almost every Arsenal fan at the end of last season believed that this would be their campaign, one where the squad would finally come of age, and deliver the end-result Wenger's plan had envisaged. However, all of that changed during a disastrous off-season for the club, with more players leaving than coming in, and only one of the incoming players ready for first-team action.

Arsene Wenger admitted recently to making mistakes in the transfer window before the season began, and was a rather refreshing change from his usual "the-team-is-very-young" hocus pocus. Wenger was never a great tactician, even during the years Arsenal were winning almost everything in sight, but he more than made up for it with an incredible eye for talent, and a superb brand of football that combined skill, speed, and precision like never before.

However, his tactical failings have become more and more blatant over the years, as his squad is nowhere near as strong as it used to be at the turn of the century to compensate for it. The one-touch quick-passing style during the early 00's has been replaced by a much slower multi-passing game, which is much easier to defend against. Arsenal were known for scoring time and again through classic counter-attacking football, with the ball being played from one end to the other in a matter of seconds, but this aspect of their game as been notoriously absent over the past few years, with most counter-attacks being rather slow, and eventually resulting in the same old short passes outside the penalty area.

The defence remains the team's achilles' heel, though, and Wenger could certainly do worse than call upon one of his former players to help out with the Arsenal backline. Martin Keown did a commendable job in 05-06 to help Arsenal set a defensive record in the Champions League, which guided them to the final, and maybe him, or even Tony Adams, could be brought in to make the defence a bit more mean.

However, the bigger problem seems to be the lack of leadership and ambition at the club. And no, this isn't just referring to the captain on the pitch, but leadership and ambition in the entire squad, coaching staff, and up in the boardroom. Arsenal have very noticeably lowered their standards and expectations in recent times, and when the club chairman comes out and declares that finishing outside the top four is "no disaster", no more words are needed to get the point through. A "successful" season for Arsenal these days seems to be a top four finish, and a couple of decent cup runs which end in the quarters or semis.

It's always advisable to give the manager of a football team a free reign, and let him function without any additional pressure, but it's turning out to have quite the opposite effect at the Emirates, with noone even questioning even a single decision that Arsene Wenger makes. Ever since David Dein left, the Arsenal board has seen many changes, with more board members leaving for reasons yet unknown to the fans. Also, none of the current board understand football and its dynamics as well as Dein did, which enabled a symbiotic relationship between him and Wenger, and propelled the club to great heights.

What it also did was provide Wenger with an alternative view, which is so important for Wenger, whose job can get rather lonesome. Pat Rice has always been a steady and competent No.2, but different times require different solutions, and it seems that a stronger assistant coach, someone who could dare to disagree with Wenger, would help the first team a lot more right now.

The Solution...

One thing is for certain, that Arsenal lack that extra bit of fire, desire, and steel, that takes teams past that final hurdle and makes them champions. And at times, it isn't all dependent on the players. Things are a bit too relaxed and laid-back at the club, and everyone must be put on alert and on his toes, and this starts right at the top, from the chairman, who seems to be in a world of his own.

It would be ideal to get David Dein back, but Hill-Wood's ego will probably not allow for that. In this situation, new CEO Ivan Gazidis must be given a little more power. Wenger should remain the manager of the first team and not more, because his double-role hasn't worked for anyone. Gazidis may have taken on Dein's role, but whether his personality and dynamism can match his predecessor's, remains to be seen. And who knows, maybe the man who brings "change" at Arsenal is Stan Kroenke, who hails from the country that is witnessing "change" every moment with President Obama!

Whoever it may be, Arsenal Football Club needs to be woken up from its slumber. The snoring's becoming too loud to be ignored.