{"id":3719,"date":"2021-07-24T20:58:23","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T19:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=3719"},"modified":"2021-08-02T01:44:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T00:44:28","slug":"pre-season-part-1-a-very-confusing-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=3719","title":{"rendered":"Pre-season, Part 1: A very confusing picture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Capitola Rob Holding tries to convince aging American to sign for the Arsenal after beers and too many bacon baps.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The planning that informs our range of articles on this site is most impressive and is very carefully and democratically done. We looked to move seamlessly into the new season with detailed accounts of preseason action followed by an assessment of our transfer activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately our intended push towards the new season began with a whimper and has ground to a juddering halt, largely through no fault of the club itself. In these unpredictable times weird things happen so this article will describe the match action we have seen so far but will mainly try to look at what I think is currently happening at the club and the impact of that. I am keen not to encroach too far into the territory that Trev and CER will look at in subsequent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of the Covid crisis, which shows no sign of abating and which will very likely keep me from using my season ticket in the early weeks of the season, planning for the new campaign was hit by the impact of the Euros. They deprived Arsenal of Bernd Leno, Granit Xhaka, Kieran Tierney and Bukayo Saka as the rest of the players returned to training. This was in reality less of a problem for Arsenal than for many of our rivals who had more players engaged. Xhaka, of course, may never be seen in an Arsenal shirt again as he approaches a move away to Roma after five fun-filled years in North London. His Euro efforts have variously seen him placed in one of the teams of the tournament (presumably chosen by one of the psychic penguins or whatever that we see at this time of the season) or rated less favourably when his Swiss team were overrun by Italy and he missed their quarter final with Spain through suspension after producing a performance against France of very high order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poor Bukayo Saka. Despite being overwhelmed with love from housewives and grannies all over the country, he has been racially abused and will have to run the gauntlet of regular abuse over the seasons from lowlife Twitterati for his penalty miss. It matters not, he is an Arsenal hero and hopefully destined to become a great player for our club over many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-season used to be very formulaic. George Graham used to complain about Don Howe sending him on interminable laps of Trent Park before he did exactly the same with his charges. Arsene had a plan laid in stone. An Austrian training camp, a game against a team of villagers clad in lederhosen and then home to give Barnet and Boreham Wood a tanking. In recent years the lure of loadsamoney through foreign tours saw us decamp to the USA and the Far East on regular trips. On one Rob Holding was so taken with a Californian bohemian named Scruz he made the acquaintance of, that he has been desperate for a reunion!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsene\u2019s job was also complicated by the incursion of summer tournament football into the domestic calendar. When the lovely Mrs TTG, that domestic goddess with a burgeoning Amazon habit, says to me that \u2018the football season never seems to end\u2018 she is technically not too far from correct. As the Copa America and Euro 2021 players sneaked off to Mykonos for some overdue R and R, they passed those lucky enough to be playing in the qualifying rounds of the Europa Conference League. Where is the Intertoto Cup when you need it? Football is a perpetual spectacle with massive international involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Summer, Colney (which has also been hit by a Covid outbreak) must have been a confusing and frustrating place on the first day of the new campaign. What Arteta had to work with was so different from what we hope we will start the season with. To illustrate this our team in the second half of our second friendly at Ibrox consisted of nine players who may not represent or even be at the club this season. This was a large part of the reason I didn\u2019t bother to watch the  matches on our Scottish tour live. My comments are gleaned from a highlights package for each game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tour began with an early evening match at Easter Road against Scotland\u2019s third best side, Hibernian. The game started inauspiciously when Soares exposed our young goalkeeper, Arthur Okonkwo, with a ghastly backpass. The nervous custodian made a hash of the awkward situation and Hibs were one up. They added to their lead with a header from a set piece, a problem which reared its ugly head distressingly quickly again at Ibrox. We were clearly a superior team to Hibernian but understandably very rusty and chaotic defensively, with no sign of Holding (who was away reflecting on his time in California with Scruz). Pepe missed a penalty and while our football quality began to shine through in the second half a nicely-taken finish from Emile Smith-Rowe was all we had to show in a dispiriting match with a very depressing (although almost totally irrelevant) 2-1 scoreline in favour of the Hibees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our second game, last Saturday, was more encouraging although we managed to concede two further goals from corners. Andreas Georgeson, our set-piece coach, had decamped to Malmo and will be replaced by Nicolas Cover, a French set-piece expert who joins us from those perennial strugglers Manchester City. We anticipate (and desperately need) positive results at both ends of the field. One of the concerns was no cover on the posts (nothing new) and smaller players like Bellerin and Elneny trying to pick up much bigger players at corners. Still Balogun got off the mark with a goal. Sadly it was the Balogun representing Rangers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were bright moments though, particularly a very encouraging debut by our new Portuguese left-wing back, Nuno Tavares, who joins us from Benfica. He finished a surge upfield sweetly with an assured right-foot finish and his pace and strength were exciting to behold. Eddie Nketiah scored our second equaliser with a well-taken and opportunistic finish and the game was a much more satisfactory affair than the Easter Road debacle; it saw KT3 enter the fray having cut his holiday short to return to training, albeit it (for him) on the wrong side of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the shock of the cancellation of our trip to the Florida Cup, an intense disappointment to our American fans, but not surprising in the midst of a pandemic which appears to be hitting Florida particularly hard. I fear we will see a lot of disruption this season although our absence from Europe with its consequent lessening of our travel programme may be a blessing in disguise. We are trying to arrange a couple of private friendlies but it is hardly conducive to a smooth run-in to the new season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the reassuring thing that we can take from the way pre-season has unfolded is that there appears to be a rational and credible plan developing at the club and that the necessary finance to implement that plan appears to be forthcoming. When clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona are pleading poverty and we look enviously at the expenditures of the oil-rich state-owned clubs like PSG and Manchester City or the oligarch-funded Chelsea it is surprising to see KSE apparently approving a quite lavish purchasing spree which doesn\u2019t appear to be totally dependent on chopping away all the massive financial deadwood we will be left with; we still have players like Willian and Kolasinac who are unsellable given the size of their remuneration packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I mooted this in my article about Arteta a few weeks ago, a few drinkers understandably were sceptical that the same KSE who have been relatively frugal since they took full ownership of the club would be willing to fund the necessary expenditure. I will let those who come after me talk specifics about who we have acquired and may still acquire but the template that has been created, of young players with high sell-on value and significant potential, makes absolute sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been critical of Edu over his time in the Technical Director role and the Willian deal still brings tears to my eyes. He does not appear to be a skilled seller of players but frankly it would be hard to find anyone who could unload some of the players we have accumulated. Even the late Arthur Daley would have struggled to find buyers for some of the stock we have on the books, although maybe chucking in a few cases of Lithuanian Riesling might do the trick (that\u2019s one for slightly older British readers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frustratingly, Chelsea and Liverpool seem to achieve serious fees for players they sell on. We can scarcely raise any finance from sales at all. Guendouzi, Torreira and Xhaka all look likely to go cheaply and the big saving has to be on the wage bill, freed now of Ozil\u2019s mega contract which we were still funding in full while he was at Fenerbache. Call me picky but I\u2019m a little underwhelmed by January\u2019s deal that saw a player leave on a free transfer while we continued to pick up his full salary and bonuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However Edu does deserve credit in one very important respect. He has made it a major plank of our strategy to retain young talent from the Academy and in almost every notable instance has persuaded young stars like Saka, Smith Rowe, Okonkwo, Tierney, Balogun and Taylor-Hart to commit their futures to the club. This is sound husbandry and of course ensures we have a Hale End nucleus in the first-team squad which may be swollen soon by the addition of Patino, Azeez and Hutchinson. This is probably, in a confused and highly unusual pre-season, the most substantial element of good news we can cling onto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember a few seasons ago, that erstwhile striker Gary Lineker bemoaning the fact that every season the Marshdwellers were always anticipating a transitional season. They never had the right pieces in place to challenge for honours. Sadly in recent years much the same criticism could be levelled at us. We\u2019ve spent years trying to repair the damage caused by lack of or misdirected investment and inadequate oversight. Let us hope the positive perceptions we have of a new attitude and approach from KSE will indeed prove to be the case and that we can see 2021\/22 as a season where our move back to the top really gathers momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The planning that informs our range of articles on this site is most impressive and is very carefully and democratically done. We looked to move seamlessly into the new season with detailed accounts of preseason action followed by an assessment of our transfer activity. Unfortunately our intended push towards the new season began with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,6,13,11,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3719"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3762,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions\/3762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}